asked Ned.

"Yes, indeed! But our men were brave and persevering fellows; Wayne,
their leader, believed in the old saying 'Where there's a will there's
a way.' He practiced upon that, and in consequence was very
successful. He was so rapid and earnest in what he did that people
took to calling him 'Mad Anthony Wayne.'

"Now, he resolved to storm this fort at all hazards, as Lossing says,
and only waited for the ebbing of the tide and the deep first slumber
of the garrison.

"At half-past eleven o'clock that night the Americans began a silent
march toward the fort. Two strong men disguised as farmers, and the
negro Pompey, went first. There was no barking of dogs to arouse the
garrison, for they had all been killed--all in that neighborhood--the
day before. Pompey gave the countersign to the first sentinel on the
high ground west of the morass, then the two disguised men suddenly
seized and gagged him. The same thing was done with the sentinel at
the causeway. Then, as soon as the tide ebbed sufficiently, the
greater part of Wayne's little army crossed the morass at the foot of
the western declivity of the promontory, no one among the enemy
observing them. Three hundred men under General Muhlenburg remained as
a reserve in the rear. The troops were divided into two columns--all
with unloaded muskets and fixed bayonets. At a little past midnight
the advance parties moved silently to the charge, one on the northern
and the other on the southern part of the height. The two main
divisions followed them, one led by Wayne himself. The Americans were
not discovered by the British until they were within pistol shot of
the pickets on the heights, when a skirmish took place between the
advance guards and the sentinels.

"The Americans used only their bayonets, as they had been ordered, but
the pickets fired several shots; and those sounds of strife waked the
garrison, and the silence of the night was broken by the loud cry 'To
arms! to arms!' the roll of the drum, the rattle of musketry from the
ramparts and the abatis, and the roar of the cannon, charged with
deadly grapeshot, from the embrasures. It was a terrible storm, but
our brave fellows forced their way through it--through every
obstacle--until the vans of all the columns met in the centre of the
works, where they arrived at the same time. Each of our men had a
white paper in his hat which, as it could be seen in the dim light,
enabled him to distinguish friend from f