The guard standing at Black Creek bridge had a very bad toothache the night of December 29th, so bad that he thankfully retired to the barracks at Chippewa, an old, evacuated tavern, whose big cavernous fire-place, well filled with blazing logs, gave much comfort to his aching jaw. The men were lying about on straw, two and two under a blanket, when in came Nick Thorne to ask if any one of them would help him load up wood from the barrack yard. Some great doings were on hand; he had the countersign; the wood loads were to be used for a beacon light. Reed, whose father, a U. E. Loyalist of 1796, had followed Brock at Queenston, forgot his toothache. The _Caroline_ was a copper-bottomed craft, originally constructed by the man known afterwards as Commodore Vanderbilt, was intended to sail in the waters off South Carolina, and her timbers were of live oak from that State. She was converted into a steamer and brought up the canals to Lake Ontario, had been used as a ferry at Ogdensburg, and was then taken through the Welland Canal for similar ferry purposes at Buffalo. She was hired by the patriots on Navy Island to convey stores to them from Fort Schlosser, an old military position of French times, where neither fort nor village remained; there was nothing but a tavern, which was the rendezvous of the “pirate force” in coming and going. “Where are you going?” queried someone similar to the gentle general. “To Dunkirk,” answered the _Caroline’s_ master, Appleby. “You mean eastward to Navy Island?” But this skipper answered never a word, and a scornful laugh laughed he.