Behind this swarm of vessels moved a phalanx of bateaux and canoes, drifting slowly southward, waiting: biding their time. The canoes, even at that distance, looked monstrous. They had high bulging bows and sterns, and the paddlers were thick in them, like teeth in a jawbone. Verrieul, from his perch in the ratlines, shouted that they were Canots du maître—Master canoes. That meant Indians—hundreds of Indians.

“Well, well!” Arnold said. “So that’s what they were up to!” He glanced over his shoulder at the other galleys: then stepped up on the bulwarks to have a clearer look at the armada of gunboats bearing down on us.

We seemed to be the hub of a girdle of vessels; a belt that was inexorably contracting, intent on our destruction.

The gun-crews, at their stations, were understandably restless; for the north wind howling in our top-hamper must have cut like knives; and that rim of gunboats, their sails fang-like against the eastern shore, wasn’t soothing.

They shuffled and shivered, these shoeless, red-nosed gun-crews. Their eyes and heads turned constantly from us to the onrushing Britishers.

Arnold made tapping motions with his forefinger and counted—“twelve, thirteen, sixteen, twenty, twenty-three, twenty-four—–

“Twenty-four gunboats, I make it,” he said. “Maybe fifty bateaux with troops. Light infantry, probably. See what you get.” He took the tiller from me.

Nason came aft. “Sir, the bow gun’s double-shotted.”

Arnold nodded. “Try it once. Then take two gun-crews aft to the cabin guns. We’ll haul our wind and get the eighteen-pounders into play as we go back to the anchorage.” He thrust out his lower lip. “They’ve got a few more than I figured on—a few more. Too many to run risks with.”

Through our fringe of spruces I tried to count. One of the distant schooners yawed again, puffing out a cloud of white smoke. The shot struck off our starboard bow, a quarter mile away. It seemed to me too close. I lost count, but contrived somehow to arrive at what I considered a fair estimate. “Twenty-two, I make it,” I told Arnold.

The bow gun let off with a crash that almost brought us to a stop.

“All right,” Arnold said. “Let’s turn.”

Tom Bickford ran forward, shouting orders. We hauled our wind and crossed the bows of the Washington galley. She went off a little: then rounded into our wake. The Trumbull and the Royal Savage did the same, as pretty as a picture. In five minutes’ time the four of us were running back into the channel in the face of the sharp northeast wind, close hauled on the starboard tack.

“Now then,” Arnold said, “we’ll have a try at those schooners.”