If my stripping for bed had been swift, the reversal of the process left the disrobing as far behind as if it were a tortoise racing the fleetest hound that ever gave tongue on fox’s scent. In frantic haste I dressed and left the inn and made my way to the legion barracks. The embarkation had already begun, they told me, and when I mentioned Champe’s company, it was added that it had gone aboard among the first.
On the face of it, this seemed as if it might be a danger past, but I thought it best to make assurance doubly sure and to that end dragged my weary legs down to the boat-landing where the lighters were putting off to the ships.
It was well indeed that I took this final precaution. Not a stone’s throw from the landing I met Champe, that minute come ashore in one of the returning boats on a peremptory summons from Arnold. Beckoning him aside, I told him hurriedly what was before him, and drilled him upon the story I had invented till he begged for mercy and swore he could say it backward.
That was all very well, but I have learned that a cat killed is a cat safely dead only after it is well buried, with the earth tramped down solidly upon it. So, when I had kept sight of Champe until Arnold’s door opened to swallow him, I found a spying place and watched—and had no trouble in keeping awake, either, I promise you—until I saw him come out again.
He gave me the countersign in passing, as he was on his way back to his ship. It was only a single word, “Hoodwinked,” but it lifted a load from my shoulders that was all but crushing me; lifted the load and let me, for the third time that morning, seek the bed that seemed to have a spiteful grudge against a weary soldier of fortune.
This time there were no cold-sweat alarms to snatch me from the brink, and when next I opened my eyes, the room was dark, and I knew not what day or night of the week it was.
IX
IN WHICH I PAY A DUTY CALL
CASTNER was at the supper-table in the tavern common-room when I went up-stairs, and I found that I had slept the clock only once around. To my surprise, the lieutenant was wearing a uniform to match my own, and I saw now why he had been so sore at my pointless joke. He was to accompany the Arnold expedition; and I was not long in divining the reason when he told me sourly that he had been detailed to act as aide to General Arnold. For all he had paid good king’s gold and a commission in the king’s army for his prize traitor, Sir Henry Clinton was afraid to trust him, and my friend Castner was going along as a sort of amiable spy in Arnold’s military household.
“You don’t seem to take your promotion very joyfully,” I laughed, drawing a chair opposite and sitting down to help him with the cold roast.
“It’s a dirty business,” he blurted out; and then he shut his mouth on his meat and I was left to guess whether he meant his own sending, or the proposed descent of an armed force upon a defenseless coast.