How he had coaxed a brigadier general’s commission out of Congress, God only knows; but he had it, nonetheless, together with the command of Mount Independence, the peak which protected Ticonderoga on the south. With his position went a log cabin so roomy as to have a bedroom and a kitchen as well as an apartment which seemed to be, so far as I could tell, his drinking room—or at least his principal drinking room. He had also acquired a young aide-de-camp, two servants and several sentries, to say nothing of an air of penetrating wisdom such as I had seen in no other general—least of all in Arnold, and little enough in Gates and St. Clair, in spite of their long service in the English army.

We had a glass of wine together, and he was kind enough to ask for Nathaniel, whose name he had naturally forgotten. Some gentlemen, he said, were coming to supper, so he would postpone taking action on my request until the next morning, when he could do full justice to it.

Unfortunately he was unwell on the following morning—which was the 5th of July, the hottest day I ever endured. He was so unwell that it took the best part of a bottle of rum to get him up—or so Doc claimed to have discovered from one of the sentries; and I suspect General Roche-Fermoy would have been unable to get up at all if he had not been called to a Council of War by General St. Clair.

He could not, of course, attend to me while the Council of War was on his mind, nor could he do it when the Council of War was over, because, apparently, of the serious nature of the business transacted at it. What the business was, we were none of us supposed to know; but it was not hard to guess. Not only had the British succeeded in scaling Mount Defiance, but they had also succeeded in taking two great guns to the top.

At one moment there had been nothing on that towering height —nothing but a moving speck or two. A moment later two British guns looked over at us—two guns capable of throwing into confusion any movements of troops or vessels that might be undertaken within their range—two guns that would doubtless, in a day’s time, be augmented by a dozen more. The British had done what Arnold had predicted they would do; and nothing—not one single thing—had been done by St. Clair to hinder them.

Arnold, Cap had said, had given due warning of what might ensue. “About that time,” Cap had heard him say, “you’ll start running, seeing as how that hilltop commands not only the fort, but both routes to the south.”