My unhappiness was greater on the following morning, when he came down to see us, his pipe sending up smoke that smelled of burnt feathers. He was accompanied by a young secretary who looked and acted uncomfortable, and clumsily bumped into and stumbled over almost everything in sight.

What Wynkoop saw seemed to cause him neither enthusiasm nor disturbance until he reached the stocks for our new galleys. When he saw them, he blinked and sniffed, and shot a question at me that might have been in a foreign tongue for all I understood of it. I was saved from embarrassment by the secretary, who asked the question again in English, saying, “What’s this here now?”

I said it was a row-galley, whereupon Wynkoop shook his head decisively and said, “Ve ken’t built ’em: ve ken’t built row-gellies! Sdob id, und built gundelos!”

“Sir,” I said, “General Arnold specifically asked for row-galleys. He asked me to design row-galleys, so he’d have vessels fit for maneuvering.”

Wynkoop snorted. “Vat you going to fessen ’em togedder mit? Sdring? Vair’s der nels? Vair’s der boldts? Vair’s der sbyges? Vair’s der sells und ricking?”

“Well,” I said, “we’re bound to get spikes and bolts sooner or later, and I figure to get sails on ’em somehow. General Arnold wants row-galleys. He told me—–”

Wynkoop snatched his pipe from his mouth and glared at me. “Cheneral Arnolt! I dun’t gif a dem for Cheneral Arnolt! He en’t der feller dot hess to vite dis vleet! Id’s me!” He thumped his chest. “Me! Vite it, chess, und maneuffer it! Id’s as issy to maneuffer a gundelo ass a row-gelly. Und ve ken built dree gundelos vile you’re drying to built vun of dese demn row-gellies, und nod gedding it built, neider! Zum teufel mit! I vun’t heff it! Nudding but gundelos I vun’t heff!”

So there was an end of our row-galleys. I wondered where Arnold was, and what he would say when he found I hadn’t obeyed his orders to build galleys; but there was nothing to be done about it, for his orders had been superseded by Wynkoop’s.

That’s one of the unfortunate but inescapable things about an army. Half the orders are given by men incompetent to give orders; but for the sake of maintaining the discipline without which an army is worthless, the orders must be obeyed on pain of public disgrace or even of death.

We went back to work on the vessel whose frame we had brought from St. John’s. Here, at least, was something so near finished that not even a Wynkoop would want to stop her. Since she was small, we had given her as much deck space as possible, arranging to rig her as a sloop; and now we pierced her for eight guns. Between the gun-ports we made oar-ports, five ports to a side. Thus in spite of Wynkoop’s desire for gundelos, we had one row-galley after all—a sloop row-galley; but a row-galley none the less. Her hull was so near finished that if we could have got oakum, we could have plugged up her seams somehow and tossed her into the lake so to lay down another vessel on her stocks. But having no oakum, we had to leave her as she was and work on her powder-magazine and fo’c’sle, which was like working in a hot corner of hell.