Presently Mount touched my arm and pointed. High up in the dark haze above the city two bright lights hung. So we knew that Rolfe was watching from the belfry of the Old North Meeting-House, and that Paul had read the twin lamps' message and was now galloping west through the Middlesex farms.
Shemuel, shivering in his wet and muddy garments, crept up beside me to ask where we were to be landed.
I did not know, nor dared I ask, fearing to awake suspicion. Besides, we were close under the sprit of a tall, black frigate, so close that I could see the candles flaring in the battle lanthorns and the dead bay-weeds hanging from the chains, and I could even read her name, the Falcon.
Then, suddenly, out of the shadow under the black frigate's hulk, a cockle-shell came dancing towards us, with an officer in the stern, who played his lanthorn on us and waved his arm.
"Move into line with the ship's boats!" he called out, with many a strange sea-oath; and our brawny oarsmen pulled northeast once more towards the long line of boats which now stretched almost across the bay.
"You land at Phipps's Farm, sir?" inquired a sweating boatman of Mount.
"Phipps's Farm!" broke in Mr. Foxcroft. "It's in the marshes o' Lechemere! I'm damned if I'll be landed at Phipps's!"
"Isn't that where the troops land, sir?" asked the boatman, resting his oar.
Mount shook his head mysteriously.
"We are on special service, lads," he said. "Ask no questions, but put us ashore at Willis Creek, and tell the colonel to give you a guinea apiece for me."