uled up on the shore not more than thirty feet from where
he lay, asked sharply:

"Have you the courage, Fitz Hamilton, to embark with me in yonder craft,
and go down to the Gloucester shore where we may remain hidden amid the
foliage until it is sufficiently light for us to make out whether any
one comes looking for a messenger from the Jerseyman?"

"Meaning to brave the Britishers?" I cried in something very like alarm.

"Meaning to carry the message which it is necessary should be delivered,
and without heed whatsoever to these gentry who wear red coats."

"I have the courage, Pierre," I said, after a time of hesitation; "but
have we the right to desert Uncle 'Rasmus while he must for his own sake
hold Horry Sims a prisoner, and when he has nothing whatsoever to eat or
drink in the cabin? Surely it would be deserting him for us to take boat
now and leave the village, if peradventure we can do so, for there are
an hundred chances against our being able to return, and only one in our
favor. It is the same as abandoning Uncle 'Rasmus."

"And if it were abandoning him, and Saul, and every one whom we know,
yet would I say it was our duty to go because the Jerseyman, expecting
his message to be delivered, will give no further heed to sending it
into the American lines."

Although Pierre's words had fired me, and it was possible at any time
for the lad to arouse all my enthusiasm and all my bravery when he spoke
as he had a moment previous, I understood that it was a most dangerous
venture which he proposed, such as might be tried twenty times over
without success.

Mark you, in order to gain the Gloucester shore at the point near where
the Jerseyman claimed we would find someone awaiting us, we must sail in
our skiff, without a pass from my Lord Cornwallis, within hailing
distance of the _Charon_, or of the _Guadaloupe_, both of which vessels
lay where their guns could be brought to bear either on York or
Gloucester, and it did not seem to me within the range of possibilities
that we could pass either craft without being discovered by the sentries
who would undoubtedly order us to come alongside.

Even though we were minded to be so reckless as to take the chances of
disobeying an order, it could avail us nothing, for pursuit would be
given immediately, and how might we hope to escape from a vessel of
war's boat, manned most like by a dozen men, we being only two lads not
overly well skilled in rowing.

I was tu