Mr. Pellew, as the youngest officer present, was required to offer his opinion the first.  He pleaded earnestly that his own little party might not be included in the proposed capitulation, but permitted to make the best of their way back.  He had never heard, he said, of sailors capitulating, and was confident he could bring them off.  It is very possible that they might have escaped.  Soldiers are accustomed to act only in orderly masses; but sailors combine with discipline the energy of individual enterprise.  Mr. Pellew’s party had acted as pioneers and artificers to the army during its advance; and their knowledge, and readiness at resources, would have given them great facilities in making their way through a hostile country.  But their escape would have cast a very undeserved discredit upon the army, and the proposal was discountenanced.  Burgoyne said, what sailors could do, soldiers might do; and if the attempt were sanctioned for the one, the others must throw away their knapsacks and take their firelocks.  As Mr. Pellew still clung to his proposal, the General took him aside, and having represented the impossibility of drawing off the army, convinced him of the impropriety of permitting the attempt by a small part of it.

The result of the council was a communication to General Gates, who, knowing the desperate condition of the British army, and his own irresistible superiority, must have been surprised at the gallant spirit manifested in its hopeless extremity.  When he observed that the retreat of the British was cut off, he was told that the British could never admit that their retreat was cut off while they had arms in their hands; and to his proposal that the troops should pile arms within their camp, it was replied, that sooner than submit to such an indignity, they would rush on the enemy determined to take no quarter.  Terms proposed by General Burgoyne were finally acquiesced in; and the American commander, as far as he was concerned, faithfully observed and enforced them with the most considerate delicacy.

Mr. Pellew, after having shared in the hospitality of General Gates, was sent to England by General Burgoyne with despatches, a distinction to which his services in the campaign were considered to have entitled him.  At Quebec he met his former commander, Sir Guy Carleton, whose successor had not yet arrived, and who charged him with additional despatches, and the following letter to Lord Sandwich:—­

“Quebec, November 2, 1777.

“MY LORD,—­This will be presented to your lordship by Mr. Edward Pellew, a young man to whose gallantry and merit during two severe campaigns in this country, I cannot do justice.  He is just now returned to me from Saratoga, having shared the fate of that unfortunate army, and is on his way to England.  I beg leave to recommend him to your lordship, as worthy of a commission in his Majesty’s service, for his good conduct.

“GUY CARLETON.”