The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 6.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[385] One man got his family into a boat to go to Ram Island for safety. He imagined he was pursued by the enemy through the dusk of the evening, and was annoyed by the crying of an infant in the after part of the boat. ‘Do throw that squalling brat overboard,’ he called to his wife, ‘or we shall be all discovered and killed!’ A poor woman ran four or five miles up the river, and stopped to take breath and nurse her child, when she found to her great horror that she had brought off the cat instead of the baby!

All through that memorable night the terror swept onward towards the north with a speed which seems almost miraculous, producing everywhere the same results. At midnight a horseman, clad only in shirt and breeches, dashed by our grandfather's door, in Haverhill, twenty miles up the river. ‘Turn out! Get a musket! Turn out!’ he shouted; ‘the regulars are landing on Plum Island!’ ‘I'm glad of it,’ responded the old gentleman from his chamber window; ‘I wish they were all there, and obliged to stay there.’ When it is understood that Plum Island is little more than a naked sand-ridge, the benevolence of this wish can be readily appreciated.

All the boats on the river were constantly employed for several hours in conveying across the terrified fugitives. Through ‘the dead waste and middle of the night’ they fled over the border into New Hampshire. Some feared to take the frequented roads, and wandered over wooded hills and through swamps where the snows of the late winter had scarcely melted. They heard the tramp