As we crossed the bridge, I commented admiringly on the amount of labor that must have gone into the building of it. Its segments of planking were anchored to piles, which had been driven in clusters, so that their tops seemed like gigantic stepping-stones extending from shore to shore. Thus they formed not only a causeway, but a dam against British vessels.

“Yes,” Cap said, “it’s a lovely bridge. Lovely. It took a lot of work. There’s a chain, too, so ships can’t get by—a lovely chain, big enough to be an anchor-chain for the Old North Church.” He pointed toward the water. Fastened to a boom of logs was an endless chain of enormous links—a lovely chain, as Cap had said.

Cap looked over his shoulder. “Yes,” he repeated, “there’s been enough work done here to hold up the whole damned British army for nine years.” In a raucous growl he added, “Only it ain’t been done in the right place.”

He led us up the steep slope of Mount Independence and herded us into a small log house—one of a cluster of several similar houses on the shoulder that looked across to Ticonderoga. There were two bunks in the cabin, made of bare boards, and two stools which were nothing but oak chunks like chopping-blocks.

Cap pushed the door shut behind us, removed his shirt and hung it over the one small window, reached up into the chimney and drew a ragged candle stub from an invisible hiding place, and contrived to light it after a deal of cursing and fumbling with his tinder-box.

“There!” he said. He snatched up the candle and examined it carefully. “By God,” he cried, “if that mouse ain’t been in here again, chewing at that candle! It seems as if you couldn’t lay a thing down for a minute without having it interfered with! If there’s anything makes me sick, it’s an army!”

“When do we eat?” Doc Means asked.

Cap slapped his back. “When you been in the army as long as I have, old Catamount, you won’t ask about getting something to eat. You’ll go get it without saying nothing to nobody.”

His laugh was boisterous. He was wholly different from the Cap Huff who had met us on the Ticonderoga side of the lake. He took his hatchet from his belt, kicked over one of the oak blocks, and inserted the blade of the hatchet in a crack. The base pried away, revealing the chopping-block to be a hollow shell. In the hollow was a five-gallon keg.