Putnam and Durkee kept on,
in order to reconnoiter the enemy's main camp at the "Ovens," and in
consequence nearly lost their lives.
Night overtook the two brave partizans before they had reached the
vicinity of the enemy, and when they saw the camp-fires gleaming they
incautiously approached, thinking that the French, like the English,
would be found within the circle. But the French pursued an altogether
different system, and probably the safer one, of building their
camp-fires within and themselves sleeping without the lines, protected
by the darkness of the night. Their sentinels were posted still further
from the center of the main body, so when the two spies approached and,
dropping to their hands and knees, crept cautiously toward the fires,
they had not gone far in this manner before they were discovered and
fired upon.
To their amazement, they then found themselves right in the midst of
the enemy, hemmed in on every side. Lieutenant Durkee was slightly
wounded in the thigh, but he and Putnam immediately rose to their feet
and made the best of their way out into the darkness amid a shower of
bullets, and pursued by the awakened enemy.
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