But it was all to no purpose. Say what I would, his only reply was a stubborn repetition: “I’ll go back with you and see it through.” And when I could get nothing more out of him, we made our way as swiftly as possible back to our stolen boat, taking to the water a short half-hour, I should say, before dawn-breaking.
Our luck, which had left us so promptly after the boat-stealing, gave us a little glimpse of itself again when we approached the New York shore. By the merest chance, we took ground within a few feet of the dangling boat chain, and by chance again, our sleepy sentinel, or another in his place, was at the other end of his beat when we climbed cautiously up the bank.
Once more safely in the town, we separated; Champe to go to his barracks, and I to steal unobserved into my tavern and up the stair and so to my room with the unrumpled bed.
I rumpled the bed duly, in less than two minutes after I had dropped the door-bar, being fully nine-tenths dead for the want of sleep and rest. But I had scarcely pulled the covers up before there came a mighty thundering at the door; and when I went to answer it, I was told that my general commanded my attendance on the moment—and he had sent a soldier to do the summoning.
VIII
A WALK UP GALLOWS HILL
IT nettles me to think that one carrying the name of Page should be a prey to senseless terror, but the sight of that sour-faced soldier standing, with his musket at parade, before my door, made me ill.
Weighing it evenly in a calmer moment, it was not so greatly to be wondered at. A spy’s life always hangs by the slenderest thread, with all the world that touches him a den of wild beasts ready to tear him limb from limb. Besides, I was in the last ditch of weariness and fatigue and a tired body is next to an empty belly for sapping the courage.
But, after all, my soldier caller did not put me under arrest when I was dressed and ready to go with him. On the contrary, he preceded me to Arnold’s house, and when I went in, took up his sentry stand before the entrance, pacing in step with Sir Henry Clinton’s man next door.
When I climbed the stair and met the man whose escapes of the night past might have been measured in thicknesses of a hair, the unreasoning terror gripped me again. Arnold was standing with his back to the door when I entered, and when he turned to face me he was scowling darkly and his first question made my heart turn a somersault within me.
“Where did you go last night, after you left me, Captain Page?”