We were in the channel by now, close over to the New York shore. When we came about on the starboard tack, we could see the American fleet clearly, about a mile away.

The wind seemed to jump from north to northeast: to eddy around us. Our mainsail slapped against the mast, and the galley swayed. Arnold came beside me and felt the tiller. The men continued to shout for rum.

“I don’t like the feel of that wind,” I told Arnold. “It bounces off the cliffs. I think we ought to get the canvas off her when we’re in mid-channel, and row the rest of the way.”

“Do so!” Arnold said. He stepped to the break in the deck and spoke in a rasping, high-pitched voice. “We’re taking in sail. Then we’re rowing to our anchorage. All you’ve got to do, to get that rum, is brail up those sails in a hurry and clap onto your sweeps!”

Under bare poles the galley moved steadily over the last half mile. The pursuing schooners had worked out into the lake on the larboard tack, and were hidden from us. So, too, was the sloop-of-war. Except for the black smears around the mouths of the spongers and rammers, who had rubbed their noses with powder-stained hands, and the salty powder-smoke that clung in our throats, we might have been returning from a pleasure cruise.

The Washington and the Trumbull, following our example, furled their sails and crawled along behind us. The Royal Savage, having no oars, took in her square topsails, and continued to make short tacks under her fore-and-aft sails. I was sure Hawley felt the same insecurity about the wind that I had felt.

That crescent-shaped line of vessels, absurdly enough, seemed like home to me, and I couldn’t get back to it fast enough. I thought of it as a sort of shelter from the unknown.

As we crawled slowly into place in the curving line of gundelos and schooners, the turmoil on our decks was deafening. To present our broadside to the vessels in pursuit of us, we must, before anchoring, get a spring on our cable by making fast a line to the anchor, running it through a stern port so to haul ourselves around at right angles to the wind after the anchor should be let go; also it was necessary to drop our boats over the side, out of the way of the enemy’s fire, and to move our heaviest guns to the gun-ports that pointed down channel. Since our seamen were still green hands, all this movement required more running, shouting and giving of orders than can be imagined.

Yet Arnold seemed to find the uproar pleasing. He stood at the break of the deck, speaking mildly to those who came near him, telling them to take it easy: to take it easy.