The wind is from the north and the schooner Royal Savage, tucked in behind Valcour Island, tugs at the end of her anchor cable. She is the flagship of the American fleet on Lake Champlain, one of fifteen small vessels anchored in line between the island and the western shore of the lake.

Benedict Arnold stands on the quarterdeck, a boat cloak all but covering the blue-and-buff regimental coat he wears underneath. Of middling height, stout and muscular, his dark hair bound in a queue, Arnold is very much a man in command.

Arnold is an officer in the United States army, a Brigadier General. He is now also Commodore of the Lake Champlain fleet, a grand-sounding title for the commander of that odd assortment of vessels.

The wind is brisk, kicking up a short chop on the open waters of Lake Champlain and setting the tail of Arnold’s cloak slapping against his legs. The early-morning sun is low in the southeast, its light hard and sharp, leaving the eastern shore of the lake in shadow, and the long line of the Green Mountains beyond sharply etched against the pale blue sky.

The western shore of Valcour Island is also in shadow, but on the New York side of the lake the sunlight falls on the late autumn foliage, the reds and yellows of the birch, beech, and maple, alight in a blaze of color. Great tracks of virgin forest, spruce and fir, stretch away west toward the Adirondack Mountains, which just that morning the men woke to find capped with the winter’s first snow.

But Arnold is not looking at the scenery. The fleet has not shifted anchor in two and a half weeks, and there is nothing on shore that he has not seen already. Rather, his attention is fixed on the guard boat, which he sent out into the open lake just two hours before, tacking against the north wind, beating back to rejoin the fleet.

He looks out over the vessels under his command, a mix of galleys and gondolas, a schooner, and a sloop. The vessels are not nearly as well-armed, well-manned, or numerous as he had hoped they would be, but there is nothing more he can do. Shifting his gaze southward over the schooner’s rail, Arnold can see miles up the lake, toward Fort Ticonderoga and Mount Independence. There the outnumbered and poorly equipped Northern Army of the United States is dug in, waiting for the British hammer blow from the north.

Most of the American soldiers around Lake Champlain consider theirs to be a powerful naval force, superior to the British fleet just completed at the north end of the lake. Benedict Arnold is not so sanguine, and as a former ship’s captain he has a better understanding of such things than do the landsmen who make up the Northern Army.

The enemy’s fleet, Arnold knows, will be formidable. It has behind it the full resources of the British navy, while Arnold himself has spent the past months begging for the most basic supplies; gunpowder, shot, sailcloth, and rope to fit out the vessels he has. The British fleet will be manned by picked men from the British men-of-war on the St. Lawrence River. They are perhaps the finest seamen in the world. As to the "sailors" in his own fleet had, Arnold wrote days before that "few of them were ever wet with salt water."

But Arnold has shaped them, through training and discipline, and has reason to hope that they will give a good account of themselves. Now, under his exacting and critical gaze, the men go about their morning routines, stowing away what bedding they have, clearing the decks for the day’s work.

The vessels offer little in the way of shelter, particularly the gondolas, which are little more than big open boats. Discomfort has turned to suffering in the increasingly bitter weather and the violent storms that lash the fleet. The men have lived for months aboard the vessels, with their clothes in rags, and with no coats, gloves or socks to defend against the cold. Seeking shelter ashore is far too dangerous. The woods are filled with British troops and their Indian allies, a lesson learned the hard way, at the cost of men’s lives.

As the guard boat closes with the anchored fleet, a flash and a gray puff of smoke shoots from the muzzle of the swivel gun on its bow, followed a second or two later by the flat report of the gun. It is the prearranged alarm signal and it can only mean one thing. Today is the day. The British fleet is out.

A long and brutal eighteen months of fighting has brought Arnold to that place. A year before on that very day, he and his men were struggling to drag bateaux and supplies over the Great Carrying Place in the wilderness of northern Maine, deep into their march to Quebec. Since then, he has seen the heady days when the conquest of Canada seemed within the grasp of the United Colonies, and then the nightmare spring when his sick, starving, utterly defeated men were driven from Canada by the Redcoats and the Hessian mercenaries, as if the entire Northern Army of the United Colonies was no more than a poorly trained local militia.

That army has seen a long procession of general officers during the Canadian campaign, Philip Schuyler, Richard Montgomery, David Wooster, John Thomas, Arthur St. Clair, John Sullivan, and now Horatio Gates, but no other general has served as long or has been as deeply involved in the fighting as Arnold. Other officers have taken time to travel to Philadelphia and woo members of Congress, but Arnold has not left the front lines for a year and a half.

In truth, by October of 1776, there are not many officers anywhere in the Continental Army who have seen as much hard campaigning as Benedict Arnold.

The guard boat comes about on its final tack and stands in for the Royal Savage, drawing alongside the flagship. The officer in the sternsheets shouts up to the quarterdeck the news that Arnold is expecting. For days the wind has been out of the south, holding the British fleet at bay. Now it has come around out of the north, and six sail of the enemy have been seen weathering Cumberland Head and standing southward up the lake.

Arnold issues orders for the fleet to make ready for the fight. He dispatches scouts to the north end of Valcour Island to keep an eye on the approaching enemy. He passes the word for his senior officers, Brigadier General David Waterbury, second in command, and Colonel Edward Wigglesworth, third, to repair aboard the Royal Savage for a council of war.

