The story of Ethan Allen's long captivity, lasting two years and eight months, as told by himself, is one of the most interesting narratives connected with the Revolutionary war. Loaded with chains, consigned to the filthy hold of a vessel, with no seat nor bed save a seaman's chest, half starved, tortured by daily indignities, his high courage and brave spirit never faltered. Once, when insulted, he sprang at his tormentor--the captain of the ship--and with his shackled hands knocked him down; and again he bit off the nail that fastened his handcuffs, and by these feats of strength and anger awed his guards into some show of respect. The method by which he saved himself from a felon's death in England was worthy the dignity of a veteran diplomat. A letter to the Continental Congress, which he knew would never reach its destination, but fall into the hands of its bitterest enemy, Lord North, contained an account of his ill treatment and possible fate, and closed with the request that if retaliation upon the Tory and other prisoners in its power should be found necessary, it might be exercised not according to his own value or rank, but in proportion to the importance of the cause for which he suffered. The English ministry concluded evidently to treat him henceforth as a prisoner of war entitled to an honorable exchange, rather than a rebel deserving an ignoble death, and he was returned to America, where he was confined, with varieties of usage, in Halifax, and afterward in New York. While in the latter place, and suffering from hunger and long ill health, he was approached by a British officer, authorized to offer him the command of a royalist regiment, and the gift of thousands of acres of land at the close of the war, in any part of the American colonies he might select, providing he would forsake the patriot cause and take oath of allegiance to the crown. Colonel Allen rejected this overture with great scorn, assuring the officer that he had as little land to promise him as had the devil when making a similar one. "Thereupon," said Allen, "he closed the conversation and turned from me with an air of dislike, saying I was a bigot." An exchange of prisoners at length freed him from a situation so full of personal hardship and mental anguish, and he hastened home to his family, from whom he so long and cruelly had been separated. His only son had died in the meantime, and his wife and daughters, not expecting his arrival, were not at Bennington in time to receive him. But his neighbors and friends flocked in from miles around to give him greeting, and although it was the Sabbath, a day strictly observed in those parts, the enthusiasm of the joyful occasion could neither be postponed nor suppressed, and its expression found vent in the firing of cannon and happy huzzas. The "Hampshire Grants" in his absence had become the full-fledged "State of Vermont," knocking for admission at the doors of the Continental Congress.