I expected every moment to hear that a cannon had fallen through the bottom of a bateau, or that a barrel had burst itself on the heads of those who stood waiting for it with upstretched arms; but for hours those ragged, sweating specters fumbled safely at their labors, making profane jests about the fat King whose troops were at our heels; and one by one the bateaux, deep in the water, dropped away from the larger vessels and pulled slowly upstream again.

When we were done, there was nothing left in the schooners. We took off their sails, even, and stripped them of their cordage; and at last we set fire to them, so that the final bateaux to cast off were lighted on their way by the flames that poured from the hatches.

It was like dawn, for in the light of the burning vessels we could see apple trees, white with blossoms, on both banks; and robins waked to trill their quavering morning melodies. It wasn’t dawn, alas, but only midnight, and before dawn had come we had tied rags around our hands and the rags were bloody.

We rowed all night through a sultriness that pressed upon us like hot wool, and all through the scorching glare of the following day. It is fifty miles from Sorel to Chambly, against a swift current; and for hours on end each stroke we took with our clumsy oars seemed the last that could be endured. Still we took one more, and then one more: always one more stroke, our arms and backs like hot lead; and inch by inch we lumbered on, another inch farther from the British: another inch closer to Chambly—another inch closer to the rapids, beyond which British vessels couldn’t pass.

Toward dusk a black wall of clouds rose in the west—a wall from which emerged an angry smothered roar, with only such breaks as a growling animal might make to catch its breath.

The growling was louder when we came to the pool at the foot of Chambly rapids, where massed bateaux wallowed uneasily in the swirling, foam-streaked water, waiting to go up. They were a sad flotilla in the shadow of the coming storm, and the men in them, both sick and well, were strangely silent—perhaps because, like me, their muscles trembled with fatigue and they were too spent for speech.

While we waited, the black wall in the west towered up over us and seemed to burst. The whole sky blazed. Thunder pounded at our ears and heads like padded hammers, while the rain had the solidity of falling lakes. There was an inhuman yet personal intensity to the storm, as if the devil had sent a legion of water-witches to torment us. There was no slackening of the rain; the stabbing of lightning was incessant, and it was to the unremittent crashing of close thunder that we were drummed to our battle with Chambly rapids.