The night came on dark and stormy and with a northerly gale driving over the lake. So the fleet up anchor, and “one following a [shaded] light on the stern of the other,” they slipped through the enemy’s line that lay across the south end of the channel, with Arnold on the _Congress_ bringing up the rear, because that was the post of danger, and at daylight on the morning of Thursday, October 12th, they were ten miles away and under the lee of Schuyler Island. [Illustration: A View on Lake Champlain Showing the Fight of 1776. _From Hinton’s History of the United States._] At this point the fleet came to anchor and began to make such repairs as were possible. Two gondolas were sunk because they were past remedy, and when the patching of the rest had been carried far enough to enable them to float without too much pumping, the fleet started on. Meantime, however, the wind shifted to the south, and the progress, depending on the oars, was necessarily slow. But, although the wind retarded the American fleet, it had retarded the British as much, if not more. The British had discovered that the Americans were gone as soon as daylight came on Thursday morning, but so slow was the progress of the square-rigged _Inflexible_ against the head-wind that it was not until Friday that the British were able to overtake the Americans. The Americans were at this time just south of the narrow water at Split Rock. Arnold, with the _Congress_ and the _Washington_ and four smaller (three-gun) boats, was guarding the rear, and until noon there was an anxious race to escape to the shelter of Crown Point--anxious because the choice of the British fleet--the uninjured _Inflexible_, with the schooners _Carleton_ and _Maria_--were in the van of the chase, and Arnold’s rowboats were together no match for the least of these. But at noon, while yet some leagues from Crown Point, the tired crews of the flying boats had to drop their sweeps and take to the guns, for the British ships were upon them. The wind had shifted to the north once more, and the British vessels, of course, got it first. No more desperate conflict is recorded in naval annals than that of Arnold that day. At the first broadside of the enemy the shattered _Washington_ was so injured that surrender was unavoidable. Nevertheless Arnold ranged up within musket-shot of the big _Inflexible_ and continued to fight while the farmer crews of the four gondolas stood to their guns and faced the storm of shot and grape from the twelve-gun and fourteen-gun schooners--faced the storm unflinchingly until one-third of Arnold’s crew had been killed, his boat reduced to a wreck, and resistance could no longer damage the enemy.