We had worked hard enough before Ellen went away; but she was no sooner gone than the seeming hopelessness of the task that lay before us set us to working harder than ever, with Wynkoop ordering us to do something, and almost immediately deciding to have us do something else; so that even had we possessed the tools and materials with which to build ships properly, much of our efforts would have been wasted.

As it was, the vessels on the stocks seemed no further advanced, each day, than they had been the day before. Nothing existed for us save the building of ships: nothing else, it almost seemed, had ever existed, or ever would. To me, the marshes and the cool breezes of Arundel became misty memories: Ellen, even, seemed as remote as those long-gone days when I walked my own quarterdeck, bound for the Spanish ports.

Those who came up from Ticonderoga brought us diversified information—how Pennsylvanians were fighting daily with New Englanders; how General Gates, after replacing Sullivan as Commander of the Northern Army, had ordered the entire army out of Crown Point and back to Ticonderoga, giving Arnold the job of moving it back; how Congress, early in July, had signed a Declaration of Independence, making us free and independent of Great Britain. What we wanted to know, however, was when in the name of God we’d get blacksmiths, oar-makers and the million other things that we needed; but they didn’t know the answers. It was as Cap Huff said: a Declaration of Independence was a nice thing to hang on the wall, maybe; but if somebody didn’t send us a few tons of spikes and oakum before long, the British would blow hell out of us, the Declaration and everything else; so what was the use of mentioning a Declaration of Independence before we got a few spikes?

We had our first encouragement on a cool evening in mid-July, when we heard shouts from the Wood Creek road and the sound of a fife playing Yankee Doodle, extremely brisk and cheery. We ran down the hill, and so did most of the carpenters who were sitting around the new barracks and Skene’s barn; for a fife was something we hadn’t heard for many a day. There, coming into the ravine, was a company of fifty, swinging along in double file as fast and regular as soldiers, only instead of muskets they carried axes. At their head was Dominicus Davis, the best calker in our Arundel shipyard. Beside him, tooting the fife, was one of James Gould’s children, though I could never tell them apart, he having had twelve by his first wife and eight by his second.