“Why didn’t you come about sooner?” Arnold demanded.

Hawley only nodded. I could see his throat muscles work.

Arnold’s swarthy face was puffy, as if he was near exploding.

Nathaniel spoke up. “We’d have gone ashore, even if we’d been anchored. I never saw anything to beat her crankiness.”

Arnold turned to him almost deferentially. “I suppose you didn’t, by any chance, save my papers?”

Nathaniel looked horrified. “Your papers! Were your papers aboard?”

“Every document that bore on this campaign,” Arnold said gently. “All my accounts: that’s all.”

Hawley cleared his throat and drew a long breath. “I—General—I didn’t know—these British—–” He cleared his throat once more, stared at the sky and tried again. “They had me in Halifax, General. I was real anxious to fight ’em. Real anxious to fight.”

He stopped. I felt sorry for him. Arnold shook his head and turned away.

“We figured on taking her again,” Nathaniel broke in. “We figured on swimming out to her. We would have, too, only when we started back, we found those red skunks had cut us off—hundreds of ’em! The biggest men I ever saw!”

Hawley fumbled at the back of his neck. His eyes were fixed on his feet, and his voice was indistinct. “I’ll board her now if I can get enough boats. I’ll get your papers for you.”

Arnold jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the Royal Savage. From her canted side slow jets of smoke puffed toward us: hung, billowing: then rolled up over her bulwarks and drifted south in ragged streamers.

“See that?” Arnold demanded. “They boarded her, and now they’re killing our men with our own guns!” He seemed to fly into a fury. “By God, if I have to abandon a vessel, I see to it that nobody else gets her!” He shook his fist at Hawley and Nathaniel. “Why didn’t you set her afire! Why didn’t you blow her up? What in God’s name was the use of making the British a present of a schooner and guns and powder and shot!”

He ran to the companionway. Steven Nason straightened up from the aftermost gun, his face a black mask except for his eyelids, which were still white. “Lay your guns on the Royal Savage,” Arnold shouted. “I want every gun in this fleet laid on that vessel! Send word along the line! They can’t have her! Blow hell out of her!”

All along the deck the men turned the guns. We payed out two fathoms of spring, to let them bear more easily.

In his eagerness to have the Royal Savage destroyed, Arnold seemed to have forgotten Hawley and Nathaniel.