"To tell the truth, Saul Ogden, I haven't had time to think since the cannonading began. Then Pierre and I were on the Gloucester shore, having made up our minds it would be useless to try to get into York before another night had come. When we found it might be possible, as has been proven, such a fever of excitement seized upon me that I have had no clear knowledge of what has been going on."
"It seems that you knew sufficient to understand the moment had come when you might set me free," the lad said in a tone of exultation, and I, determined that the credit should go where it belonged, replied promptly:
"It was not me, Saul Ogden, who was quick-witted enough to think that we might find the guard-house without sentries around it. Pierre Laurens is the one to whom your release is due, and save for him I dare venture to say at this moment I would be with you inside the Widow Marshall's house with red-coated sentinels standing guard over me."
"Why? How? What has happened since I have been shut up yonder?"
It was no time for story telling just then, as Saul must have understood, for the first cannon ball which had reminded me that there was danger in the air and that danger coming from the ranks of our own army, was followed by another and another, until while we ran it seemed as if we were actually being pursued by these missiles—as if there was a force in the air to guide them out of a direct course to where they might work destruction.
By this time Pierre had overtaken us, for the lad could ever run more swiftly than either Saul or I, and seizing me by the arm as if I was a child who needed guidance, shouted in a tone of triumph even amid all that peril:
"If any one had told us when Abel Hunt was following so close at our heels, that we might have worked this trick, it would have seemed like a fairy tale, and yet we have come through thus far in safety, with every chance of gaining old Mary's cabin unmolested."
"If so be we get in the path of one of these messengers," I said, motioning toward a cannon ball which was ploughing up the earth not twenty yards away, "then shall we find that we have been molested for all time."
"If we have worked our will in this encampment of my Lord Cornwallis's, we two lads alone, then I predict that we shall come through in safety, at least so far as this work is concerned. What may happen before the battle is ended I care not, so that we have kept faith with those who waited for us."
It can thus be seen that Pierre, quick-witted and versed in military matters though he was, believed as did I, that this cannonading betokened a regular battle, whereas, as we afterward came to know, it was simply the investment of York, the beginning of a regular siege.