A four miles' march brought them to the Saddle river, which had overflown its banks; the night was gloomy and tempestuous, and a body of American regulars held the bridge. He was thus compelled to ford the river, a task of great danger and difficulty. Rumour said that 'Moody was out,' and the mail instead of being sent as usual, by the way of Pompton, was sent by another way under a guard. Selecting a man whose voice, face, and tall figure resembled his own, he sent him to a certain justice of the peace in another neighbourhood, who at once fled to the woods, giving out everywhere that Moody was there. To that quarter the Colonial troops were at once despatched, while Moody captured the mail at another, and brought in all the despatches relative to the important interview between General Washington and Count Rochambeau in Connecticut. After this, Moody captured two more bags of despatches, in one expedition being aided by his younger brother, who must have been a mere lad, as he himself was then only in his twenty-fourth year.
In October, 1781, Captain and Brevet-Major George Beckwith, of the 37th Regiment, then aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-General Baron Knyphausen, informed Mr. Moody that a person named Addison had suggested a project of great moment—to bring off all the books and papers of the Congress! This Englishman had held some inferior office under Thompson, the Secretary to the Congress, and, being a prisoner of war, it was resolved that he should be released, return to his old employment at Philadelphia, where Moody would visit him—Major Beckwith vouching for his fidelity.
Moody undertook this perilous duty with the full knowledge that Addison might deem him well worth betrayal; thus he stipulated that the former was to be kept in ignorance that he had undertaken it. Moody took with him only his brother John and another Scotsman, named Marr, on whom he could rely, and a night—the 2nd of November—and place were appointed where they were to meet the traitor Addison, in the vicinity of Philadelphia.
They met him duly, but Lieutenant Moody kept a little in the background lest his figure, which was a tall one, might be recognised by Addison, who was at once accosted by his brother and Marr. The former told them that everything was ready; that he had obtained access to the most secret archives of the Senate House, and that next evening he would deliver up all the books and papers they were in quest of. Mutual assurances of fidelity were exchanged. They crossed the river together in a boat for Philadelphia, unaccompanied by Moody, whose first foreboding or suspicion was a right one, for the perfidious Addison had already sold him and his companions to the Congress!
Pretending that the precise time at which their plans could be executed was dubious, Addison suggested that Lieutenant Moody should remain at the ferryhouse opposite the city till they returned; and before departing he told a keeper of it that the visitor was an officer of the New Jersey Brigade, which the woman understood to be the force of that name under Washington. To avoid notice, Moody affected indisposition, and remained in a room upstairs, but with his arms ready, awake and on the watch.
Next morning he overheard a man saying to another:
'There is the very devil to pay in Philadelphia! There has been a plot to break into the Senate House, but one fellow has betrayed two who are now taken, and a party of soldiers are coming to seize a third, who is concealed somewhere hereabouts.'
On hearing this alarming intelligence, Moody took his pistols, rushed downstairs, and escaped. He was not one hundred yards from the house when he saw the soldiers enter it! He attempted to gain shelter in a thicket by leaping a fence, but found the latter lined by cavalry, and got concealment in a ditch, under the overhanging weeds and shrubs. There he lay for some time with pistols cocked, and heard the soldiers pass and repass within ten yards of him. From the ditch they went all round an adjacent field, where he could see them probing the stacks of Indian corn with their bayonets; and conceiving rightly that they would not explore there again, when night fell he sought shelter in one; and as his pursuers were still about, he remained in an upright position in the stack, without food or drink, for two days and nights, enduring excruciating torture. The stacks were destitute of corn, being merely straw.
After a time he ventured, in the dark, to the bank of the Delaware, and finding a small boat, while full of grief for the peril of his brother and friend, pushed off and rowed up the river; and though many times accosted by people on the water, he replied to them 'in the rough phraseology of the gentlemen of the oar;' and escaping unsuspected, after many adventures and circuitous marches, all undergone in the night, in five days from the time of his landing, he reached in safety the British headquarters at New York. There was not the slightest hope that his brother would be pardoned, for the treason of Arnold and many recent events had infused much rancour in the minds of the contending parties. Tried by court-martial, the two prisoners were sentenced to death and executed. John Moody was in his twenty-third year, and on learning his fate, his father—an old and deserving soldier—lost his reason. The American bulletin runs thus in the papers of the time;
PHILADELPHIA, November 14, 1781.