When Fellows came up with us, however, he proved to be one of those rare militia officers who go anywhere, do anything, and sit up all night and every night if necessary in order to carry out orders. Like his militiamen, he wore homespun, and there was nothing military about him except his sword, which hung from a hairy leather harness that must have required the skins of two cows for the making. When we placed ourselves under his command, told him what we had done and showed him the tree we had felled across the creek, he said, “Quite a tree, ain’t it!” Unlike most of our officers, he was grateful for suggestions, and seemed to be more interested in stopping the British than in his own importance, which was a pleasant surprise.

When we showed him how easily boulders could be levered into the stream, and how it was possible to distribute the water of the swamps by cutting trenches through the sides of the waterways that had made beds for themselves, he set a detachment to cutting trenches and another detachment to prying boulders from the bank. Wherever there was a bridge, he had his men break it to pieces and carry the pieces to the rear. He stationed us in squads across Wood Creek valley, each squad in command of a head axe-man, who marked the trees to be felled, drove pegs in the ground to show where each tree should be laid, and warned the near-by choppers when a tree sighed and tottered, ready to fall. He put me in charge of one of these squads, and never did I see men fell trees with greater expedition—perhaps because of the manner in which Doc looked apprehensively over his shoulder from time to time, each time asking, in a trembling voice, “Any sign of ’em, Cap’n Peter?”

The whole forest echoed to the irregular, unending chocking of the axes, the recurrent warning howls of “Mark! Mark!” as a tree began to topple, and the rumbling crashes as they hurtled down to wedge their branches tight against those which had already fallen.

Slowly we left the ruins of Fort Ann behind us. From bank to bank the creek was so thickly spanned by fallen trunks that it seemed impossible the British could ever clear them sufficiently to force their way through. The road was laced and jammed with criss-crossed trees. The little brooks, stripped of their bridges, were turned from their courses by the tree trunks that lay across them. The place was a bedevilment of nature, a dismal and unholy chaos.