I was surprised when a huge hand grasped my shoulder and turned me into the shipyard. I saw Cap Huff’s moist red face close to mine, and behind him a group of men in tow-cloth smocks like my own—except that mine was in shreds. So great was my relief at finding myself among friends again that I began weakly to laugh.

At the sound of this silly laughter of mine, they came close around me, while Tom Bickford took me by the arm. I tried to understand how anyone connected with this army could still look as fresh and clean as Tom.

“You better come and lay down, Cap’n Peter,” he said, and tugged at my elbow. “You get some food and sleep!”

“Have you seen Nathaniel?” I asked.

“You better come right away and lay down, Cap’n Peter!”

A powerful odor of asafoetida reached me. Doc Means came and felt my pulse, and Joseph Marie Verrieul took my other arm. They only irritated me. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked. “Can’t you hear? Where’s my brother Nathaniel?”

“He’s been sent with Major Scott and Zelph way down to Crown Point, at the other end of Lake Champlain, Cap’n Peter,” Tom said, “to help guard supplies General Arnold seized in Montreal for the army. They been shipped down there to keep ’em from the British. Nathaniel’s on that duty.”

“When did he go?” I asked. “How long’s he been gone? Who went with him?”

“Why, he’s all right,” Doc Means said. “You better worry about yourself, not him, Cap’n Peter. We got a nice eel stew on the fire, over in the work-shed. Tom’s been saving it for you. I’ll drop in a little mite of Sympathetic Powder to kind of straighten you out.”

The ground seemed to heave under me: I thought I was back on shipboard. “I’ll straighten all of you with a belaying pin unless I get an answer,” I told them. “You say Scott and Zelph were sent south to Crown Point with him? Just those three men?”

“Doc’s right,” Tom Bickford said solicitously. “You better worry about yourself: not Nathaniel. Him and Major Scott and Zelph aren’t in any danger at all, and the trip’s even so safe that some young girl’s folks took advantage of it to send her along with ’em to be took care of that way. Name of Phipps or something. You quit worrying about Nathaniel, Cap’n Peter.”

I was in no condition to think calmly. All I could do was have confused thoughts. Something seemed impossible and incredible. For no reason I had understood, Marie de Sabrevois had seemed to consider it important that she and Ellen should go to Albany; and now here was Ellen in Crown Point with Nathaniel, only halfway to Albany, while Marie herself remained in St. John’s.