On the night of the 10th the breeze fell. Arnold, stretched on our mess table, was wakeful and read Price’s book by the light of two candles. I was wakeful, too, so that I knew that we were in for a change of weather. The wind was raw and smelled of snow, and it swung into the northeast just before dawn. It was a wind that made our legs ache, even though we had a blanket apiece.

The mountains on the New York shore, on the morning of the 11th, loomed white against a pale blue sky. Down the channel between Valcour and the mainland rushed an endless procession of white-caps, all of them soiled-looking, as is the way of white-caps on fresh water.

Arnold wanted his breakfast, and he wanted it in a hurry. “None of your humming-bird breakfasts, either,” he warned Zelph. “I’ve got to have something to stick to my ribs! This feels like a busy day!”

“Lansakesalive, Gennle,” Zelph said, “they ain’t nothin’ aboard this here vessel, only a pail of coffee an’ a nice slab o’ salt poke an’ that ship braid I cooked on shore yesdy. What you say, Gennle; coffee an’ poke?”

“Look,” Cap Huff said. “I saw you playing around with a twenty-pound salmon last night—a salmon the size of a shark. Where is it?”

“Salmon ain’t for breakfast,” Zelph said. “Salmon’s for supper.”

“No it’s not!” Arnold said. “It’s for breakfast. Make a quick chowder: pork scraps, ship bread and potatoes. We’ll eat him now while we’ve got a chance.”

Zelph snorted. “Chance! Chance! That all we got, chance! Lay around and lay around, not doing nothin’: that all we do, Gennle!”

“You make that chowder!” Arnold said. “Before you know it you’ll have so much to do you won’t even have time to say ‘fish,’ let alone cook one!”

The general was right. We were finishing Zelph’s chowder when the whole fleet set up a tumultuous shouting, and we hurried on deck to find every ship’s crew perched on the guns and in the ratlines, peering into the north. They were watching the Revenge, and from the manner in which she was tearing down to us, like a little old lady with her skirts hoisted up to let her run the faster, she had news.

Arnold took one look at her, then turned to Nason. “Run up a white pennant, and while you’re doing it, pass the word to the Washington! All captains aboard the Congress for a Council of War!”

Cap Huff let out a roar that turned every face aboard the Washington in our direction.