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“Steady, steady now,” cried the young captain. His mate was steady at the helm until a musket ball or two ran past them.

“Let go!” shouted the captain. “Swing your bonnet. Let them know you’re a woman and they won’t fire on you.”

The little mate stood erect. She waved her pink flag of a sun-bonnet. Distinctly the soldiers saw the pink frock of Anna Kull; they saw her long hair as the sea breeze lifted it when she shook her pink banner.

A second, two, three went by as the girl stood there, and then a flash was seen on the bank, a musket-ball ran through the bonnet of the little mate, and the waves of air rattled along the shore.

The bonnet was in the sea; Anna had dropped to her seat and caught the helm in her left hand.

“Cowards!” cried Valentine, for want of a stronger word, and then he fell to working the boat on its way. The tide helped them now; it swung the boat over toward the Jersey shore.

The firing from Staten Island called out the inhabitants on the Jersey coast. They watched the approaching boat with interest. Everything depended now on the cow’s lying still, on the boy’s strength, on the meeting of the tides. If he could reach there before the tide came up all would be well; otherwise it would sweep him off again toward the island.

“Can’t you row?” asked Valentine, at length.

“Bub, I can’t,” said Anna, her voice shaking out the words. It was the first time she had spoken since she sat down.

“Are you hurt?” he questioned.

“I tremble so,” she answered, and turned her face away.

“I reckon we’d better help that boy in,” said a Jersey fisherman as he watched, and he put off in a small boat.

“Don’t come near! Keep off! keep off!” called Valentine, as he saw him approach. “I’ve a cow in here.”

The fisherman threw him a rope, and that rope saved them. The dewy smell of the grassy banks had aroused the cow. She was stirring.

The land was very near now; close at hand. “Hurry! hurry!” urged the lad, as they were drawing him in. Before the cow had time to rise, the boat touched land.

“You’d better look after that girl,” said the fisherman, who had towed the boat. The poor child was holding, fast wrapped in the remnants of her pink frock, her bleeding hand. The musket ball that shot away her bonnet grazed her wrist.

“Never mind me,” she said, when they were pitying her. “The cow is safe.”

The same evening, while, in Philadelphia, bonfires were blazing, bells ringing, cannon booming, because, that day, a new nation was born; over Staten Island Sound, by the light of the moon, strong-armed men were ferrying home the girl and the boy, who that day had fought a good fight and gained the victory.

At home, in the Kull cottage, the mother waited long for the coming of the children. She said; “Poor young things! Mine own children –they shall have a nice supper.” She made it ready and they were not come.

Farmer Rycker’s wife and daughter came over to tell and hear the news, and yet they were not come.

Sundown. No children. The Kull father came up from his fishing and heard the story.

“The Red Coats have taken them,” he said, and down came the musket from against the wall, and out the father marched and made straightway for the headquarters of General Howe, over at the present “Quarantine.”

Then the mother, left alone in the soft summer gloaming, fell on her knees and told her story in her own plain speech to her good Father in Heaven.

It was a long story. She had much to say to Heaven that night. The mothers and wives of 1776 in our land spake often unto God. This mother listened and prayed, and prayed and listened.

The fishermen had left Valentine and Anna on the shore and gone home. Tired, but happy, the brother and sister went up, over sand and field and slope, and so came at length within sight of the trees that towered near home.

“Whistle now!” whispered Anna, afraid yet to speak aloud. “Mother will hear and answer.”

Valentine whistled.

Up jumped the mother Kull. She ran to the door and tried to answer. There was no whistle in her lips. Joy choked it.

“Mother, are you there ?” cried the children.

“No! I’m here,” was the answer, and she had them safe in her arms.