Washington crosses in the dark

Two and a half thousand men, eighteen guns and the horses went over the ice-choked Delaware on Christmas night, nine hours late, into a nor'easter.

The almanac promised a nearly full moon, and it did light the loading; then sleet and snow closed over it and the crossing finished in the dark, which is why the timetable slipped. They marched nine miles and took Trenton at daybreak, in a war that had been all but lost the month before.