The oarsmen bent to their task and the barge swept on by the forts.  A Yankee sloop overhauled and surveyed them.  If its skipper had entertained suspicions they were dissipated by the presence of Solomon Binkus in the barge.

They came up to The Vulture and made fast at its landing stage where an officer waited to receive the General.  The latter ascended to the deck.  In a moment a voice called from above: 

“General Arnold’s boatmen may come aboard.”

A British war-ship was a thing of great interest to Solomon.  Once aboard he began to look about him at the shining guns and their gear and the tackle and the men.  He looked for Arnold, but he was not in sight.

Among the crew then busy on the deck, Solomon saw the Tory desperado “Slops,” one time of the Ohio River country, with his black pipe in his mouth.  Slops paused in his hauling and reeving to shake a fist at Solomon.  They were heaving the anchor.  The sails were running up.  The ship had begun to move.  What was the meaning of this?  Solomon stepped to the ship’s side.  The stair had been hove up and made fast.  The barge was not to be seen.

“They will put you all ashore below,” an officer said to him.

Solomon knew too much about Arnold to like the look of this.  The officer went forward.  Solomon stepped to the opening in the deck rail, not yet closed, through which he had come aboard.  While he was looking down at the water, some ten feet below, a group of sailors came to fill in.  His arm was roughly seized.  Solomon stepped back.  Before him stood the man Slops.  An insulting word from the latter, a quick blow from Solomon, and Slops went through the gate out into the air and downward.  The scout knew it was no time to tarry.

“A night hawk couldn’t dive no quicker ner what I done,” were his words to the men who picked him up.  He was speaking of that half second of the twenty-fourth of September, 1780.  His brief account of it was carefully put down by an officer:  “I struck not twenty feet from Slops, which I seen him jes’ comin’ up when I took water.  This ‘ere ol’ sloop that had overhauled us goin’ down were nigh.  Hadn’t no more’n come up than I felt Slops’ knife rip into my leg.  I never had no practise in that ’ere knife work.  ‘Tain’t fer decent folks, but my ol’ Dan Skinner is allus on my belt.  He’d chose the weapons an’ so I fetched ’er out.  Had to er die.  We fit a minnit thar in the water.  All the while he had that damn black pipe in his mouth.  I were hacked up a leetle, but he got a big leak in him an’ all of a sudden he wasn’t thar.  He’d gone.  I struck out with ol’ Dan Skinner ’twixt my teeth.  Then I see your line and grabbed it.  Whar’s the British ship now?”

“‘Way below Stony P’int an’ a fair wind in her sails,’ the skipper answered.

“Bound fer New York,” said Solomon sorrowfully.  “They’d ‘a’ took me with ’em if I hadn’t ‘a’ jumped.  Put me over to Jasper’s dock.  I got to see Washington quick.”