And now am I minded to hasten over the events of this night, even though in all the time I have lived I can recall nothing more stirring and like to warm the blood of those who have the good of the Cause at heart. If I spend the time necessary to the story, then must I leave untold the details of our next encounter with Luther Stedman, therefore it is that I will set down here what I saw printed a long while after that eventful night, for we who called ourselves Minute Boys, our prisoner, Seth Hartley, and James Martin, the wounded soldier, had no other part in all the dangerous enterprise than to keep the sloop moving from shore to shore as rapidly as possible. By setting down here the words of another, as I did while telling the soldier’s story, we shall come to the part we lads played, all the more quickly, and he who does not care to read may pass it over, if, peradventure, the doings of my comrades and myself are more pleasing. “With twenty thousand men the English advanced on the American position by different roads, and in the early morning of August 27th, they encountered the Americans whom Putnam had sent out under Sullivan, who had taken the place of Greene, owing to the illness of the latter. “Sullivan was first attacked by a large body of Hessians under Von Heister, and scarcely had the fight begun when he was assailed in the rear by the main force. Between two galling fires, it was not possible for the Americans to hold their ground, and nearly the whole force, including the commander, were made prisoners of war. “Another division of fifteen hundred American troops, under Lord Stirling, was now assaulted by General Grant, and a little later by Cornwallis. After four hours of desperate resistance, Stirling succeeded in getting his men across a marshy stream to a plate of safety, while he himself was taken prisoner, and the struggle known as the Battle of Long Island was over. About four hundred had been killed and wounded on each side, and the British had taken some eleven hundred prisoners. “An evacuation of Long Island, and a retreat to New York, was the resolve of a council of war. The fog still rested heavily upon the island, the harbor, and the adjacent city, like a shield of the Almighty to cover the patriots from the peril of discovery. Although lying within a few hundred yards of the American lines, the enemy had no suspicion of the movement. “At eight o’clock in the evening the patriot regiments were silently paraded, the soldiers ignorant of the intent; but, owing to delay on account of unfavorable wind, and some confusion in orders, it was near midnight when the embarkation commenced at the ferry stairs, foot of Fulton Street, Brooklyn. For six hours soldiers and volunteers plied their muffled oars, and boat after boat, filled with the champions of freedom, touched at the various wharves from Fulton ferry to Whitehall, and left their precious burdens.