vements among the British troops were reported by
all the scouts, but the enemy's designs could not be penetrated.

CHAPTER VI

A PERILOUS SERVICE

Writing of these events afterward, Captain Hull said, "It was evident
that the superior force of the British would soon give them possession
of New York. The Commander-in-chief, therefore, took a position at Fort
Washington at the other end of the island. To ascertain the further
object of the enemy was now a subject of anxious inquiry with General
Washington."

In a letter to General Heath at this crisis Washington wrote as follows:
"As everything in a manner depends upon obtaining intelligence of the
enemy's motions, I do most earnestly entreat you and General Clinton to
exert yourselves to accomplish this most desirable end. Leave no stone
unturned, nor do not stick at expense, to bring this to pass, as I never
was more uneasy than on account of my want of knowledge on this score."

Johnston, in his valuable "Life of Nathan Hale," says: "If he
[Washington] had been anxious to fathom Howe's plans before the latter
began the campaign from Staten Island, he was infinitely more so now.
It was not enough to keep a ceaseless watch across the East river....
Like every other commander in history, all through the contest he came
to depend much on intelligence gained through the 'secret service.'"

Stuart, the earliest reliable biographer of Hale, in writing of spies
says: "The exigency of the American army which we have just described,
would not permit the employment, in the service proposed, of any
ordinary soldier, unpracticed in military observation and without skill
as a draughtsman,--least of all of the common mercenary, to whom,
allured by the hope of a large reward, such tasks are usually assigned.
Accurate estimates of the numbers of the enemy, of their distribution,
of the form and position of their various encampments, of their
marchings and countermarchings, of the concentration at one point or
another, of the instruments of war, but more than all of their plan of
attack, as derived from the open report or the unguarded whispers in
camp of officers or men,--estimates of all these things, requiring a
quick eye, a cool head, a practical pencil, military science, general
intelligence, and pliable address, were to be made. The common soldier
would not answer the purpose, and the mercenary might yield to the
higher seductions of the enemy, and betray his employ