That the committee from Connecticut had visited the town for the sole and only reason of inducing the corporal to join the force, there was no question in his mind, and now, more implicitly than ever before, did he believe that throughout all the provinces there could be found no abler soldier than Corporal ’Lige.
“Yes, lad, I’m goin’ with the committee, more to tell ’em what they ought to do, as you might say, than to serve as a private soldier, for you see I know Ticonderoga root and branch. I could tell you the whole story 9 from the meanin’ of the name down to who is in command of it this very minute, if there was time.”
“But there is, corporal. The committee are talkin’ to Colonel Easton and Master Brown now, and don’t count on leaving here before to-morrow.”
“What do they want of the colonel?”
“I don’t know; but they are stopping at his house.”
“I ain’t sayin’ but that the colonel is as good a soldier as you’ll find around here; but bless your soul, lad, though it ain’t for me to say it, he could learn considerable from Corporal ’Lige if he was to spend a few hours every now and then listenin’.”
“But tell me all you can about Ticonderoga, corporal.”
The old man looked around furtively as if half-expecting the committee from Connecticut, 10 or Colonel Easton, might be coming to ask his advice on some disputed point, and then, shaking his forefinger now and again at the lad much as though to prevent contradiction, he began:
“In the first place the folks ’round here call it ‘Ticonderoga’ when it ain’t anything of the kind. The real name is ‘Cheonderoga,’ which is Iroquois lingo for ‘Sounding Water,’ being called so, I allow, because the falls at Lake George make a deal of noise. The French built breastworks there in ’55, which they christened Fort Carillon. Now you see it’s a mighty strong place owin’ to the situation, and its bein’ located on a point which, so I’ve heard said, rises more’n a hundred feet above the level of the water. The solid part of it—that is to say, the land—is only about five hundred acres. Three sides are surrounded by water, an’ in the rear is a swamp. That 11 much for the advantages of the spot, so to speak. Now I was there in July of ’58 when Montcalm held the fort with four thousand men. Lord Howe was second in command of General Abercrombie’s forces, and Major Putnam, down here, was with the crowd. That’s when the major wouldn’t let his lordship go into the battle first; but banged right along ahead until we come to the first breastworks, finding it so strong that the troops were marched back to the landin’ place and went into bivouac for the night. It was the sixth day of July; on the eighth we tried it again; but the fort couldn’t be carried, an’ the blood that was shed there, lad, all under the British flag, would come pretty nigh drownin’ every man, woman an’ child in this ’ere settlement. On the twenty-sixth of July in the year 1759, General Amherst with eleven thousand men scared the French out; 12 they didn’t fire a gun, but abandoned the fortification and fled to Crown Point. Since that time the king’s forces have held it.”
“How many are there now?” Isaac asked, not so much for the purpose of gaining information as to tempt the old man to continue his story.