But even when we were thus snug, unless, perchance, the Britishers took it into their heads to search the river banks, our work was by no means done. It was now necessary that we should know if the enemy went up stream, and after we had rested no more than five minutes, when a full hour would have been hardly enough to put me in proper trim again, Darius said: "Come, Amos, you an' I will stand the first watch. Bill an' Jerry can spell us in a couple of hours." "What do you count on watching?" I asked curtly. "The Britishers, of course. We'll paddle down to the river, an' lay there till the fleet goes one way or the other." It would have been a long watch had we remained on duty until the entire fleet sailed in one direction; but as to that we were happily ignorant, and I took my place in the canoe believing the enemy would sail past our hiding place in a very short time. We allowed the canoe to drift down the creek until we were come within a few yards of the river, and then, well hidden by the undergrowth, we made ourselves as comfortable as possible where we could command a full view of the channel. "It doesn't appear to be as easy to get back home as we counted on," I said, by way of starting a conversation, and Darius replied confidently: "This 'ere stop won't put us back very much, though it'll make a power of extra work, for I count to be slippin' down river within a couple of hours at the longest." Then the old man fell silent, and I was not disposed to wag my tongue, because of looking ahead to the meeting with mother and the children, which now seemed so near at hand. We had been on watch an hour or more when the enemy appeared. The schooner was leading the way slowly, being towed by boats, with the men taking soundings every fifteen or twenty yards in order to show the channel to the two frigates close astern, and another hour went by before the three vessels had passed our hiding-place. Then we watched eagerly, expecting to see the rocket-ships and bomb-vessels appear; but they did not heave in sight, although it seemed to me as if they should have been close behind the larger ships in order to take advantage of the labor being performed by those on board the schooner. When half an hour had passed, and the river, so far as we could see in either direction, was free from craft of any kind, Darius bestowed a resounding slap upon his leg as he cried angrily: "What an old fool I am, to be sure! In two years more, if I keep on runnin' down hill, I won't be able to tell my own nose from somebody's else, even when it's pulled." "What's the matter now?" I asked in surprise. "What's the matter, lad? Can't you see that only part of the fleet is goin' up stream? If the other ships counted on leavin' anchorage they'd been in the wake of the frigates. We're shut in here between two ends of the British force, an' likely to stay quite a spell."