The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [64]
“I cannot die . . . Do sir, pray for me. Will you not send for my mother? If she were here to nurse me I could get well. Oh, my mother. How I wish I could see her. She was opposed to my enlisting. I am now very sorry. Do let her know that I am sorry,” the boy pleaded with the minister and then, later that night, expired.
One thing that both Beebe and Robbins noticed was that substantially more soldiers turned out for the evening prayer service as the number of dying increased. Perhaps they were seeking God’s protection. Robbins did not know, but he began to offer longer and stronger sermons. He asked the drummers to build his ten foot high platform with their instruments each evening and preached from the platform on top of them to ever larger congregations. Now, too, the minister noticed, his sermons in the evening attracted civilians who lived nearby, as well as the enlisted men and officers. The men not only listened to his readings from the Bible and his sermon, but joined in the loud and exuberant singing of rousing hymns, with a fifer and drummer adding music, as the torches burned around them on the parade ground and the moon rose over Fort Ticonderoga.
Robbins’s exhilaration was limited, though, because the garrison was hit with a succession of bad news. First, Washington’s forces had suffered a terrible defeat on Long Island, New York, during the last week of August. Second, the British army, thousands strong, had begun a march toward Ticonderoga.
Worst of all, Benedict Arnold’s navy had been defeated. The British had beaten Arnold’s hastily created sea force in a battle that commenced near Valcour Island at the northern tip of Lake Champlain on October 11 and lasted three days. The British sunk or disabled eleven of the sixteen ships, killing eighty or more of Arnold’s men and taking more than one hundred prisoners in a sea battle that continued thirty miles southward on the lake. Arnold and the rest of his men abandoned their ships, burned them, and escaped to Crown Point. Fearful of being destroyed there by a much larger British force, Arnold had the fort burned and the men headed south again, toward Ticonderoga. Arnold wrote to his superior, General Schuyler, that he was happy to be alive. “On the whole, I think we have had a very fortunate escape and have great reason to return our humble and hearty thanks to Almighty God for preserving and delivering so many of us from our more than savage enemies.”4
Finally, on October 15, 1776, the men from Arnold’s battered navy arrived in terrible condition. Arnold was satisfied that his fleet had inflicted enough damage to several of the British warships to force their repair. But he was exasperated by the losses of his ships and men. Through sheer coincidence, Robbins and Arnold met at the hospital, where the minister was offering comfort to Arnold’s men who fought in the lake engagement. The angry Arnold told Robbins to join a company of wounded men that he was sending to Fort George in the morning; Arnold decided that in addition to medical assistance, they needed all of the heavenly help they could obtain. Robbins agreed, but reluctantly. Face to face with the very insistent general, he had no choice.
The trip to Fort George, at the southern end of Lake George, nearly cost the reverend his life, and the lives of all the men in his boat. There was little breeze and the men were forced to row. The lake was smaller than Champlain and, closer to the shore, they had the opportunity to look out from the boat at the gorgeous scenery that surrounded them. Autumn had arrived in upstate New York. The green leaves on the hundreds of thousands of trees that the soldiers could see on shore had changed to their customary fall colors of red, orange, and yellow. This rainbow of turning leaves gave the woods a painter’s palette of vivid color. They had pulled on their oars hard all morning, their hands callused from dragging them through the waters of the lake, but the uncertain weather of Lake George struck hard in the