The others I knew by sight only: Captain Dickenson of the Enterprise sloop; and the gundelo captains—Grant of the Connecticut, wearing a bearskin coat; little Ulmer of the Spitfire; Simonds of the Providence, pale and shivering with an attack of intermittent fever; Reed of the New York, whose clothes, I suspected, were in worse shape than mine, since they were concealed beneath a linen over-all; Rice of the Philadelphia and Grimes of the New Jersey, captains who had commanded galleys in Pennsylvania’s river defense, a year before; Sumner, of the Boston, a Bostonian with a thoughtful look frequently encountered in Bostonians, even when least thoughtful,—good men, all of them, though some had never been beyond lobster soundings.

With a full-rigged ship maneuvering against us, however, our seafaring knowledge would be of less account than our ability to keep our heads above water.

Our own vessel, like all the others, was a turmoil of preparation. Men ran among the guns; casting them loose; setting tubes, fuses, rammers, water buckets in place; falling over the water buckets and each other.

Cap Huff’s scarecrow marines were herded amidships, drawing the charges from their muskets and reloading. Cap himself lay full length on the deck, his head down the main hatch, watching the screening of the powder-magazine with wet blankets; bawling directions in a voice that set the whole belly of the galley to booming.

I followed my fellow-captains down the companion ladder. The cabin was dim, and the thudding of bare feet on the deck above gave me the feel of standing within a drum that rumbled a hurried call to arms.

“Come, come, gentlemen!” Arnold said. “Find seats if you can!” He sat at the end of the mess-table, gripping it as though to pick it up and bang it on the floor out of pure exuberance. There was no doubting his cheerfulness.

We found seats between the gun-carriages, or on them, or astride the guns themselves, as poverty-stricken in appearance as sardine fishermen.

“Now then,” Arnold said, “you heard the Revenge: a full-rigged ship and two 16-gun schooners passed Cumberland Head. By now they’re abreast of us on the far side of the island. The rest of the fleet’s with ’em—no question of that! It’s what I expected, gentlemen: what I figured on! They haven’t observed proper precautions! They’ve over-rated themselves! They haven’t kept proper watch, and so they’re going by. Let’s decide: what’s best to be done?”

There was some clearing of throats.

“Quick!” Arnold said. “They’re going by!”

Colonel Wigglesworth spoke up, which was proper, he being a young man, if not the youngest; and the youngest is entitled to speak first in a Council of War. “What’s your opinion, General?”

“You’ll have my opinion fast enough! What’s yours?”

Wigglesworth coughed. “Pretty hard to beat this anchorage. We could fight ’em right here.”