'I am Ensign Moody,' said that officer sternly; 'I have a strong party with me, and if you do not surrender your keys, I will blow the place about your ears!'
His men now imitated the Indian war-whoop, and shouted, 'The Indians—the Indians have come!'
On this the gaoler, his assistants, and even many of the townspeople, fled to the woods. Moody then burst into the gaol through the window, and found the condemned soldier in his cell fast asleep.
'There is no possibility,' says Moody's Narrative (now out of print), 'of describing the agony of this man when he saw before him a man in arms, attended by persons he was utterly at a loss to recognise. The first and only idea that occurred to him was, that, as many of the friends of the government had been privately executed in prison, the person he saw was his executioner!'
Moody released and carried off with him all the prisoners, including the soldier, who, by a strange freak of fortune, was afterwards taken again during the war, and hanged in the same prison, and in virtue of the old sentence, though we are told that his only crime was 'an unshaken allegiance to his sovereign.' This seems barely probable, as another soldier, a Scotsman named Robert Maxwell, was executed at the same time for robbery and plunder.
On the 6th of March, 1781, when Moody was still an ensign, the Adjutant-General, Oliver de Lancy, of the 17th Light Dragoons, successor in office to the ill-fated André, proposed 'an expedition into the rebel country, for the purpose of intercepting the despatches of Mr. Washington.' Moody instantly undertook the task, and marching his party twenty-five miles that night, concealed them in a morass; but the guide lost heart, which so enraged Moody that he would have shot him, but for the sake of his wife and family, and was compelled to return to New York. Colonel de Lancy was much disappointed; the guide was made a prisoner, and on the 11th of the same month Moody set forth again, and reached the Haverstraw Mountains, which overlook the Hudson, amid a snow-storm, and by the 15th he captured the despatches and their bearer; but so great were the hardships undergone that some of his men perished of cold and hunger. For this, Moody, who had been one year a volunteer, and three an ensign, was promoted to a lieutenancy.
About the middle of May the adjutant-general, being in want of intelligence, suggested to Moody the capture of another 'rebel mail;' and on the night of the 15th he set forth with four well-armed men, and after proceeding many miles, he found himself beset on three sides by a considerable number of the Colonial troops, who, having secret intelligence of his movements from New York, were then in ambush awaiting him.
On the fourth side lay a ridge of cliffs, so steep and rugged that to escape by it seemed impossible. There was no alternative now but to surrender and die, or leap down the cliffs, and in the dark. Calling on his men to follow him, the daring Moody sprang down, and as the soil was soft at the base, they were all unhurt, though seriously shaken. They now crossed a swamp, only to find themselves before a still stronger party of the enemy when day was breaking. To advance was impossible, as there was no doubt that they had been betrayed. They contrived to creep away unseen, and travelled till they gained the North River within four miles of New York. Just when Moody conceived they were out of all peril, a party of seventy men, under arms, issued from a wayside house, and opened fire upon him. 'He received one general discharge, and thought it a miracle he escaped unwounded; the bullets fell like a storm of hail around him; his clothes were shot through in several places; one ball pierced his hat, another grazed his arm. Without at all slackening his pace, he turned round, discharged his musket, and killed one of his pursuers; still they kept up their fire, each man discharging his piece as fast as he could load; but gaining an opportunity of soon doubling upon them, he gave them the slip, and in due time arrived once more safe in New York.'*
* 'Political Magazine,' vol. iv.
He departed again on the same perilous errand for Pompton, on the 18th May, conceiving that the foe would think they had sufficiently scared him from further expeditions of the kind. With four resolute fellows, he crossed the Hakinsack river by a canoe which he concealed among the long, rank sedges, and soon fell in with an American patrol, whose object was to prevent the conveyance of provisions to the British headquarters. He was ordered to stand or be instantly shot. With his four men, he fired, and then gave an order as if he had a strong force in reserve, on which the patrol fled.