Down went Abijah’s head, the cover was tightly screwed into place, and the machine was towed out into the channel and cast loose.  Away it floated towards the British fleet, which lay well up in the Narrows.  The officers made their way to the Battery, where they waited in much suspense the result of the enterprise.

An hour slowly moved by.  Morning broke.  The rim of the sun lifted over the distant waters.  Yet the “Eagle” still rode unharmed.  Something surely had happened.  The torpedo had failed.  Possibly the venturesome Abijah was reposing in his stranded machine on the bottom of the bay.  Putnam anxiously swept the waters in the vicinity of the “Eagle” with his glass.  Suddenly he exclaimed, “There he is!” The top of the “Turtle” had just emerged, in a little bay a short distance to the left of Howe’s flag-ship.

It was seen as quickly by the sentinels on the “Eagle,” who fired at the strange aquatic monster with such good aim that Abijah popped under the water as hastily as he had emerged from it.  On board the “Eagle” confusion evidently prevailed.  This strange contrivance had apparently filled the mariners with alarm.  There were signs of a hasty effort to get under weigh, and wings were added to this haste when a violent explosion took place in the immediate vicinity of the fleet, hurling up great volumes of water into the air.  The machine had been set to run an hour, and had duly gone off at its proper time, but, for some reason yet to be explained, not under the “Eagle.”  The whole fleet was not long in getting up its anchors, setting sail, and scurrying down the bay to a safer abiding-place below.  And here they lay until the day of the battle of Long Island, not venturing again within reach of that naval nondescript.

As for the “Turtle,” boats at once set out to Abijah’s relief and he was taken off in the vicinity of Governor’s Island.  On landing and being questioned, he gave, in his own odd way, the reasons of his failure.

“Just as I said, gen’ral,” he remarked “it all failed for the want of that cud of tobacco.  You see, I am narvous without tobacco.  I got under the ‘Eagle’s’ bottom, but somehow the screw struck the iron bar that passes from the rudder pintle, and wouldn’t hold on anyhow I could fix it.  Just then I let go the oar to feel for a cud, to steady my narves, and I hadn’t any.  The tide swept me under her counter, and away I slipped top o’ water.  I couldn’t manage to get back, so I pulled the lock and let the thunder-box slide.  That’s what comes of sailin’ short of supplies.  Say, can’t you raise a cud among you now?”

There is another interesting story to tell, in connection with the British occupation of New York, which may be fitly given here.  The battle of Long Island had been fought.  The American forces had been safely withdrawn.  Washington had moved the main body of his army, with the bulk of the stores, from the city, leaving General Putnam behind, in command of the rear-guard.