Cap Huff let go his hold on our bateau to shoulder himself free of the jostlers. “Keep those damned guns off my feet!” he roared. Stooping, he heaved at the spokes of a cannon-wheel. The whole piece rose in the air and toppled into the boat beside us. The boat lurched beneath the sudden shock; and the bateau-man on the stern thwart shot overboard.

He scrambled out, wild-eyed, and pointed downstream, sputtering, but we didn’t need his pointing.

Far down the river road there moved a column in scarlet coats and white breeches. There was a shimmery glitter in the air above them—the reflection of the setting sun on their bayonets. There did indeed seem to be a million of them; they filled the road as far as we could see, an endless stream of scarlet.

Between us and that slowly flowing column there was nothing except Arnold and Wilkinson—two small horsemen, motionless in the middle of the long road that curved like a snake beside the river. Around us the sweating artillerymen argued and cursed, balancing their guns and trimming their bateaux. One boat pushed off; then another.

We stowed our belongings, wishing Arnold would stop watching that scarlet flood. The men in the next bateau bawled at us to push them off; and Cap, setting his foot against the bow, shot it out into mid-stream. We were alone, then, on the muddy river bank, a nervous and uneasy crew. We could see people edging out from the farm houses, silently eyeing us in the sunset glow; but they stayed half hidden, either from fear or hatred.

All of us were fretful over small matters. Cap Huff was in a stew, not only because of Nason, but also because Doc Means persisted in saying how it should be as easy to inoculate people against the bites of mosquitoes and black flies as against the smallpox; and I was in a rage because Cap Huff went from one to the other of us, asking in a husky whisper, “What do you think’s become of Stevie? What do you think we ought to do about Stevie?”

He must have known that none of us knew anything at all about Nason, and that there was nothing to be done about him. Yet he harped on the subject interminably; and to me, attempting to pursue certain thoughts that had come into my head concerning Ellen Phipps, it seemed as though he would never stop.

When Verrieul, standing on a thwart, said softly: “Now they come,” we got ourselves into our places. Arnold’s black horse came sailing over the abandoned barricade, with a clatter of hoofs, Wilkinson scrambling close behind.