With the gathering darkness, gunfire from the fort and the water-batteries was increasing, and a hot wind had sprung up—a searing blast straight from an oven, so that the black abyss between Defiance, Independence and Ticonderoga was like the mouth of Gehenna. That howling, parching wind, whirling the cannonading against us, set my nerves on edge.

“Orders or no orders,” I told the aide, “you’d better wake the general and start him moving. What’s more, you’d better pack up his baggage, because it looks to me as if it might be needed elsewhere, and soon!”

To wait longer in the hope of getting anything for ourselves from Roche-Fermoy was useless. With Doc stumbling behind me, I hurried down the slanting path toward the floating bridge. The closer we came to the water, the more violent was the thunder of the cannon. By the flashes we could see a short distance on both sides of the bridge, but the bridge itself was dark—so dark that not until we were close up to it did we see, shuffling and stumbling out of the smoky, gun-powdery gloom, an endless line of heavy-laden soldiers. Except for the quick flashes of the guns, there were no lights. The bridge was packed with men, clattering toward us over the loose boards—dim, grumbling specters, bowed down with burdens.

They were a headless, confused mass, hurrying along under cover of the darkness, the noise and the smoke.

Doc spoke weakly. “Where’s all them soldiers going? What’s it mean?”

I told him, choking with bitterness. “St. Clair’s evacuating Ticonderoga. Ethan Allen, and Arnold took it two years ago, but they might have spared the trouble. Ticonderoga’s gone! St. Clair and Congress wouldn’t listen to Arnold, and so they lost it for America!”

… Remembering the tattered rabble that had fled out of Canada with Sullivan, a year before, I knew there was no use in trying to cross the bridge against this human torrent in order to find anybody on the other side.

“Come on,” I told Doc. “Let’s go to the wharf and see what’s to be done.”

We hurried along beside the stumbling soldiers. The American vessels were moored to a rough dock near the floating bridge. The dock had been built since I brought the Congress galley up past this very spot, almost a year ago, on my way to join Arnold. As for the five vessels whose masts and bulwarks showed above the dock-edge, the look and the tarry smell of them took me back to that dark night when we had stolen away from Valcour Island beneath the noses of the British, patched and battered sieves, but unbeaten still, thanks to the indomitable persistence of Arnold.