As Captain Morgan finished, I handed the decoded message to him. He quickly read it and handed it to Colonel Arnold, saying, “If I may be so bold, sir, it seems this message—and the silver ‘Courier Ball’ in which it was delivered to you—belong next door in General Washington’s Headquarters, where we met yesterday.”

Colonel Arnold, looked at it, nodded his head, and said, “Captain Morgan, you are correct. If the other commanders arrive while I am gone, please inform them I shall return in short order.” With that, he hastened out the door leaving the three of us alone in the room.

As soon as he departed, our Captain said, “Nathanael, I want you to write a letter today to your father, care of Rev. Thruston. Do not reveal where we are going. Ask your dad if he recalls the name of the British officer who caused me to be flogged while your father and I were on the ill-fated Braddock expedition in the summer of ’55. Not the officer I struck. He couldn’t speak for his broken jaw, but the engineer officer who testified falsely at my court martial. If memory serves me right, his name was Ensign John Montresor.”

“The same name that’s on Colonel Arnold’s map?”

“Yes. And if it’s not just the same name, but the same man, the scars on my back tell the tale of his perfidy. If that man had anything to do with the map that’s supposed to guide us through the Maine wilderness to Quebec, we better pray now for our Lord to do for us what He did for Moses: send us a pillar of cloud to guide us by day and a pillar of fire to guide us at night.”6

At that point, Col. Arnold re-entered the room and said, “Thank you, Captain Morgan, for your advice on the encrypted message. Adjutant General Gates is most grateful and said he will immediately deliver the message and your Adjutant’s translation to General Washington.

“While we await the arrival of our fellow commanders of this expedition, let me ask, Captain Morgan, how is it you know all these things?”

Our Captain shrugged and replied, “I do not know ‘how,’ sir. All I do know is our Good Lord has blessed me with ‘situational awareness’—the ability to realize what is happening around me and granted me the wisdom and experience to determine what needs to be done about it. That’s what has kept my Riflemen and me alive in some very challenging circumstances.

“Second, I have learned to keep company with the right kind of people. I now expect—as I did not when I was younger—those with whom I associate to admonish me when I need it, encourage me when I do what’s right, and hold me accountable if I fail to do my duty. I never ask others to do that which I cannot do. If we need a ‘Forlorn Hope,’ I will lead it and be in front of all the rest.”