up to Brooklyn. Washington hoped and prayed that Howe would try
to carry Brooklyn Heights by assault. Then there would have been
at least slaughter on the scale of Bunker Hill. But Howe had
learned caution. He made no reckless attack, and soon Washington
found that he must move away or face the danger of losing every
man on Long Island.

On the night of the 29th of August there was clear moonlight,
with fog towards daybreak. A British army of twenty-five thousand
men was only some six hundred yards from the American lines. A
few miles from the shore lay at anchor a great British fleet
with, it is to be presumed, its patrols on the alert. Yet, during
that night, ten thousand American troops were marched down to
boats on the strand at Brooklyn and, with all their stores, were
carried across a mile of water to New York. There must have been
the splash of oars and the grating of keels, orders given in
tones above a whisper, the complex sounds of moving bodies of
men. It was all done under the eye of Washington. We can picture
that tall figure moving about on the strand at Brooklyn, which he
was the last to leave. Not a sound disturbed the slumbers of the
British. An army in retreat does not easily defend itself. Boats
from the British fleet might have brought panic to the Americans
in the darkness and the British army should at least have known
that they were gone. By seven in the morning the ten thousand
American soldiers were for the time safe in New York, and we may
suppose that the two Howes were asking eager questions and
wondering how it had all happened.

Washington had shown that he knew when and how to retire. Long
Island was his first battle and he had lost. Now retreat was his