In divided counsels, therefore, we took our stiffened limbs out of their boat crampings, and stamped and beat our arms and got the sluggish blood in motion before we dragged our craft high and dry, and set out to scramble up the steep bank fronting our landing-place. At the top, to our astonishment, we were above the thin skim of fog that lay like a veil on the surface of the water, and could see dimly the surrounding objects. The first of these was a man, walking slowly and with measured steps toward us on the bank’s edge. “A sentry,” muttered the sergeant, and we flattened ourselves silently where we were till the soldier passed us, creeping swiftly forward to cross the line a minute later. Not above a stone’s throw from the waterside we were brought to a stand by a barrier of some sort which, to the sense of touch, proclaimed itself to be a high wooden fence. It was here that Champe gripped my arm and drew me down beside him. “The luck’s turned, Captain Dick!” he whispered excitedly. “Of all the thousand places where we might have landed, we’ve drifted blindly to the one we were aiming for! This is our garden, and here is the board you kicked loose when you were walking with Sir Judas night before last!” It was as true as it was blankly incredible. The board pointed out by Champe lay just as it had fallen, and peering through the gap it had left, we could see the dark bulk of Arnold’s house, with Sir Henry Clinton’s shouldering it on the right. There were no lights in any of the windows, and the garden, when we had entered it through the gap in the fence, was silent and deserted, as might be expected at such an hour. We were in the shadow of the house itself when I bade Champe strike a spark into his tinder box to let us tell the time. It was past two o’clock, though how much past I could not tell, since I had forgotten to wind my watch and it had stopped exactly on the hour. Determining this, we held a whispered consultation. It was terribly late to press our plan to its conclusion, and Champe urged this, arguing most sensibly that, if we had all good fortune from this on, we could not hope to row far on the way to Tappan before the daylight would show us to all who cared to see; that with the tide against us we would not be past the British boat patrols by sunrise. On the other hand, I contended that it might very well be now or never. “You heard what the guard-ship ensign said: if daylight finds us in New York, this day’s sun will be the last we’ll ever see, for they tell me they hang their caught spies at midnight. Our alternative is to take to the boat again and try to escape as we can. But if we try to do this, we may as well take Arnold with us. If we are caught, we hang, anyway, and none the less certainly if we are caught empty-handed.”