Edward Ellis - The Boy Patrol Around the Council Fire

“In May, 1776, he became captain of a company of Continental Rangers attached to Lieutenant-Colonel Knowlton’s regiment, called ‘Congress’ Own.’ The young officer’s company was the best drilled and disciplined of all. Little is known of his actions during those eventful days, but it cannot be doubted that he did his duty well. Illness kept him in New York at the time the British invaded Long Island, and still weak and pale, he joined the troops who retreated toward Harlem Heights early in September.

“This brings me back to the day when Lieutenant-Colonel Knowlton walked into the quarters of General Washington and introduced Captain Hale as the officer who had volunteered to serve him as a spy. The commander looked admiringly into the blue eyes of the handsome young athlete and took his hand. The great man was moved and feelingly thanked him for the inestimable service he hoped he would render his country. He saw without questioning that Hale was the ideal actor for so perilous a rôle. He gave him minute instructions, with a written order to the owners of all American vessels in Long Island Sound to take him to any point on Long Island where he might wish to go.

“Captain Hale left camp the same evening. He took with him Sergeant Stephen Hempstead, a member of his company, who was devoted to the officer, and a servant, Ansel Wright. They had to walk fifty miles to Norwalk before they found a safe place to cross the Sound, because of the British cruisers that were ever moving to and fro. At this place, Hale took off his regimentals and donned a brown cloth suit and a broad-brimmed hat. He assumed the character of a Quaker school teacher, who had wearied of the society of the rebels in New York and had started out to find a situation among more congenial folk.

“The captain instructed his companions to wait at Norwalk until the 20th, upon which day he expected to come back. They were to send a boat for him on that morning. He left with them his uniform, his commission and all other papers that might betray his identity. He crossed the Sound in a sloop and went ashore on the point of Great Neck in Huntingdon Bay, being rowed thither in a yawl. He landed near a place called ‘The Cedars,’ not far from a tavern kept by a widow named Chichester. She was a spiteful Tory and the inn was a lounging place for those of her neighbors who were of the same mind. In the gray light of early morning Hale walked past without being noticed. A mile beyond, he stopped at the farm house of William Johnson, and obtained breakfast and a bed for several hours’ rest. Thence he went directly into the nearest British lines, where he was received without suspicion. He was gone for about two weeks, but what he did, where he went, what adventures befell him and the various means he used to escape detection can never be known. It is certain that he visited all the enemy’s encampments near Brooklyn and twice passed their lines. He made drawings and notes of what he saw and learned; he went from Brooklyn, then only a ferry station, to New York City, which the British captured after his departure, and was equally thorough in every place. The drawings and memoranda, the latter written in Latin, were hidden under the loose inner soles of his shoes.

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