It was as true as it was blankly incredible. The board pointed out by Champe lay just as it had fallen, and peering through the gap it had left, we could see the dark bulk of Arnold’s house, with Sir Henry Clinton’s shouldering it on the right.
There were no lights in any of the windows, and the garden, when we had entered it through the gap in the fence, was silent and deserted, as might be expected at such an hour. We were in the shadow of the house itself when I bade Champe strike a spark into his tinder box to let us tell the time. It was past two o’clock, though how much past I could not tell, since I had forgotten to wind my watch and it had stopped exactly on the hour.
Determining this, we held a whispered consultation. It was terribly late to press our plan to its conclusion, and Champe urged this, arguing most sensibly that, if we had all good fortune from this on, we could not hope to row far on the way to Tappan before the daylight would show us to all who cared to see; that with the tide against us we would not be past the British boat patrols by sunrise.
On the other hand, I contended that it might very well be now or never.
“You heard what the guard-ship ensign said: if daylight finds us in New York, this day’s sun will be the last we’ll ever see, for they tell me they hang their caught spies at midnight. Our alternative is to take to the boat again and try to escape as we can. But if we try to do this, we may as well take Arnold with us. If we are caught, we hang, anyway, and none the less certainly if we are caught empty-handed.”
Champe saw the force of this, as I was sure he would; and if his teeth were chattering when we set about breaking into the house, why so were mine for that matter, and I protest it was from the raw chill of the morning and not from fear.
Our breaking and entering was easily accomplished. A window in a rear room gave to the cautious prying of Champe’s saber point; and from that room, which, as I knew, was used for stores, to the lower corridor, or entrance hall, we came by forcing the lock of the communicating door.
I half expected to find an aide or an orderly sleeping in this lower hall, if, indeed, there should not be a sentry, awake and on guard. But there was neither nor none of these. The hall was deserted and silent; and when we drew the curtains of the side-lights at the front, there was no sentry outside, save the one whose footfalls we could faintly hear as he marched back and forth before Sir Henry Clinton’s quarters.
Here again, then, fortune appeared to be favoring us most astoundingly. It was almost unbelievable that the man we meant to seize and carry off was sleeping quietly, and wholly at our mercy, in the room above. But, unless his guard was in the room with him, there was none in the house; of this we made sure as a condition precedent to our creeping silently up the stairs.
Before the closed door of the office-bedroom I gave the sergeant final whispered instructions; this after we had softly tried the door and found, to our greater astonishment, that it was unlocked.