In my head were no heroic thoughts; merely forebodings and dark fears: forebodings as to Nathaniel: as to Ellen Phipps: as to what lay before us on these narrow waters, hidden in the chill mist that seemed to me to smell of death. And ironically I remembered Cap Huff’s words to Zelph, back in the peaceful days of long ago: “That’s the nice thing about a war: there ain’t no regular work to do—only wear a uniform, walk around a lot, and camp out.”

… We rowed twenty miles that night, Verrieul and Doc Means conning us from the bow. A gill of rum was issued to the rowers every two hours; and while the mists of early morning still wreathed the dark hills above us, we pulled into the narrow cleft beneath the heights of Ticonderoga to see a sight that looked like war indeed.

All the waterways to north and south are pinched together at Ticonderoga, as if some clumsy god had squeezed the end of Lake George and the narrowest portion of Lake Champlain between enormous fingers. The earth is gathered up in abrupt folds; the waterways twist between them; and overlooking the narrow channel are the gray walls of the old French fort.

When we had come down from Crown Point, three months before, carrying the ship timbers to Skenesboro, the fort had been a ruin, overgrown and crumbling, and all the other hills were thick with trees. The place had been a wilderness, without a house or sign of life.

Now, as our galley came slowly into that moat between the hills, the fort’s gray walls had been rebuilt, and from its ports and parapets black guns protruded. Redoubts and magazines squatted on the rocks, and sentries walked a score of posts. On our left, the shores of Mount Defiance were stripped of trees; and the once-wooded heights of Mount Independence, at our right, had become a city of tents and cabins from which the smoke of campfires rose to undulate in layers against the hills.

Under the guns of the fort were docks; whaleboats and bateaux by the hundred were stacked along the shore. Among them lay the Trumbull galley, fully rigged and ballasted, and partly painted. On the docks were cannon: brass carriage guns in rows; spars and masts; piles of cannon balls. Men ran and shouted as we drew near.

A barge put out to meet us. When it came under our counter, I saw the officer in the stern sheets was Captain Wilkinson, whom I had last seen with Arnold.

“What ship is this?” he asked, his jaw muscles fluttering. I told him we were the Congress galley; that the Washington was close behind us.

“Run her in beside the pile of spars,” he ordered. “Send your crew ashore under guard. They’ll camp by themselves on the flats to the north until you’re rigged and ready to sail.”