There could be no failure; for if we failed, we would have no means of escape, and would be doomed to wander, without arms or food, in the trackless wilderness to the south.

How we did it I scarcely know; but it was done. With fingers bloody from our rowing, we lashed ropes to the bateaux, bow, stern and amidships; and as many as could laid hold of the ropes, regardless of rank or military observances. Ordinarily, that is to say, no love was lost between the Pennsylvanians and the New England troops, and I have known times when Pennsylvanians would see Massachusetts men in hell before they would lift a finger to help them. But at Chambly rapids there was no thought of differences; and once, while I dragged at a rope with raw hands that seemed to clutch hot nettles, the man who grunted and puffed beside me was General Sullivan.

The men on shore hauled; in each bateau, men with poles strained to hold it from the rocky bank; while in the rapids, waist deep in the surging flood and clinging to the gunwales, went other men. Inch by inch they worked forward, half supported by the bateau and half supporting it. The heavy boat tilted upward in the churning, thrusting torrent, rearing like a restive horse; and inch by inch it climbed that rampart of water that leaped at us and showed white fangs in the crackling flashes of lightning; then hid for a moment in impenetrable dark before leaping at us once more.

The pole of a bateauman would often slip; and its wielder, plunging over the side, would go down through foam and over boulders, to be fished out, choking and gagging, by those below.

Those who waded would lose their footing, swing backward against the legs of their fellows, and whirl away, half submerged, until they floundered among the boats that waited in the pool. The bateau would hesitate and lurch; there would be a strangled chorus of shouts from those who labored with it. Once more it would move upward almost imperceptibly, quivering and fighting in the lightning’s glare.

There was agony, even, in watching the painful slow ascent of those unwilling bateaux, held by main strength on that sloping wall of water at an angle as unnatural as it was impossible; for with each one that went up, we said to ourselves a score of times that it could go no farther—that it must topple backward and whirl down among us, sinking others before it sunk itself. Yet every last one of them went up, and over the brink at last into the smooth stretch of water that flows through the plain in front of the square stone fort.

… It was a strange sight, that plain, when we had hoisted our bateau up the rapids and dragged its nose ashore, our legs trembling and muscles throbbing.