We were glad to see him; glad, too, to have the Connecticut sailors he had brought. Since all the other vessels had captains, Waterbury complimented him by putting him to work with Captain Warner, who was also from Connecticut, on the Trumbull galley, whose stocks were next to ours. Ours, being the largest, had been named the Congress by Arnold; the other three were named for the three mainstays of the Northern Army—General Washington, Governor Trumbull of Connecticut, and General Gates.

The galleys were growing rapidly, though not as rapidly as they would have grown if we had been free of the attacks of intermittent fever that laid workmen flat on their backs by scores, their teeth chattering and their faces as white and pinched as though the blood had been drained from their bodies.

There were times when, between our sick, the endless feuds among Pennsylvanians, Yorkers and New Englanders, and the heat and the mosquitoes, we were sure that none of the vessels would ever be finished.

Yet the little Lee galley, built from the timbers we had brought from St. John’s, was pushed into the water and went off to Ticonderoga, unballasted, unmasted, ungunned—a raw hulk, rowed by a mob of Yorkers who fouled their oars, cursed, and tumbled about the deck under the apparently unseeing eye of red-headed Captain Davis. Davis gave us a wink as his craft moved slowly northward—a wink that indicated he was less put-upon than he seemed.

Thatcher, captain of the Washington galley, stood with Hawley and me, watching the Lee pull out. Thatcher laughed ironically. “They got considerable to learn,” he said, “and I shouldn’t wonder if Davis learned ’em.”

Hawley caressed the back of his neck. “You got to be charitable at a time like this. You got to let ’em get aboard ship. When you get ’em there, you can explain to ’em about not making unnecessary noises, and how Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. If you try to explain to ’em before you get ’em there, as I understand it, they might write home to a Congressman about it, and you’d get put in jail for conduct unbecoming to something or other.”

The gundelos Connecticut and Spitfire, too, were thrown in by main strength, they being too flat-bottomed to slide on the ungreased ways; and off they went to Ticonderoga for guns, sails, powder, shot and the rest of their equipment.

And so, in spite of everything, Arnold had the beginnings of a fleet two months from the day when we had started south from Isle aux Noix.

Two months to a day had passed when Cap Huff returned from Ticonderoga—a strangely mild and soft-spoken Cap Huff—with a message from Arnold. He drifted into our bunkhouse about an hour after sundown, as quietly as a shadow, and hoarsely whispered, “I got a message for Hawley. Anybody here know Hawley?”