Doc, still restless, was up at dawn, grubbing around in the grass for a mess of greens; and no sooner had he washed the grit from them and popped them into a borrowed kettle with a dozen slices of borrowed pork than we heard the sound of drums down river. The drummers marched at the head of four hundred men. What was more, the four hundred were in a hurry; for early as it was, they never even broke ranks, but stood in the rutted road outside the fort while a detail from the garrison went from man to man, giving them ammunition and pouring rum into their canteens. They were York militia from Albany County, under a Colonel Van Rensselaer, and to me they looked no different from the Massachusetts militiamen who had refused to stay more than two days with General St. Clair at Ticonderoga. They were dust-caked, half disciplined, soaked with sweat; and from the state of their clothes, they might have rushed straight from their fields and plows to join the army. When they had received their rum, they hurried on, their muskets trailing or slanted over their shoulders every which way. They were Dutchmen, and when they shouted at Doc and me, we could hardly make out what they said. They were asking how far it was to Fort Ann. When we told them, in plain, simple language that any fool could understand, they looked first baffled and then amused, which gave us an even lower opinion of Dutchmen than they seemed to have of us. Yet I must give these men their due; for before the day was over a number of them lay dead in the swamps of Wood Creek; and Colonel Van Rensselaer, who led them, was nearer dead than alive from a British bullet. It was they who went to the relief of Colonel Long and, with what was left of Long’s regiment, drove back from Fort Ann as smart a British regiment as ever held Americans in contempt.