We three white men reckoned on this when we bought rum at Buttonmould Bay. We reckoned that, if we could make our Indian companions drunk, and seem drunk ourselves, the three of us could somehow, in the darkness, take French leave of the British and make our way within the American lines. We hadn’t counted on finding a hundred drunken Iroquois dancing a Bacchanalian war dance at the very front of the advanced corps of the British army. Yet that was what we did find; and when Sponge-belly reeled among those rum-soaked dancers and burst into an oration, telling how brave and important he was, I thought we had lost our opportunity to steal off quietly.

At the end of his oration, Sponge-belly waved his brandy bottle, drew his hatchet from his belt, and screamed to be shown the Long Knives—to be led against the Americans. His screaming set the others to screaming. They stamped, leaped and howled. Like madmen they gathered around Sponge-belly and, still leaping and howling, hustled him off among the trees.

Since Doc was with him, there was nothing to do but follow; so follow we did, howling and leaping too, but cursing Sponge-belly and those fuddled red fools.

… Verrieul stayed close to me. Joseph Phipps was somewhere ahead, watching over Doc. Where Lewis Vincent and John Phillips were, I had no idea. The whole dense, hot forest was a bedlam of howling maniacs.

We ran on and on. We ran until there was no longer a canopy of treetops above us. We saw stars overhead. The smooth pine needles underfoot gave way to meadows. We were in open country, and I suspected we were on dangerous ground.

I knew it when the silent darkness before us was split by a musket-shot. The howlings came to a sudden end. The report of the musket echoed as if imprisoned in a vast tin kettle. The shot, I realized, must have been fired by an American outpost.

I caught Verrieul by the belt and pulled him to the ground. Far ahead there were more stabbing flashes; a stuttering rattle of reports.

All around us there were quick movements: the rush of feet through young undergrowth: cracking twigs: grunts, and a heavy thud or two. We saw the dark forms of staggering, tipsy Indians as they turned and fled back past us into the shelter of the forest whence we had come.

Verrieul and I lay still and listened. We heard someone approaching, noisily and laboriously. He tripped and fell: then resumed his journey on all fours, muttering and moaning. I recognized the voice of Sponge-belly. He crawled off, snuffling and grunting. Far away, to the rear, I could hear a British officer imploring those red zanies to be quiet.