Page:Tomlinson--The rider of the black horse.djvu/142

126 too strong ever to be taken. His confidence, however, had been somewhat lessened by his increased experience, and now he was also well aware of the fears of the leaders that the militia with which the little forts in the region were manned might not be able to offer a very sturdy or prolonged resistance to a determined onslaught by the redcoats. He knew also of the current belief that, after the experience of the British at Bunker Hill, they would not attempt, even by the bayonet, as they had done there, to dislodge the Americans if they were intrenched in the heights above them; but the reverses of the preceding year, when the farmers and farmers' boys had fled from before the well-disciplined redcoats in the fight on Long Island, in New York, in Harlem, the bloody defeat at Fort Washington and the wild flight from Fort Lee, had not been forgotten. It was true that the skill and energy of Washington had turned apparent defeat into victory at Trenton and Princeton; but even the enthusiasm aroused by these events had in a measure been forgotten in the face of the perils that were threatening in the summer of 1777.

Across the Hudson, in its narrow channels near the fort he was seeking, he was aware that