Inshore, when the light grew stronger, we dimly saw, as through a veil, the rounded hump of Schuyler’s Island. We were both glad and sorry to see it—glad because it offered a convenient anchorage: sorry because it showed us that in our ten hours of ceaseless labor we had rowed our sinking craft a mere eight miles.

When Cap Huff learned how far we had come, he roared strickenly, swearing we had rowed twice around the lake, to say nothing of pumping out enough water from our one galley to float all of Britain’s mighty navy.

… There was still a fog when we came to anchor at the northern end of Schuyler’s Island, sheltered from that damnable south wind; and we prayed to God the fog would hold until the wind changed—until we could patch our mangled craft—until, in short, we could somehow earn for ourselves another chance for life.

Until the fog lifted, we knew, we were safe; for the British, waiting hopefully to pounce on us at Valcour, now that the wind favored them, would never dream that we were gone.

There were five of us in that little bay—the Congress and the Washington, and three battered gundelos, the Providence, the Jersey and the New York; and there was so much to be done to make each vessel seaworthy that a shipyard, fully equipped, would have needed a week for the task.

Arnold, stripped to breeches and fur vest, was all over the five vessels like a squirrel, almost before they had time to swing head to wind. He rowed around the Washington, thumping her shot-torn planking with his fist. He scrambled through one of her stern-ports: then, as if by magic, appeared at the mast-head of the Providence; and somehow, in another moment, he was hanging, head-down, from the taffrail of the Jersey. In ten minutes’ time he was back on the quarterdeck of the Congress with a full knowledge of what needed to be done, and how to do it.