the next
morning they changed their course, marched east of north all day, passed
Ticonderoga undiscovered, and stopped at night some five miles beyond
it. The weather was changing, and rain was coming on. They scraped away
the snow with their snow-shoes, piled in it a bank around them, made
beds of spruce-boughs, built fires, and lay down to sleep, while the
sentinels kept watch in the outer gloom. In the morning there was a
drizzling rain, and the softened snow stuck to their snow-shoes. They
marched eastward three miles through the dripping forest, til they
reached the banks of Lake Champlain, near what is now called Five Mile
Point, and presently saw a sledge, drawn by horses, moving on the ice
from Ticonderoga towards Crown Point. Rogers sent Stark along the shore
to the left to head it off, while he with another party, covered by the
woods, moved in the opposite direction to stop its retreat. He soon saw
eight or ten more sledges following the first, and sent a messenger to
prevent Stark from showing himself too soon; but Stark was already on
the ice.

All the sledges turned back in hot haste. The rangers ran in pursuit and
captured three of them, with seven men and six horses, while the rest
escaped to Ticonderoga. The prisoners, being separately examined, told
an ominous tale. There were three hundred and fifty regulars at
Ticonderoga; two hundred Canadians and forty-five Indians had lately
arrived there, and more Indians were expected that evening,--all
destined to waylay the communications between the English forts, and all
prepared to march at a moment's notice. The rangers were now in great
peril. The fugitives would give warning of their presence, and the
French and Indians, in overwhelming force, would no doubt cut off their
retreat.

Rogers at once ordered his men to return to their last night's
encampment, rekindle the fires, and dry their guns, which were wet by
the rain of the morning. Then they marched southward in single file
through the snow-encumbered forest, Rogers and Kennedy in the front,
Spikeman in the centre, and Stark in the rear. In this order they moved
on over broken and difficult ground till two in the afternoon, when they
came upon a valley, or hollow, scarcely a musket-shot wide, which ran
across their line of march, and, like all the rest of the country, was
buried in thick woods. The front of the line had descended the first
hill, and was mounting that on the farther side, when th