In an instant the quiet anchorage at Valcour Island becomes a whirl of sound and activity. The gondolas are cleared for action: the awnings which offer some shelter to the men aboard are rolled back, the powder cartridges are passed along to the gunners and rammed down the barrels of the 9- and 12-pounder cannon, buckets of water are set out, and lengths of slow match are wound around linstocks and lit, ready to set off the fine priming powder in the guns’ touch holes.

On board the galleys, sand is spread on the decks for greater traction, while rammers, worms and sponges are laid along and muskets charged and primed. The 18-, 12-, and 9-pounder guns on the broadsides are hauled inboard for loading, their wooden wheels screeching under the weight of the barrels. The rudimentary officers’ quarters under each quarterdeck are broken down and stowed away to make room for working the guns, the only thing that will matter this day.

On board the sloop Enterprise, which will serve as a hospital ship, Dr. Stephen MaCrea ties on his apron, clears a space, and lays out his scalpels and forceps, his probes, retractors, amputation knives, and bone saws. His work will take place in the dim-lit ‘tween decks, on a moving platform, with British round shot pounding the ship.

On the quarterdeck of the Savage, Arnold confers with Waterbury and Wigglesworth on how the enemy should be met. Arnold has long planned for this moment, positioning his fleet so that the British will have to make a difficult up-wind approach under American gunfire.

Waterbury, however, does not agree with Arnold’s battle plan and says so. The second in command fears being trapped in Valcour Bay, and wants instead to sally forth and meet the British on open water. Arnold listens to Waterbury’s objections, then overrules him. The Commodore does not lack confidence in his own decisions.

Arnold orders the Royal Savage and the galleys Congress, Washington and Trumbull to get underway, to show themselves to the enemy. There is a chance that the British will sail right past Valcour Island and never see the American fleet there. Arnold does not want that to happen. He does not want to chase the British fleet up the lake, he wants them to come and fight on his terms.

He orders Wigglesworth to take one of the yawl boats and beat up to the north end of Valcour Island to augment the shore lookout observing the enemy’s advance. It is 9:30 in the morning.

Arnold himself leaves the Royal Savage, transferring his flag to the galley Congress. Savage is the roomiest ship in the fleet, the most comfortable for living aboard and conducting the business of commodore, but she is not the best fighting vessel. Congress boasts far more firepower than the schooner’s unimpressive six 6-pounder guns. Royal Savage has already proven herself to be a poor sailor, while Congress, with her lateen rig and ability to move under oar, is far more maneuverable.

Still, Arnold intends to return to Royal Savage after the battle. He leaves all of his personal effects, including his papers, in the schooner’s great cabin.

The men on board the galleys and the schooner heave at handspikes thrust into anchor windlasses, and with a steady click, click, click of the pawls the dripping anchor cables are hove in and snaked down into the holds below. Soon the four vessels are underway, sailing a beam reach around the southern end of Valcour Island.

As the island slides past their larboard sides, the northern end of the lake opens up to them, and Arnold catches his first sight of the British fleet, about eight miles to windward. There is a sense of culmination in this moment, as if the curtain is opening on the final act of the past half year’s drama. This will be the climactic scene, his fleet contending with the British for mastery of Lake Champlain.

But Arnold knows, as does Guy Carleton, the Governor of Quebec and commander of the British forces, that there is far more at stake than possession of a single lake in the barely settled north woods. Champlain leads to Lake George, and from the south end of Lake George, an easy march would take an invading British army to the Hudson River and Albany. From Albany the Hudson runs straight and deep all the way south to New York City and the Atlantic Ocean.

Even now, a combined force of British and Hessian troops, thirty thousand strong, the largest army ever assembled on North American soil, holds the southern end of the Hudson River at New York City. Arnold knows that more than a month earlier a major battle was fought on Long Island. He knows that Washington’s army has suffered a defeat, but the details have still not reached the northern outposts. Four day ago, Arnold wrote, "the Affair of long Island, seems, still in Obscurity - I am Very Anxious for Our Army, & Friends."

The details might remain vague, but the danger is clear. A British army invading south from Canada could link up with a British army marching north from New York. Meeting at Albany, they would cut the country (just that year dubbed the United States) in two.

In fact, that invasion, spearheaded by the British fleet to the north and a naval expedition up the Hudson from New York, has already begun. Benedict Arnold understands that holding Lake Champlain is crucial to holding the States together, that the outcome of today’s fight could well determine the outcome of the entire war.

General Gates’s orders to Arnold are not about defending one lake. Rather, Gates has called on Arnold for the "judicious Defense of the Northern Entrance into this side of the Continent... I doubt not you will secure it from further Invasion."

Chafing at the in-fighting and ineptitude he has witnessed in the army and in the Continental Congress, Arnold has had reason at times to wonder about the dedication of his countrymen to the cause he has so wholly embraced. Just days ago he wrote to Gates, "is It possible my Country Men can be, callous to their wrongs, or hesitate one moment, between Slavery, or Death...".

The man who will be infamous for betraying his country is at this moment as dedicated to the cause of independence as any man who will ever wear the Continental uniform.

The northerly wind makes Congress heel to starboard as she stands across the lake, taking the chop on her larboard quarter. Arnold positions himself at the weather rail of the quarterdeck. He looks north, facing into the breeze. The sails of an enemy fleet more powerful than his own are spread over the northern horizon. The British are running down on them, cleared for action, guns loaded and ready to run out, their well-trained and disciplined crews standing ready at quarters.

It will not be long now. Within hours, Arnold knows, he will once again be fighting for his life, for his men, for the liberty of the country he loves.