But Howe had learned caution.

He made no reckless attack, and soon Washington found that he must move away or face the danger of losing every man on Long Island.
On the night of the 29th of August there was clear moonlight, with fog towards daybreak.

A British army of twenty-five thousand men was only some six hundred yards from the American lines.

A few miles from the shore lay at anchor a great British fleet with, it is to be presumed, its patrols on the alert.

Yet, during that night, ten thousand American troops were marched down to boats on the strand at Brooklyn and, with all their stores, were carried across a mile of water to New York.