Not until after he had gone did we realize that although he had talked as freely and easily with us as though he held no higher rank than ours, and was just our hearty comrade, he hadn’t told us the one thing we all wished most to know. He hadn’t told us how much chance we would have to be alive after the British fleet came down upon us from the north.

XXXIV

THE wind was in the north the very next morning, but it was weak and soft: not glittering and knife-edged from northern snows. Our bulwarks were high with the butts of spruces, their branches trimmed off on the inner side. Over everything there was a soothing scent of greenery reminiscent of home and Christmas.

Arnold had us knock together a plank table on the quarterdeck; and there he sat, writing letters, issuing orders and watching every vessel in the fleet—especially the Revenge, which was doing guard duty, running down the channel, and then beating up around the outside of the island, all her men on deck, and gun-crews at their stations with lighted matches.

Whenever the Revenge sheered in to report, Arnold had a look of hawk-nosed fierceness that put me in mind of an eagle.

Those pale eyes of his were sharper than an eagle’s. He had the Trumbull moved, for fear the Royal Savage would swing against her. He sent Tom Bickford to report a chafed backstay on the Lee. He watched them exercising the guns on the Washington and sent word to the first lieutenant that the guns were laid too high. He saw a boatload of potatoes rowing out from the New York shore, and nothing would do but he must examine all of them, to be sure we were getting proper value.

He was as busy as a hen who has hatched out a brood of ducks, but calmer. With all his peering about and giving of orders, the words flowed smoothly and rapidly from his pen.

He called to me, shook the sand from a letter and handed it over. It was to General Schuyler, complaining of the manner in which the fleet was treated.