“That’s right,” Arnold said. “If we can get three hundred good carpenters, and lumber and nails and sails and rope and guns, and enough sailors to man ’em after they’re built, we’d have a fleet. Well, that’s what we’ve got to have!” He eyed me sardonically.

“A fleet of how many?” I asked, remembering the cloud of sail we’d seen bearing down on us at Sorel.

“Well,” Arnold said, “we’d have to build enough to delay ’em. We’ve got a few small vessels already: enough to hinder ’em a little. There’s the Royal Savage schooner, that Montgomery seized at St. John’s when he came up to join me last winter; there’s the Enterprise sloop I took at St. John’s last summer; there’s the Liberty schooner, that used to belong to Skene, and that Captain Oswald captured in Skenesboro a year ago.

“They’re small and out of repair; but small as they are, they’re enough to control the lake until the British build something bigger. The hell of it is that the British could offset those three with flat-boats—gundelos—provided they’re big enough to mount heavy guns.”

“How many would you want to build?” I persisted.

“As many as I could,” Arnold said. “As many as we’d need to keep ’em from reaching the Hudson and joining Howe! We wouldn’t necessarily have to build big vessels. We might be able to stop ’em with gundelos, even. Haul your wind a little: see if you can’t get more speed out of this tub!”

We jockeyed her a little, but she was doing the best she could.

“Yes sir!” Arnold went on. “If we could delay ’em: if we could get control of the lake for three months—for four months, so they’d have to build a fleet and make a fight for it, they’d be no further ahead a year from now than they are today, because they’ll never dare to operate against us in the winter. Why, by God, sir, if we could delay ’em, it would be as good as a victory!”

For the first time I fully understood his plan; and more than that, I understood that here might be a chance for me to get my fingers on Nathaniel at last, and keep him close to me, where he would be in no trouble.

“I don’t see why you can’t,” I told him. “I know a shipyard inside-out, and so does my brother Nathaniel. He and I could build a gundelo in two weeks, just the two of us, I do believe, only in my opinion a gundelo isn’t worth the powder to blow it to hell.”

“Ah, yes,” Arnold said, “but it’s cheap and easy to build; and an eighteen-pounder in the bow of a gundelo can kill just as many men as an eighteen-pounder in a fort.”