"It is enough for you to have shown us that the task can be accomplished," Colonel Willett said with a smile. "I have been the first to volunteer for such service, and claim the right to go."
At this point the commandant suggested in the most friendly manner that perhaps we who had lately arrived might be in need of food, and I fancied he made this suggestion in order to be rid of us while he and his officers discussed the proposition.
At all events, we left headquarters and were conducted by Lieutenant Stockwell to a portion of the barracks which was set aside especially for the Minute Boys, to the end that we might all be together.
"Rations shall be served you at once," the lieutenant said, as he turned to leave us, and, although he kept his word, it was past noon before we had an opportunity to break our fast, because it seemed as if nearly every man in the garrison was eager to hold personal converse with us in order to learn what he might concerning the besieging army.
No matter however much we as a company might succeed in doing in the future, certain it is we could not be petted or praised more than we were during that first day in the fort.
We had not accomplished anything remarkable, so far as I could see; aided by all the circumstances, and particularly by the fact that St. Leger's force had concluded to hold a powwow with the Indians on that certain night, we had come across the plain when, at another time and under other conditions, we might have made an hundred attempts without succeeding.
It was, as Sergeant Corney would put it, the fortune of war, or the accident of war, which enabled us to do as we had done, and only the old soldier himself could take personal credit for our being there.
If the garrison was on short allowance, we never would have suspected it during the first four and twenty hours of our stay, for every man inside the walls who had anything in the way of food which he thought might tempt our appetites, offered it to us, and the wonder of it all is that we were not so puffed up with pride as to behave very foolishly.
Late in the afternoon, on the day after we arrived, Colonel Willett came to our quarters, and, sitting down among us regardless of his rank and high attainments as a military officer, talked in the most neighborly fashion with us concerning the surrounding country, the different routes we had pursued when coming to or going from the fort, and, particularly, concerning what we might have heard regarding the movements of the enemy between Fort Schuyler and Oswego.
Of course to this last question we could give no satisfactory reply; but certain it is that he gained very much of useful information which would serve him in his attempt to reach General Schuyler. Having come to an end of his inquiries, he told us that it had been determined between himself and the commandant that on the next stormy night he and Lieutenant Stockwell would make an effort to leave the fort on their way to Stillwater, where it seems he believed the general would be found.