When night came, we made fires from the uprooted bridges, so that by their light a part of us might go on chopping. But for the danger of crushing men beneath the trunks in the darkness, everyone would have chopped. We slept in shifts, conscious even in our sleep of the bite of axe-blades into wood; of the rending smash of tumbling timber.

All through the 11th of July we chopped and chopped, and pried boulders into Wood Creek, and destroyed bridges.

We worked all through the night as well, and through sickening heat on the morning of the 12th.

Hell, I am sure, can be no worse than that valley of Wood Creek. My hands were raw and blistered: my wrists and knees a mass of sores from the unending rubbing of damp cloth against my salty body: my mind a turmoil from my perpetual brooding over Nathaniel and Ellen. Sweat stung my eyes, itching and smarting when it trickled over the countless small injuries that such toil invites. The air was alive with mosquitoes and infinitesimal insects whose bites were white-hot stabs.

At noon on the 12th; General Fellows, surveying our labors, grunted with satisfaction. “How many bridges do you figure the British would have to build in the last two miles?” he asked me. He added, “Provided they’re able to clear the road.”

“Only one,” I said.

“One!” he protested. “One! You must have taken out ten bridges yourself!”

“Yes sir, but there’s so many trenches been dug that there’s no dry land for bridge-heads. The only way the British can ever transport supplies and artillery across that two miles of swamp is to build one bridge—a bridge two miles long!”

He beamed at me, a sour, reluctant Berkshire grin. “That’ll please General Schuyler! I’ll have to send him word.” He stared me up and down. My unshaven chin, my red and hollow eyes, my insect-bitten face and neck, caked with the blood from countless punctures, my scabbed and swollen hands and wrists, seemed to give him satisfaction. “I’ll send you,” he added. “We need more men out here, and when he sees you, he’ll know it’s the truth. We ought to have another five hundred, if this road’s to be properly blocked. Do you want me to write him a letter? You can tell him what we’ve done, can’t you, and what we need?”

I said I could, adding that I would like to take Doc with me, as my orders from Schuyler included him.

Fellows glanced at him briefly, and seemed unimpressed. Doc wavered as if with weakness. “Take him along,” Fellows said readily. In a kind voice he added to Doc, “A man your age ought to stay with regular troops, where he can get medical attention in case he needs it.”