Cap Huff, perched on the upturned bateau he had commandeered for Arnold, fretted perpetually about Steven Nason. “Somep’n’s happened to Stevie,” he kept saying. “He’d be here by now if somep’n hadn’t happened to him! By God, if those illegitimate lobster-backed Royal 69th Footsore Dragoons of His Majesty’s Personal Backhouse have done anything to Stevie, by God, I’ll pull ’em off into the bushes one by one and stake ’em out on a ant-hill! If ever this army needed I and Stevie, it’s now, when there ain’t but one general in sight that don’t fall face down in a cowflap every time he starts to go anywhere or do anything! If anything’s happened to Stevie, by God, the war’s as good as over—and somep’n has happened to him! I know somep’n has!”

His complaining made me think he might be right.

The last of Sullivan’s men had hobbled down the road and tumbled into bateaux, three full days since Sullivan had consented to retreat. The barracks below us had been set afire, as well as Colonel Hazen’s mansion across the river. I wished, in my despair, that we could somehow burn the Château de St. Auge, and Marie de Sabrevois with it.

When the smoke poured up from the barracks, we looked for Arnold among the officers who hustled into bateaux and were pulled off upstream—that is, to the southward, toward Lake Champlain. It was not until they were all afloat that he came pelting out of the barracks’ yard on his black horse. Behind him rode Wilkinson, extremely military on a bay mare afflicted with wind.

Arnold clattered through the mud and puddles from last night’s rain and waved to us. “Put the boat in the river! We’re getting out of here!”

Wilkinson stopped to hand me Arnold’s field-desk: but Arnold went straight for the barricade across the road and seemed to sail over it: then whirled his horse and spoke to the major who commanded the battery of four-pounders. “Put those guns in boats and get started! Don’t get caught! You’ve got five minutes—no more!”

He bolted down the road, leaving Wilkinson still skirting the barricade on his windy mare. The artillery company swarmed around the pieces, hustling them back to where we wrestled with our bateau. In two seconds we were all of us struggling to be in the same small spot at the same time.

A bateau-man, perched on the stern of the nearest bateau, leaned back on his setting pole to keep the bow against the shore. He danced on the stern thwart with excitement. “By God!” he shouted. “It’s thum—it’s thum! A million of ’em!”