“There you go again, Captain, tripping me up just as I’m taking the gallop. Where was I?—oh, yes; piling the good half of the Dutch oven on the trap-door to make all safe. Well, that done, I must needs go back a ways to buy the silence of the carrot-headed Irish grog-ladler who had put me in the way of finding the hidden boat. After I had let him rob me to the tune of three guineas where he had offered for two, I thought it might be well to take a round along the shore to that Dutch schnapps house where I had been meeting Mr. Baldwin, Major Lee’s letter carrier from the camp at Tappan.”
“A good thought,” I broke in. “I had forgotten that we may still have a line of communication open in that direction.”
“It was a lucky thought,” Champe went on. “When I found the Mynheer, I was told that Mr. Baldwin had been seeking me since daybreak, and while I was talking to the Dutchman, in Mr. Baldwin pops again, to give me a letter fresh from Major Lee.”
“Let me see it,” said I, holding out my hand; but the sergeant only laughed at me.
“Do you think I should have got through that fort guard-room yonder with the letter in my pocket, Captain Dick? No, no; I took no such risks, I promise you. The paper was well chewed and swallowed before it ever saw outdoor daylight. But I can tell you well enough what it said. We’re outflanked, foot, horse, and dragoons. There was a spy in the camp at Tappan the night you got your marching orders from Mr. Hamilton. You’ll know what that spells out for us?”
“I can guess; let’s have the worst of it.”
“I’m coming to that, too. This spy was caught, fragranty delictum, a few hours after you left the camp. Handily invited, with the turn of a cord around his two thumbs, he told what he could pick out of Mr. Hamilton’s talk to you heard from his hiding-place under Mr. Hamilton’s bed in the next room. He had it all down pat; your name and rank and mine, and the whole story of my plot and your cutting in to help me. But he protested to the last gasp that his knowledge was all of the ear; that he saw nothing—being under the bed—and wouldn’t know either of us by sight.”
“To the last gasp, you say—then they hanged him?” I said, feeling a great burden lifted.
“Unluckily, they didn’t. He had his drumhead trial, and was to stretch a cord at daybreak. Two hours before dawn they changed guard at the hut where he was in keeping, and the relief found the hut empty. The man was gone.”
“Oh, good lord!” I exclaimed. “We are not the only ones to tangle our feet and fall down over them, it seems. He’ll be here on top of us, next, I take it.”