148 JUSTIN MORGAN 



Commodore Macdonough's fleet was anchored off 

 Plattsburg with fourteen vessels and eighty-six guns. 

 On shore could be heard from the deck of his flagship, 

 ''Saratoga," the Commodore giving orders, in that cool, 

 calm voice — so loved by Decatur and Bainbridge — the 

 voice that indicated at once courage, humanity and con- 

 fidence. Nor were these qualities at all disturbed by the 

 rumor that a ''host was advancing down the lake to 

 crush the Yankees !" 



The "host" was Captain George Downie, on his flag- 

 ship, "Confiance," with a flotilla of sixteen vessels carry- 

 ing ninety-two guns. 



It was now the eve of a great naval engagement — the 

 tenth of September, eighteen hundred and fourteen — the 

 story of which has been told over and over for genera- 

 tions. 



Near Captain Dulaney's headquarters, Morgan slept 

 little that night ; across the lake Burlington throbbed 

 with flaring lights, and the town about him was wide 

 awake. He dreamed waking dreams of his ancestor, 

 the Turk, ridden by Captain Byerly, in King William's 

 wars, one hundred and twenty-five years before — the 

 Byerly Turk, he was called — who had seen the glories 

 of Londonderry and Enniskillan. 



Of another ancestor, too, he dreamed, the White 

 Turk, ridden by Oliver Cromwell ; and now he, Mor- 

 gan, was taking part in a war under the saddle of his 

 Lady's soldier — for this reason an even greater person- 

 age than Captain Byerly or Oliver Cromwell ! 



Long before dawn on the eleventh, his owner rode 

 him out to watch the maneuvers on the lake from an 

 eminence, for it now seemed that Morgan was not to 

 take an active part in this battle. 



Commodore Macdonough had drawn his fleet up in 

 two lines, forty yards apart, and as daylight came, and 



