“I’d like to keep ’em aboard ship,” I said, “so to get ’em accustomed to the craft.”

Wilkinson shook his head. “Your men are New Englanders. The riggers are Pennsylvanians. They can’t work while there’s New Englanders around.”

“That’s too damned bad about the Pennsylvanians!” I said. “What’s their objection to New Englanders?”

“They don’t like the way you enlist old men and blacks and Indians.”

“Well, for God’s sake!” I cried. “Do you have to be elected to this war by the Pennsylvanians? When did they decide nobody could fight the British unless registered as gentry?” I was furious to think that Pennsylvanians or anybody else should question Doc Means’s age or Zelph’s color, since either of them was as valuable as any Pennsylvanian I had ever seen, bar none.

Wilkinson raised his eyebrows. “I’m not responsible for the way they feel, Captain. But I am responsible for keeping order among the troops. If Pennsylvanians are obliged to work with New Englanders, there’s always a fight, and somebody gets killed; so take your men ashore under guard: then report to the general.”

“To General Arnold?” I asked.

Wilkinson’s voice was chilly. “General Arnold has no authority at this post, as you doubtless recall, now that I mention it. General Gates is commander-in-chief of the Northern Army.”

Dignified and disdainful, he turned his boat and left us; but his pomposity made no impression on Cap Huff, who emitted an unseemly noise between compressed lips, and hoarsely whispered, “Poop-head!”

By the time the galley had been made fast to the dock and the crew marched off to barracks by Tom, Verrieul and Cap Huff, shears had been set up for handling the guns, and a swarm of shipwrights, armorers, riggers and blacksmiths were hard at work.

A company of York troops, lined up in a row, rolled 18-pound shot from man to man, moving them to a spot abreast of our main hatch, looking and acting like children playing a queer game of marbles. Eight other ragged soldiers lashed a long 18-pounder to four poles, preparatory to bringing it aboard.

I made myself as military as I could—a difficult task, since my tow-cloth smock, long ago worn to shreds, had been replaced by a buckskin shirt whose tails had been cut off to make patches for the shoulders, so that I had to wear it outside my breeches. The latter, bought from a farmer, were too small, and for footgear I had only moccasins, since shoes were impossible to get. I had a ribbon for my hair, however, and Joseph Phipps’s gold-laced hat, which he had let me have in return for a pewter snuff-box.

Wilkinson was waiting in the ante-room to the general’s quarters inside the fort on the hilltop; the general, he told me in a hushed voice, was almost ready for me.