Andre came on the British ship "Vulture,"
which he left at Croton Point, in Haverstraw Bay. Well," so runs Uncle
Richard's story, "it took a long time to get matters settled; they
'confabbed' till after daybreak. Then Arnold started back to the post
which he had plotted to surrender. But daylight was no time for Andre
to return to the "Vulture," so he hung round waiting for night.
"During that day, some men who were working for James Horton, a farmer
on the ridge overlooking the river, who gave his men good rations of
cider, drank a little too much of the hard stuff. They felt good, and
thought it would be a fine joke to load and fire off an old disabled
cannon which lay a mile or so away on the bank. They hauled it to the
point now called Cockroft Point, propped it up, and then the spirit
of fun--and hard cider--prompted them to train the old piece on the
British ship "Vulture," lying at anchor in the Bay. The "Vulture's"
people must have overestimated the source of the fire, for the ship
dropped down the river, and Andre had to abandon the idea of returning
by that means.
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