The fisherman threw him a rope, and that rope saved them. The dewy smell of the grassy banks had aroused the cow. She was stirring.
The land was very near now; close at hand. “Hurry! hurry!” urged the lad, as they were drawing him in. Before the cow had time to rise, the boat touched land.
“You’d better look after that girl,” said the fisherman, who had towed the boat. The poor child was holding, fast wrapped in the remnants of her pink frock, her bleeding hand. The musket ball that shot away her bonnet grazed her wrist.
“Never mind me,” she said, when they were pitying her. “The cow is safe.”
The same evening, while, in Philadelphia, bonfires were blazing, bells ringing, cannon booming, because, that day, a new nation was born; over Staten Island Sound, by the light of the moon, strong-armed men were ferrying home the girl and the boy, who that day had fought a good fight and gained the victory.
At home, in the Kull cottage, the mother 149 waited long for the coming of the children. She said; “Poor young things! Mine own children—they shall have a nice supper.” She made it ready and they were not come.
Farmer Rycker’s wife and daughter came over to tell and hear the news, and yet they were not come.
Sundown. No children. The Kull father came up from his fishing and heard the story.
“The Red Coats have taken them,” he said, and down came the musket from against the wall, and out the father marched and made straightway for the headquarters of General Howe, over at the present “Quarantine.”
Then the mother, left alone in the soft summer gloaming, fell on her knees and told her story in her own plain speech to her good Father in Heaven.