We were eager to be under way, as may be supposed, and as soon as the day dawned on the 27th of August, we cast off from the dock, feeling that the good God had been very kind in permitting us to return to our homes when so many had been left at Bladensburg to fill soldiers' graves. It was as if everything favored us at the start of the homeward journey. The river was free from the drift of all kinds which had covered its surface; the wind was blowing gently from the north, and the day gave promise of being clear. The pungy slipped along as if conscious that she, like ourselves, had escaped from great dangers, and was longing for another cargo of oysters in her hold. Bill Jepson acted as if he had suddenly lost his senses. He sang the wildest kind of songs, danced two or three hornpipes, and then insisted on Darius joining him, while Jim Freeman furnished the music by whistling fast and furiously. As a matter of fact, all of us, even including my father, were disposed to be exceeding jolly now that we were homeward bound with the belief that the enemy was no longer in a position to annoy us. We lads talked of the pungy we would buy when the government paid us for the Avenger, and laid many a plan for the future when Jim, his two friends, Jerry, Darius and I would begin oystering again, in a craft capable of carrying three or four times the cargo we had been able to squeeze into the old boat which had been sacrificed at Pig Point. Then, when it was near noon, we had come within sight of Fort Washington, and as we rounded the bend Captain Hanaford gave vent to an exclamation of surprise and fear, which was echoed by Bill Jepson. At some considerable distance down the river it was possible to see the upper spars of seven vessels of war which were slowly approaching the fortification from the southward. "It's the British fleet!" Captain Hanaford cried as he shoved the tiller hard down, thereby swinging the pungy's nose into the mud of the eastern bank. "We were bloomin' fools to think that the enemy had all run away!" "It's the fleet under Captain Gordon, an' I can tell you just how strong it is," Bill Jepson said as he rubbed his head nervously. "There are two frigates of thirty-six an' thirty-eight guns; two rocket ships of eighteen guns each, two bomb vessels of eight guns each, an' one schooner carryin' two guns." "The schooner would be enough to bring us up with a sharp turn, therefore I hold that it don't make any difference how many frigates are behind her," Darius cried. "The question is whether the fort can prevent their comin' up the river?" No one aboard could say what might be done by those in the fortification, or how strongly it was garrisoned; but later I read the following in one of the newspapers, and will set it down here so that what happened while we were on the river may be the better understood.