“Hey there! Wake up! Tell Cap’n Thatcher and General Waterbury they’re wanted for a Council of War!” His voice, echoing from the cliffs of Valcour, frightened a fish-hawk from a towering pine and sent it screaming into the north. “Send the word along! Don’t be afraid to holler!”

Arnold groaned. “That’s no way to speak to officers!” he told Cap severely. “ ‘Holler’! ‘Wake up’! ‘Hey there’!”

“General,” Cap said, “I can’t keep military words straight in my head; but I’ll get those captains over here if it’s the last thing I do!”

The Revenge, abreast of us, let off a two-pounder with a thump, came about in the gun’s white smoke, and dropped her jib.

The captain shouted through a birch-bark trumpet: “They’ve come around Cumberland Head! The first one was a ship—a full-rigged ship!”

Arnold, astride our taffrail, raised despairing eyes to heaven. “And you, you damned fool,” he growled, “you had to fire a gun! Why didn’t you put a match to your magazine, so they’d be sure to see you?”

“A full-rigged ship,” the captain of the Revenge repeated, “and two schooners, maybe sixteen guns each!”

“Did they see you?” Arnold shouted.

“I guess not! They didn’t haul their wind!”

“Is that all you saw?” Arnold called. “Three vessels?”

“That’s all I waited to see. One was a full-rigged ship!”

Arnold made a funnel of his hands. “Get away to the southern tip of the island. Anchor behind the island. Understand? Anchor where you can watch ’em. If they keep on going, let ’em go! Understand?”

“I’ll let ’em go,” the captain said.

“If they come about and start for you,” Arnold shouted, “fire a gun and make sail. Fire a gun and get back here with no loss of time. Understand? When you’re seen, fire a gun, and beat back up the channel. Take your place in the line of battle. Understand? The moment you see one of the enemy come about, fire a gun and get away!”

The voice of Captain Seaman came faintly to us against the wind—“Fire a gun—beat back—–”

Arnold shook his fist at us. “Now, then! Wet the blankets and double-shot the guns! We’ll show these British there’s somebody in the world besides themselves!”

XXXV

I WATCHED the captains come over the side: David Hawley, feeling the back of his neck; sleepy-looking Thatcher of the Washington galley; puckery-lipped Captain Warner of the Trumbull; red-headed Captain Davis of the Lee; General Waterbury, second to Arnold in command, gray and sober-looking, his left shoulder thrust forward, crab-like: Colonel Wigglesworth, third in command, a stocky, sedate man with quick blue eyes that belied his sedateness and a nose so hooked that he had the look of an amused hawk. I knew him for a sea captain of ability, as a sea captain had to be to sail one of Nathaniel Tracy’s ships.