INSTEAD of turning, the wind came up from the south again. It rolled back the remnants of the fog-bank and thinned it to nothing. To the north the lake was flat and blue, and on it we saw the British, white against the dark pines of Grand Isle like snowy icebergs. Their very snowiness was heartbreaking; for it showed us their sails were full and drawing: they were running free, while we labored against a head wind. Where they were, the wind was north, bringing them straight down on us.

Before the fog lifted, I thought we had almost escaped. Now I saw we were worse off than ever; and I damned dramas and romances in which misfortunes quickly pass: in which troubles vanish like a morning mist, to leave life smiling and golden, free of care and pain.

Things aren’t like that in life and war. In life we struggle, shattered, from disaster, only to plunge headlong into fresh disasters. In war, soldiers fight until they can fight no more, and then go on fighting: men exhaust themselves with superhuman labors and then go on working regardless of weariness.

It seemed to me that if any men deserved to escape, we did—that if any men had ever earned peace, victory and a happy end, we had earned it; but war and life, alas, take no account of what men earn.

We were silent, staring at those distant snowy sails, and by our silence revealed our knowledge that here was the end of all our labors. I dared not even wonder what that end might be.

Arnold broke the silence. “They’ve got a breeze, so sooner or later we’ll get it, too. Don’t forget that! Cast loose the guns in the cabin.”

He went down among the rowers, who had stopped rowing to watch the British. “Now then,” he called, limping up and down between their haggard ranks, “now then, we’ll drink the last of our rum and get at it again! It means hard work, but not for long! Only till the wind comes up with us!”

There was something indomitable about him, always. He wouldn’t be beaten: he couldn’t be beaten. He couldn’t even think of being beaten; and those who saw or heard him in a trying hour caught from him a sort of reckless hardness.

Those at the oars were still powder-caked from the cartridges they had ripped open with their teeth at Valcour, and from the greasy black powder-wetness of guns and swivels. Their cheeks bristled with beard: their necks and arms, emaciated from work and lack of food, protruded awkwardly from stinking rags. Their hands were all gurry sores and blisters, their feet and legs battered from stumblings and collisions in the battle.