All afternoon they rowed about, poking the yawl’s nose first into one creek and then into another, and nightfall found them still exploring the North Inlet. Then, when they had about decided that it was too dark to row further and that they had better return to the sloop, they suddenly saw a lighted torch on the shore. Heading for this they found some negroes dragging for oysters. Baron de Kalb, who knew more English than the others, called out and asked if there was good anchorage for a ship thereabouts and whether he could find a pilot to take them to Charlestown.
The negroes, very much surprised at the sudden appearance of the yawl, thought the men on board might be Englishmen or Hessians, and instantly grew suspicious. One of them answered, “We belong to Major Huger, all of us belongs to him. He’s our master.”
“Is he an officer in the American army?” De Kalb called back.
The negro said that he was, and added that there was a pilot on the upper end of North Island, and then volunteered to show the men in the yawl where the pilot lived and also to take them to the house of the Major.
Lafayette thought it would be best to find Major Huger at once; but the tide was falling fast, and when the rowers, unused to these shoals, tried to follow the negroes in the oyster-boat, they discovered that they were in danger of beaching their yawl. The only alternative was for some of them to go in the oyster-boat, and so Lafayette and De Kalb and one other joined the negroes, while the crew of the yawl rowed back to the Victory.
Over more shallows, up more inlets the negroes steered their craft, and about midnight they pointed out a light shining from a house on the shore. “That’s Major Huger’s,” said the guide, and he ran his boat up to a landing-stage. The three officers stepped out, putting their feet on American soil for the first time on this almost deserted coast and under the guidance of stray negro oystermen.
But this desolate shore had already been the landing-place of English privateersmen, and the people who lived in the neighborhood were always in fear of attack. As Lafayette and his two friends went up toward the house the loud barking of dogs suddenly broke the silence. And as they came up to the dwelling a window was thrown open and a man called out, “Who goes there? Stop where you are or I’ll fire!”
“We are friends, sir; friends only,” De Kalb hurriedly answered. “We are French officers who have just landed from our ship, which has come into your waters. We have come to fight for America and we are looking for a pilot to steer our ship to a safe anchorage and are also hunting shelter for ourselves.”