"At length Pompey told them that his master would not allow him to come with his fruit in the daytime, because it was now hoeing-corn season. The officers, unwilling to lose their supply of luxuries, then gave him their countersign regularly so that he could pass the sentries in the evening. He had it on the night of the attack, and gave it to the Americans, who used it as their watchword when they scaled the ramparts. It was 'The fort's our own.'" "And they could say it with truth," laughed Lucilla; "for the fort was really theirs--stolen from them by the British." "The fortress seemed almost impregnable," resumed her father; "built upon a huge rocky bluff, an island at high water, and always inaccessible dryshod,--except across a narrow causeway in the rear,--it was strongly defended by outworks and a double row of abatis. There was a deep and dangerous morass on one side, and on the other three were the waters of the Hudson." "And was the rock too high and steep to climb, papa?" asked Ned. "Yes, indeed! But our men were brave and persevering fellows; Wayne, their leader, believed in the old saying 'Where there's a will there's a way.' He practiced upon that, and in consequence was very successful. He was so rapid and earnest in what he did that people took to calling him 'Mad Anthony Wayne.' "Now, he resolved to storm this fort at all hazards, as Lossing says, and only waited for the ebbing of the tide and the deep first slumber of the garrison. "At half-past eleven o'clock that night the Americans began a silent march toward the fort. Two strong men disguised as farmers, and the negro Pompey, went first. There was no barking of dogs to arouse the garrison, for they had all been killed--all in that neighborhood--the day before. Pompey gave the countersign to the first sentinel on the high ground west of the morass, then the two disguised men suddenly seized and gagged him. The same thing was done with the sentinel at the causeway. Then, as soon as the tide ebbed sufficiently, the greater part of Wayne's little army crossed the morass at the foot of the western declivity of the promontory, no one among the enemy observing them. Three hundred men under General Muhlenburg remained as a reserve in the rear. The troops were divided into two columns--all with unloaded muskets and fixed bayonets. At a little past midnight the advance parties moved silently to the charge, one on the northern and the other on the southern part of the height. The two main divisions followed them, one led by Wayne himself. The Americans were not discovered by the British until they were within pistol shot of the pickets on the heights, when a skirmish took place between the advance guards and the sentinels.