“Arnold smelled ’em!” Cap roared. He seized Nason by the shoulder. Doubled over, he jumped clumsily with elephantine exultation. “He smelt ’em, Stevie! By God, he smelt ’em! He smelt ’em, and there they go!”

He emitted an ear-splitting bellow. On both sides of us the Virginians had ceased to fire on the stockade. They crouched in strange attitudes in the shelter of our overhanging bank, staring open-mouthed at Arnold and the running Continentals. They made gentle hissing and clucking sounds, and whispered softly to themselves, as if with a faint regret, such words as “Sho!” “By gravy!” “Look thar!” “Gawsh!”

“There they go!” Cap howled again. He meant the Canadians. They were tumbling from the windows and doors of the cabins and racing off up the valley into the uncut timber, to escape Arnold and the on-rushing Continentals.

As for Arnold, he seemed to bounce away from in front of the troops. His mare made a sharp turn and scrambled in our direction. We heard the pelting of her hoofs, louder and louder, on the heavy soil. She splashed through the water of the little brook beneath whose welcome bank we stood; she clawed up the bank like a cat, and then, above us on the slope, went into a run. Nason and Cap and Doc, Tom Bickford and Joseph Phipps, all the Virginians, Natanis and Lewis Vincent, and scattered militiamen from God knows where that had tumbled among us—every last one of us howled like madmen as Arnold went by.

He turned, circling, and was back in a matter of seconds. It was close onto sundown. The light was dim and fast getting dimmer. I thought I felt a spit of rain.

Arnold pulled off his hat and wiped his face on the sleeve of his sword-arm. All along the stockade above us, musket-fire crackled.

“We’ve got half an hour of daylight left—half an hour to take this hill!” he shouted. “Half an hour: no more! If we can take this hill, we’ll get everything!” He looked over his shoulder at the stockade and the puffs of smoke that jetted from it. “There’s no use wasting time here! There’s a sally-port round behind ’em, on the other side of the hill!”

A howl went up from those who pressed around him. “We’ll take it!” we bawled. “Go ahead!” “Sally-port!” “Take it!”