Still hoping to be relieved from New York, the army, now reduced to 3,500 effective men, of whom not 2,000 were British, lingered in their camp, where they lay always under arms, with the grape and rifle shot of the enemy falling continually around them. On the 13th they had only three days' provision remaining. A council of war was therefore held, to which General Burgoyne summoned all the principal officers. Mr. Pellew attended, as commander of the brigade of seamen; and a more decisive testimony to his merits and services could not be afforded, than the unprecedented compliment of calling a midshipman, only twenty years of age, to sit in council with generals. Mr. Pellew, as the youngest officer present, was required to offer his opinion the first. He pleaded earnestly that his own little party might not be included in the proposed capitulation, but permitted to make the best of their way back. He had never heard, he said, of sailors capitulating, and was confident he could bring them off. It is very possible that they might have escaped. Soldiers are accustomed to act only in orderly masses; but sailors combine with discipline the energy of individual enterprise. Mr. Pellew's party had acted as pioneers and artificers to the army during its advance; and their knowledge, and readiness at resources, would have given them great facilities in making their way through a hostile country. But their escape would have cast a very undeserved discredit upon the army, and the proposal was discountenanced. Burgoyne said, what sailors could do, soldiers might do; and if the attempt were sanctioned for the one, the others must throw away their knapsacks and take their firelocks. As Mr. Pellew still clung to his proposal, the General took him aside, and having represented the impossibility of drawing off the army, convinced him of the impropriety of permitting the attempt by a small part of it. The result of the council was a communication to General Gates, who, knowing the desperate condition of the British army, and his own irresistible superiority, must have been surprised at the gallant spirit manifested in its hopeless extremity. When he observed that the retreat of the British was cut off, he was told that the British could never admit that their retreat was cut off while they had arms in their hands; and to his proposal that the troops should pile arms within their camp, it was replied, that sooner than submit to such an indignity, they would rush on the enemy determined to take no quarter. Terms proposed by General Burgoyne were finally acquiesced in; and the American commander, as far as _he_ was concerned, faithfully observed and enforced them with the most considerate delicacy.