All around us, in the darkness, men were clamorous. We heard bateaux bumping into us—men stumbling in them—oars thumping and splashing. Colonel Long’s voice called, “Steady, there! By God, sir! I’ll have you fired on!” He came climbing over the bulwarks, his blue coat ripped up the back. He seemed tongue-tied.

The flame on Mount Independence rose higher, spread out, pushed up a cloud of smoke above it, cast a hot and angry glow on the under side. As the flame rose, so, too, rose the excited voices of soldiers on shore and in unseen boats around us. Their voices held the hurried shrillness of panic.

The colonel mounted the bulwarks, clutched a stay and once more bellowed orders at the throng beneath him. We could hear them colliding; dropping their burdens. “Bring that baggage aboard!” the colonel called. “Here! Bring that baggage onto this vessel!” He must have repeated his order a hundred times; but no man paid the slightest attention to him. The flame on Mount Independence grew bigger and sent up a shower of sparks. By its light we saw the soldiers, crowded together in a struggling, ungovernable throng.

“For God’s sake!” the colonel said. “For God’s sake!” He stared helplessly around. “What’s that fire! What damned fool did that!”

“If I ain’t mistaken,” Doc Means said, “that General Roast-Fermoy got drunk once too often. He’s been taking a nap all day, so maybe he just woke up and tried to smoke a pipe in bed.”

“That’s what it is!” the colonel cried. “That’s just what it is! It’s Roche-Fermoy’s house! What in God’s name is he trying to do? Send word to the British?”

He shouted more loudly at the shadowy figures. When they ignored him, he climbed heavily back on the dock again and I went with him. He was an honest and brave officer, but he was helpless in that panic-stricken horde.

We cursed and struck at them, but they only cursed and struck back, fading out from beneath our hands to go stumbling off on the road to Hubbardton. Sick men clutched at our ankles; women screamed and got underfoot. It was like a bad dream, when every effort fails of accomplishment, legs seem made of lead and muscles of jelly, and all the world is heavy with futility.

“When it’s light,” the colonel said, again and again, “it’ll be all right. They’re confused by the darkness. As soon as it’s dawn, we’ll have no trouble.”

But at dawn, things grew worse. Bateaux, loaded during the night on the Ticonderoga side, moved slowly past, half hidden in the mist; and scores of bateaux that had lain near by, waiting for daybreak, pushed off without orders and followed the others in a straggling flotilla. The occupants of the bateaux were deaf to the angry orders of officers, and pulled silently southward.