In this cheerless season, on St. Patrick's Day, the seventeenth of
March, the Irish soldiers who formed a part of the garrison of Fort
William Henry were paying homage to their patron saint in libations of
heretic rum, the product of New England stills; and it is said that John
Stark's rangers forgot theological differences in their zeal to share
the festivity. The story adds that they were restrained by their
commander, and that their enforced sobriety proved the saving of the
fort. This may be doubted; for without counting the English soldiers of
the garrison who had no special call to be drunk that day, the fort was
in no danger till twenty-four hours after, when the revellers had had
time to rally from their pious carouse. Whether rangers or British
soldiers, it is certain that watchmen were on the alert during the night
between the eighteenth and nineteenth, and that towards one in the
morning they heard a sound of axes far down the lake, followed by the
faint glow of a distant fire. The inference was plain, that an enemy was
there, and that the necessity of warming himself had overcome his
caution. Then all was still for some two hours, when, listening in the
pitchy darkness, the watchers heard the footsteps of a great body of men
approaching on the ice, which at the time was bare of snow. The garrison
were at their posts, and all the cannon on the side towards the lake
vomited grape and round-shot in the direction of the sound, which
thereafter was heard no more.
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