"Well, you find it for Peter. Start him up for the frigate, and then you get back home."
"Yes, I will. It is not far to the north stockade."
They were both staring at him, confused, numbed with awe. "I—we must thank you," Peter muttered. "We saw the Indians as they fled."
"Oh, that's all right. Glad to do it. But I've got to get—away now. I've got to get back where—where I came from—"
Then Greta took a step toward him.
"Oh, please, who—what are you? This thing you have done for us—"
Alan was gently smiling. "Hard to explain. You'd better just call it a miracle," he said. His finger pressed the time-lever. He could see Peter grip the girl as they shrank away with terror, staring at him while slowly he faded into nothingness....
May, 1942. In a dim, quiet room of the New York Historical Society Alan sat poring over an old Dutch chronicle of Nieuw Amsterdam. And then he found what he was after—an account of Stuyvesant's surrender to the Duke of York. It was a modern English translation of an account by someone who had lived in the little Dutch city.
Alan read it, awed. Here was mention of young Peter Van Saant, who had gone up the river to the Queen Catherine—the English frigate which had slipped past the forts in the fog that night. And it told of Greta Dykeman who had shown him the way to where her rowboat was hidden. And then—the miracle!