Chains: Chapter 16 Summary & Analysis

Once Ruth falls asleep that night, Isabel knows what she has to do. Madam’s threat is serious—the girls have to get out of the city. Isabel knows that Bellingham won’t listen to her after the linen chest debacle; she’ll have to go straight to the army. When she can hear Lockton’s snores, Isabel sneaks into the library, pulls the key out of the snuffbox, and finds the sheet of names from earlier. Isabel slips outside and, evading soldiers as she moves, creeps to the Patriot fort at the southern tip of the island.

Isabel winds through the tents until a sentry at a gate blocks her way. She tells the truth: that she has a message for Colonel Regan, and that her master is a Loyalist who will beat her if he finds out she’s here. Yawning, the sentry leads her into the fort and into a small room, where a man is sitting at a writing desk. When Isabel tells the man nobody can vouch for her except for Master Bellingham’s boy Curzon, he sends her away. Isabel struggles and says that she has proof the Loyalists want to kill General Washington.

The sentry and the man at the desk stop yelling at Isabel when Colonel Regan stands up from where he was sitting by the fire, hidden in shadows. He tells the men to leave and then asks to see Isabel’s paper. Isabel says that she’d like to propose a trade; she and her sister were wrongfully taken from Rhode Island. Colonel Regan promises to help if Isabel’s information is actually useful.

Isabel gives Colonel Regan the list and tells him everything she knows. He calls in other men, most of whom insist this is nonsense—until Regan says this confirms intelligence he’s been getting all day. He tells Isabel to put the list back in Lockton’s desk and come to him with any new information. In the future, there’s a code word to get into the fort: ad astra. Isabel promises to remember.