We huddled together like sheep and covered ourselves with our blankets. Occasionally we rose, stamped our feet and beat our hands, and then crouched down again.
When it was dark we put on our rackets and set out again. By daybreak we reached the landing-place. Rogers sent scouts to see if any of the enemy were out. They reported that there were two parties of them cutting wood on the east side of Lake Champlain.
FRENCH WOODCUTTERS
Rogers now marched with fifty Rangers and as many Indians down to the isthmus, and we went up the same hill from which John Stark and Engineer Clark made their observations the year before. Everything looked different in the winter. We were acting as a guard to Mr. Bhreems, who went up to the crest of the hill and made sketches of the fort. Amos and I crept along the sidehill to where a few Indians and Rangers were watching some Frenchmen at work on the other side of the lake. They were cutting down trees and chopping them up into firewood.
"I suppose we've got to go over and capture some of those men, Amos."
"Yes; seems a p-pity, too, to attack men cutting wood. It puts me in mind of home. That's what I'd be doing now if I were there."
Rogers left a few scouts to watch these men, and the rest of us returned with the engineer.
The weather grew colder and colder. All this time we could have no fires. We watched each other to see if an ear or a nose were getting frost-bitten. I told Amos that his right ear looked pretty white, and that he had better see if there were any feeling in it.
He took off his mittens and pinched it.
"It don't hurt a bit. There isn't a mite of feeling."