with me; when I had stepped off, I saw him on the edge of the piece, settling down gradually in the water, without making the least exertion to help himself. I seized him by the shoulder, and at one flirt, flung him upon the solid ice. He appeared as light as a bag of feathers. He was very thankful, and said I had saved his life; and I am not quite sure that I did not. After we had got matters regulated again, we must take a sip of their rum with them. They soon got the bung from the hogshead, the only way they had in their power to get at the good creature. We each took a hearty pull at it, for soldiers are seldom backward in such cases. The rum soon began to associate with the cider, and between them, they contrived to cut some queer capers amongst us; for we had not gone far, before one of our corporals hauled up, or rather upset. We laid him upon the sled, and hauled him to the wharf at West point, where we landed. There was a sentry on the wharf, and as we had to go some distance to deliver the clothing to our commanding officer, we left our disabled corporal in the care of the sentry, with a strict charge not to let him stir from the place, for fear that he might blunder off the wharf and break his neck on the ice. We were gone an hour or more. When we returned we found the poor prisoner in a terrible chafe with the sentinel for detaining him, for the guard had been true to his trust. We then released him from his confinement, and he walked with us as well as he could, across the river, to our barracks, where, during the night, he settled his head. If the reader says there was no "suffering of a Revolutionary Soldier" in this affair; I say, perhaps there was not; but there was an "adventure."
The great chain that barred the river at West point had been regularly taken up every autumn, and put down every spring, ever since it had been in use, (that chain which the soldiers used to denominate General Washington's watch chain; every four links of which weighed a ton,) but we heard nothing of its being put down this spring, although some idle fellow would report that it was going to be put down immediately. These simple stories would keep the men in agitation, often for days together, (for the putting down, or the keeping up of the chain, was the criterion by which we were to judge of
