The captains who had that morning assembled in our small cabin had been an odd-looking lot; but they were even odder now, as they came straggling down the companion. Waterbury had hurt his back, so that he was humped over like an old, old man, supporting himself on the handle of a gun-swab. Burning powder had fallen on his coat, covering it with neat round spots, not unlike the dapplings of a young fawn. Wigglesworth, hook-nosed and sedate, had washed the powder from his face, but done it over-hastily, so that his nostrils were black, still, as well as his ears and his neck, and the inner corners of his eyes, which gave him the staring look of a startled owl. Poor Hawley, his hands swathed in dirty bandages, due to his efforts to board the burning Royal Savage, sat silent against the bulkhead, stroking one bandage with the other.

Captain Dickenson of the Enterprise sloop came down holding the skirt of his coat before him, to show us where an Indian’s bullet had struck a button at the small of his back and run halfway around him, leaving his coat tail hanging by a thread. Since the Enterprise had been on the right of our line, she had been close to shore, and those aboard her had seen more than they wished of the Indians.

“By Jody,” Dickenson said, wagging his coat tail at us, “they looked eight feet tall, and they had black faces! If I hadn’t known they were Indians, I’d have said they’d been spewed up from the bottomless pit!”

Red-headed Captain Davis of the Lee galley had a bandage around his head: a bandage so caked with blood that his hair seemed pale beside it. Simonds, who had been white and shivering with ague when we last saw him, was burning with fever now, and perpetually clearing his throat and muttering to himself, so that I think he was a little out of his senses.

Captain Rice might have been drunk, so thick was his speech: his eyes were glassy; and only the repeated nudgings of his friend Grimes kept him awake. Evidently he had been badly shocked. Grimes was smeared with blood from neck to knee, doubtless from helping a wounded man. Little Ulmer of the Spitfire wore a bandage on his thigh. Sumner of the Boston had been deafened by the close passage of a cannon ball, which had broken his ear-drums. Thatcher of the Washington, Warner of the Trumbull, Reed of the New York and Grant of the Connecticut were not to be seen.

Arnold spoke impatiently. “We’ll wait no longer. I wanted to make public acknowledgment to all of you together, but under the circumstances the missing ones will understand how it is. Gentlemen, you fought well! I’m proud of what you’ve done this day. I hope your country’ll have the sense to be grateful!”