garrisons watching each other
and the winter through in Fort Carillon or Fort William Henry.

"The world's great age begins anew." . . . It begins anew, and
hourly, wherever hearts are high and youth sets out with bright eyes
to meet his fate. It began anew for Ensign John a Cleeve on this
morning of July 5, 1758; it was sounded up by bugles, shattering the
forest silence; it breathed in the wind of the boat's speed shaking
the silken flag above him. His was one of twelve hundred boats
spreading like brilliant water-fowl across the lake which stretched
for thirty miles ahead, gay with British uniforms, scarlet and gold,
with Highland tartans, with the blue jackets of the Provincials;
flash of oars, innumerable glints of steel, of epaulettes, of belt,
cross-belt and badge; gilt knops and tassels and sheen of flags.
Yonder went Blakeney's 27th Regiment, and yonder the Highlanders of
the Black Watch; Abercromby's 44th, Howe's 55th with their idolised
young commander, the 60th or Royal Americans in two battalions;
Gage's Light Infantry, Bradstreet's axemen and bateau-men, Starke's
rangers; a few friendly Indians--but the great Johnson was hurrying
up with more, maybe with five hundred; in all fifteen thousand men
and over. Never had America seen such an armament; and it went to
take a fort from three thousand Frenchmen.

No need to cover so triumphant an advance in silence! Why should not
the regimental bands strike up? For what else had we dragged them up
the Hudson from Albany and across the fourteen-mile portage to the
lake? Weary work with a big drum in so much brushwood! And play
they did, as the flotilla pushed forth and spread and left the
stockades far behind; stockades planted on the scene of last year's
massacre. Though for weeks before our arrival Bradstreet and his men
had been clearing and building, sights remained to nerve our arms and
set our blood boiling to the cry "Remember Fort William Henry!"
Its shores fade, and somewhere at the foot of the lake three thousand
Frenchmen are waiting for us (if indeed they dare to wait). Let the
bands play "Britons strike home!"

Play they did: drums tunding and bagpipes skirling as though Fort
Carillon (or Ticonderoga, as the Indians called it) would succumb
like another Jericho to their clamour. The Green Mountains tossed
its echoes to the Adirondacks, and the Adirondacks flung it back; and
under it, down the blue waterway toward the Narrows, went Ensign J