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.

It had the look, in the blue flashes that seared our eyes, of a battlefield; for human figures covered the treeless space before the black fort that glistened in the rain. They sprawled grotesquely in the mud; and with each blaze of lightning we saw them stabbed by a thousand watery darts. Rivulets ran over and around them; but they lay like sodden corpses, conscious of nothing. Here and there a body moved; struggled to its knees and crawled a little: rose to its feet, even, to stagger blindly and then sink again.

Groups of men came slowly into the plain from down the stream, or clambered like clumsy demons over the river bank. They groped and stumbled: then sank down among the prostrate figures, or dragged themselves away toward St. John’s. It was not an army: there were no officers: no sentinels—nothing but human cattle, palsied from exhaustion; sick with overexertion and despair.

The night before I had drunk a cup of paste, made from flour mixed with the water of the Richelieu. Since then there had been nothing to eat. I picked my way toward the fort through the recumbent bodies of those miserable skeletons, wondering whether Hazen had obeyed the orders I had brought from Arnold—the orders to send all supplies and sick to St. John’s. If he was so quick at disobeying, it might be there were still supplies remaining in the fort. I could have eaten anything. The walls of my stomach seemed to grind together, and to squeak in the grinding.

I tried to remember when it was I had spoken with Hazen and his officers. A week or more ago, I thought at first: ten days perhaps. No: it was less: six days—five days. Then it came to me that it was only two days before. Two days! I stood and stared at the drawbridge that spanned the ditch before the fort; it was down, and the lightning showed me that the heavy gates stood open, unguarded by any sentry.