“No!” I said. “Not Easton and Brown!”

Nathaniel was triumphant. “Certainly: Colonel Easton and Major Brown.”

I stared at my shoes, so that Nathaniel mightn’t see my eyes. Easton and Brown—who, with Hinman, were to blame for the lack of fortifications in the very spot where we sat! Two of the three inefficients responsible for ousting Arnold from Crown Point at the moment when he had started to make it an impregnable barrier against English troops and English vessels! Easton, kicked by Arnold for being a trickster and a coward: Brown, blocked from promotion by Arnold for being an officer without foresight: both of them intimates of Hazen, the man who couldn’t obey orders, and of Bedel, the poltroon of the Cedars!

Once more, in my mind’s eye, I saw the four of them, birds of a feather, flocking together in that small, dark room in Chambly Fort, glowering at me because I had brought a message from Arnold, the fighter who had damned them all for cowards or blunderers.

“Important,” Nathaniel had called them in all seriousness; “finest and best-considered officers in our army!”

I decided there was something incomprehensible about an army—dangerous currents, like the wild rips off Ushant: forever letting fools and incompetents come safe to port, while shattering the best and bravest men on the rocks of jealousy and suspicion.

“Easton and Brown!” I said to myself. “Easton, Brown, Bedel and Hazen! God help Nathaniel!”

… Beyond the tent I heard a rasping voice. It was Arnold, on his way from the barracks to the shore with Wilkinson and a strange captain. He stopped and faced the latter. “Waste no time!” he cried, wagging a finger in the captain’s face. “Start your camp today! Chop foundation logs! Cut poles and pegs: lay out the logs—here and there and there”—he pointed to the spots.

“Send out your men to shoot anything they can get—deer, bear, raccoons, porcupines, woodchucks, rabbits, crows! I tell you there’ll be three thousand on the verge of death with smallpox! You’ll have a town of dying men here: a whole damned town! You never saw such a sight in your life; and when you’ve seen it, you’ll hope to God you’ll never see it again!”

Wheeling, he limped to the bateau. Three soldiers, heavily laden with bundles, plodded after him. As they set down their burdens at the water’s edge, I heard a triumphant bellow from Cap Huff. “Beer! Mutton! Cheese! By God, General, this is the kind of a war I like!”

By the time I reached the landing to see them off, the bateau was already on its way toward Ticonderoga, Tom Bickford at the tiller. Arnold had his field-desk open on his knees, poking among his papers. He seemed to see me out of the back of his head.