SKENESBORO was an ante-room of hell in the weeks that followed; and our labors turned into a confused and fever-ridden struggle such as sets dreamers to groaning in their sleep.

Wherever Arnold could find a sea captain, he laid violent hands on him and hustled him to Waterbury, who put him in charge of the building of the vessel he was to command. He called on the regiments at Ticonderoga for seamen and marines; and as might be expected, the ones sent were those who could best be spared—the sickly and contentious: the thieves and rascals: the worst clad and least trustworthy: men who looked unable to shoot, march or hand a sail—men so pocky and so vermin-ridden that to pull their own weight at an oar seemed beyond their powers.

Poor as they were, they were marvels of physical perfection by comparison with those collected in New York to serve aboard the fleet—or purchased, rather; for the latter were raked out of alleys and gutters by the offer of a bounty; and if ever there were human beings who deserved the title of “sweepings of hell,” which one of our officers gave them, it was they.

Like all such sorry offscourings, they held themselves superior to all other men in wit, wisdom and ability; and when the barracks and the huts were filled with them, there were perpetual howlings and riotings, and fights of terrible ferocity, which nobody seemed able to quell. I longed, often, to see Cap Huff’s hulking figure charge into a brawling, cursing mass of those ragged, uncontrollable creatures, but he had gone away to Ticonderoga to testify in a court-martial which General Arnold had demanded so that Colonel Hazen might be punished for refusing to accept the supplies seized in Montreal, as a result of which the supplies had been plundered.

The only genuine seamen to be sent to us, so far as I could see, came marching in through a thunderstorm one afternoon, headed by a quick-moving man with enormous arms: a man seemingly unable to look at anyone or anything without feeling the back of his neck and casting a quick glance at the sky. Nathaniel and I, working in the bow of our galley, found his appearance familiar. When he caught sight of us, he pawed at the back of his neck, and raised a long arm in greeting. I remembered, then, that the same gesture had been made to us from the battered rowboat we had picked up off Old York a mere three months ago.

It was David Hawley, the Connecticut privateersman who had escaped from the Halifax prison, and rowed five hundred miles in a week.