land could be preserved to me and those who came
after me?

Like a picture I saw before me those brave men and women who had
battled against the forces of nature as they made homes in the
wilderness; then struggled against the bloodthirsty Indians to protect
their little all, and were finally called upon to fight a powerful
nation in order to hold themselves free in the land already redeemed
by sweat and blood.

Once that was presented to my mental vision I ceased to regret having
been forced to thus set off for the purpose of joining Commodore
Barney's fleet, and rejoiced that my comrades had prevented me from
showing the white feather when even my loving mother urged me forward.
I forgot all the fears which had assailed me, and thought only of what
it might be possible for me to do in order to show myself worthy the
land of my birth.

In a word, I had in a few seconds been transformed from a cowardly lad
who would shirk his duty lest, perchance, he receive some bodily hurt,
to a boy burning with the desire to do whatsoever lay in his power
toward checking the advance of an enemy who was bent upon carrying on
the war by destroying the property of peaceful settlers.

Unless my comrades read what I have here set down, they will never
know how near I was on that day at Benedict, to proving myself a
false-hearted American lad.

The afternoon was considerably more than half spent when we left home
for the eighteen-mile sail up the river, and I saw little chance of
our coming upon the fleet before morning, unless we kept the pungy
under sail far into the night, for the breeze, what little we had of
it, came from the westward, and we could not make more than two miles
an hour against the current.

Therefore it was that I said to Darius when we were half an hour or
more from port, after Jim Freeman and his friends had wearied
themselves by cutting monkey-shines on the deck in order to prove
their joy at thus having an opportunity to do whatsoever they might in
defense of their country:

"With so light a wind we are like to be forced aground when it is so
dark that we cannot give the shoals a wide berth, because of not
seeing them," and the old man replied, saying that which was in my own
mind:

"It'll be a case of comin' to anchor, lad, after the sun has set, for
we had best make haste slowly rather than jam the pungy up where a day
may be spent in tryin' to float her."

"But suppose the British are close at hand?