“Yes, but it’s flat-bottomed,” I reminded him, “and it slides like a pie-plate. It’s neither speedy, handy, nor seaworthy. If I let off an eighteen-pounder from the bow of a gundelo, I’d need a kedge-anchor to keep her from kicking ashore and fouling herself in a pine tree. I’d rather have one Spanish row-galley, like those you see in the Tagus, than twenty gundelos. They’re lateen rigged, with a main and foremast: just two sails to handle, and two yards, and no bowsprit. A handful of farmers could make sail on ’em, provided they had just one mariner to give ’em orders.”

Arnold eyed me speculatively. “I never saw one. It doesn’t sound like the smartest rig in the world.”

“It’s good enough for Spaniards,” I reminded him, “and for Italians and Algerines too. They like to hug the shore pretty tight, but they can beat to windward as well as anyone. You know where you’d be if you tried to beat to windward in a gundelo: about ten miles south of hell’s kitchen.”

“That’s so,” Arnold said, “but gundelos are better than nothing, and any damned fool can build a gundelo.”

“Yes,” I said, “and Nathaniel and I can show almost any damned fool how to build a Spanish galley, just so he knows how to handle an adze and doesn’t pound his fingers every time he drives a spike.”

When Arnold made up his mind, he made it up quick. “Good,” he said. “Good! Now let’s see: I sent your brother to Crown Point, didn’t I? He’s in charge of your ship timbers. All right: good enough! When we get to Crown Point, I want you and your brother to draw plans for a few Spanish galleys. Maybe we can contrive a way to show Mr. Burgoyne there’s some slight difference between Lake Champlain and a Thames Regatta.”

… We labored past Cumberland head and the steep sides of Valcour Island; then cruised across those fretful waters toward Crown Point, where this narrow inland sea is pushed together by the mountains of Vermont and New York.

The crumbling fort at Crown Point and the patched stone barracks within it stood forlornly on land that appeared to have been spread out, like butter, as a support for the rolling hills behind it. The lake became a canal that twisted among mountains to connect the waterways of Canada with those that join the Hudson. A few miles ahead we could see the heights of Ticonderoga, beneath which, we knew, the canal opened once more into narrow lakes—on the right Lake George, and on the left the long lagoon of South Bay.