"It is your duty, Corporal 'Lige, to take passage in the same craft that carries our leader, for the lad of whom you have charge must be kept where Colonel Allen can speak to him at an instant's notice." Had the men been allowed to follow their inclinations, the frail boats which formed the fleet would have been swamped even before they pushed off from the shore, for every member of the troop was eager to be with the first division, and it was only after considerable difficulty in the way of restraining the men that the different craft were properly and safely loaded. When the corporal and the lad who was thus virtually held prisoner entered the boat where was Colonel Allen, Isaac followed as if it was his right so to do. He could not fancy any position of affairs where he would be debarred from remaining with the man who had taken him "under his wing," and it so chanced that in the excitement of embarking he passed aboard unheeded by who might have checked him. The darkness of night was just giving way to the gray light of dawn when the little fleet put off from the shore, and without being really aware he did so, Isaac counted the number of those who were thus afloat. Beside the officers, there were eighty-three, including himself and Nathan, and it was no longer reasonable to expect that those who had been sent to Skenesborough and Panton would arrive in time to be of assistance. "Will they try to take the fort with so few?" he asked in a whisper of Corporal 'Lige, and the latter added emphatically: "If all that is told of Colonel Allen be true, he wouldn't hesitate to make an attempt single-handed." "But surely we cannot hope to do much, for fifty men behind a fort should be a much larger force than ours." "Savin' and exceptin' these men be surprised, as our leader counts them in Fort Ticonderoga will be," the corporal replied, and then placed his finger on his lips that the lad should cease talking, for the order had been passed from boat to boat just before the fleet left the shore that no conversation be indulged in. Nathan, sulky because of having been put in charge of the man whom he disliked, gave no apparent attention to anything. In almost perfect silence the journey by water was made, and brought to an end just as the day was breaking, when, in obedience to signals rather than words, the men disembarked and were formed in three ranks close to the water's edge. Then it was that Colonel Allen advanced to where the men might hear when he spoke in the tone of ordinary conversation, and said with a calmness which in itself was impressive: