Arnold shook his sword at us. “I’ll lead you there! Let nothing stop you!” His voice ruffled the hair on the back of my neck. His brown mare reared and plunged, then pranced ahead, playful still in spite of the sweat and lather on her. We climbed from the gully and scrambled after her as fast as we could run. I felt a terrible exasperation at the dripping, pop-eyed faces of those around me: at their meaningless and frantic yells: at this sudden hurry—this sudden demand that everything be done in half an hour: at the British, for building stockades that had to be taken in half an hour; at the ever-growing darkness; at the stabbing pains that pierced my head after these hours of noise and confusion and shouting and running. My tongue was swollen: my throat dry: my eyes ached. I wished to God, as I ran, that the half hour lay behind and not before us.

Cap had me by the arm. “Remember,” he panted hoarsely, and because he loped like a moose, the words came jolting from his mouth, “remember about getting me one of them she-Hessians! She ought to be a young one, without no blemishes!”

I pushed him away; heard him jerkily blurting his needs to Doc and Tom Bickford. We turned the shoulder of the hill, puffing and blowing.

Arnold spurred his horse higher on the slope. His rasping voice lifted us on—that warning, penetrating voice that made the heart leap. “Here!” he shouted. “Here! Come up! Come up!”

We streamed upward and saw the gap in the stockade. The whole camp of the Germans was open before us. We saw tents, carts, huts, baggage, running women, officers beating at their men with swords to make them face us. We felt the breath of the place, redolent of damp and dirty wool, of sweat and gunpowder and charred wood; of stale food, horse-manure, sourness. Everything, in the falling dusk, was a turmoil of shouting, of musket-flashing.

Arnold stood in his stirrups, and hurled us into it. “Get in here! Get in here! Throw ’em out! Push ’em out! Blow ’em out!”

Virginians crawled to the shelter of carts and began to fire. Groups of Hessians, on the far side of the camp, shot wildly at us: then broke and ran, their officers cursing and striking at them. A German general faced running Hessians, swinging his sabre against their heads and breasts, beating them to the ground as they tried to pass him. One of them pushed his musket against the general’s stomach and fired. The general’s sabre flew from his hand and he sat slowly down.

Morgan lumbered past us, bellowing. I saw Dearborn run in with a handful of his men, almost as though he had his shoulder against them, forcing them in by main strength. There were Americans everywhere, loading, firing, howling, swinging clubbed muskets at fleeing figures.