Here I learned that my portmanteau had not been taken away, and that a soldier, calling himself my servant, was waiting for me in the room above. Meaning to give the Royalist barman no chance to think that I cared a rap about any common soldier who might be sitting up for me, I ordered a cup of wine and a pipe of tobacco, and sat quietly before the fire in the supper-room, sipping the one and smoking the other for a full half-hour before paying my score and going above-stairs. In the barn-like room Champe was improving the interval soldier-wise; which is to say that he had taken the covers from my bed, rolled himself in them, and was sound asleep on the floor. He roused at my incoming, however, and was broad awake by the time I had thrown a log on the smoldering fire he had made. “Well, and how did you carry it off with the major?” he asked when he had rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Not so handsomely as I should have, had you told me it was Major Simcoe I should have to hoodwink,” I retorted. “But you are safe for the time being--which means until Major Simcoe and Arnold meet each other and fall to comparing notes.” “And then?” queried my sergeant. “Then Simcoe will learn that I have lied to him, and Arnold may not be able to remember that he sent you on an errand that prevented your return to the ship with his letter to the major,” I rejoined shortly. “Which means that we have purchased--how many hours, Captain Dick?” “God knows; and I do not. But we must make the most of what time we have. No one seems to know where our convoy ships of war have gone, or when they are to return. But with the fleet waiting in the lower bay, the interval can not be long. What we do, we must do quickly.” “Aye,” said Champe; “and what will that be?” I had been culling the plots out patiently ever since Castner’s announcement of the delay had set them weaving, and now there was but one that offered any promise of success--and that a desperate one. With the uncertain time-factor we had to count on, it was useless to think of trying to get word to Major Lee in the camp at Tappan. What we did must be done without help from the outside; and upon this hard-and-fast pivot the temerarious enterprise must be made to turn. “What we thought we might accomplish with a corporal’s guard of Major Lee’s men to help us, we must still do, and do it with our hands, John Champe,” I said. “Take him forcibly in his house, you mean?” I nodded. “I’m with you, Captain Dick,” was the stout sergeant’s rejoinder. “But afterward?” “That is what it may take us all the time we have, and maybe more, to provide for. The river is our only way out, and we must have a boat, the lightest and swiftest we can find. Do you pull an oar, Sergeant?” “No so comfortably as I do a bridle rein. But I shall make out when it comes to that. What is your plan?--or have you drawn any picture of it in your mind?”