The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

“That they should, sir.”

“But they want all the credit to go to Massachusetts! That’s their idea, Welch. You mark what I say. There won’t be many thanks offered to us.”

“But we’ll do the work, sir.”

“Oh, we’ll have to!” Saltonstall said. Already, in his brief tenure of command, the commodore had earned a reputation as a difficult and daunting figure, but he had struck up a friendship with the marine. Saltonstall recognized a fellow soul, a man who strove to make his men the best they could be. “We’ll have to do their work,” Saltonstall went on, “if it can be done at all.” He paused, offering Welch a chance to comment, but the marine said nothing. “Can it be done?” Saltonstall prompted him.

Welch stayed silent for a while, then nodded. “We have the marines, sir, and I dare say every marine is worth two of the enemy. We might find five hundred militiamen who can fight. That should suffice, sir, if you can take care of their ships.”

“Three sloops of war,” Saltonstall said in a tone that suggested neither confidence nor pessimism about the prospects of destroying the Royal Navy squadron.

“My men will fight,” Welch said, “and by Christ they’ll fight like fiends. They’re good men, sir, well-trained.”

“That I know,” Saltonstall said, “but by God I won’t let Lovell throw them away. You only fight ashore with my permission.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And if you get orders that make no sense, you refer them to me, you understand?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“He’s a farmer,” Saltonstall said scornfully, “not a soldier, but a goddamned farmer.”

On board the Sally, in the captain’s cramped cabin, the farmer was cradling a mug of tea laced with rum. Lovell shared the table with his secretary, John Marston, and with Wadsworth and the Reverend Murray, who appeared to have been promoted to senior aide. “We should reach Majabigwaduce tomorrow,” Lovell said, looking from face to face in the feeble light of the lantern that hung from a beam, “and I assume the commodore will prevent the enemy ships from leaving the harbor and so obstructing us, in which case we should land immediately, don’t you think?”

“If it’s possible,” Wadsworth said cautiously.

“Let us be hopeful!” Lovell said. He dreamed of the victory parade in Boston and the vote of thanks from the legislature, but small doubts were creeping into his mind as he gazed at the crude map of Majabigwaduce’s peninsula that was spread on the table where the remains of supper still lay. The Sally’s cook had produced a fine fish stew served with newly baked bread. “We shall need to anchor off the land and launch the lighters,” Lovell said distractedly, then used a crust of cornbread to tap the bluff at the western end of the peninsula. “Can McLean really have left this height undefended?”

“Unfortified, certainly, if the reports are true,” Wadsworth said.

“Then we should accept his invitation, don’t you think?”

Wadsworth nodded cautiously. “We’ll know more tomorrow, sir,” he said.

“I want to be ready,” Lovell said. He tapped the map again. “We can’t let our fellows sit idle while the commodore destroys the enemy shipping. We must put the men ashore fast.” Lovell gazed at the map as though it might provide some solution to the morrow’s problems. Why had McLean not placed his fort on the high bluff? Was there a trap? If Lovell had been given the task of defending the peninsula he was sure he would have made a stronghold at the harbor’s entrance, high on the point of land that dominated both the wide bay and the harbor, so why had McLean not done that? And McLean, Lovell reminded himself, was a professional soldier, so what did McLean know that Lovell did not? He felt a shiver of nervousness in his soul, then took comfort that he was not alone in his responsibility. Commodore Saltonstall was the naval commander, and Saltonstall’s ships so outnumbered the enemy that surely no amount of professionalism could redress that imbalance. “We must believe,” Lovell said, “that our enemies are afflicted by overconfidence.”

“They are British,” the Reverend Murray said in agreement, “and ‘pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.’ Proverbs eighteen,” he added helpfully, “verse sixteen.”

“Words of wisdom,” Lovell said, “and indeed they do underestimate us!” The general was staring at the map and searching for the optimism that had lightened his morning.

“They shall suffer for their arrogance,” Murray said, and raised a reverent hand, “‘what is this thing that ye do? Will ye rebel against the king? Then answered I them, and said unto them, the God of Heaven, he will prosper us.’” He smiled benignly. “The words of the prophet Nehemiah, General.”

“He will indeed prosper us,” Lovell echoed, “and perhaps you would lead us in prayer, Reverend?”

“Gladly.” The men bowed their heads as the Reverend Murray prayed that God would send a swift victory. “May the forces of righteousness glorify Thy name, O Lord,” the Reverend Murray beseeched, “and may we show magnanimity in the triumph that Thy words have promised us. We ask all this in Thy holy name. Amen.”

“Amen,” Lovell said fervently, his eyes tight shut, “and amen.”

* * *

“Amen,” Brigadier McLean muttered in response to the grace before supper. He had been invited to Doctor Calef’s house, which lay two hundred yards east of Fort George. That name, he thought ruefully, was a grand name for a fort that was scarcely defensible. Captain Mowat had sent one hundred and eighty burly seamen to help the work, yet still the walls were only waist high and a mere two cannons had been emplaced in the corner bastions.

“So the wretches are here?” Calef inquired.

“So we hear, Doctor, so we hear,” McLean responded. News of the enemy fleet’s arrival had come from the river’s mouth, brought by a fisherman who had fled the rebels so quickly that he had been unable to count the ships and could only say that there was a terrible lot of them. “It seems they’ve sent a considerable fleet,” McLean commented, then thanked the doctor’s wife, who had passed him a dish of beans. Three candles lit the table, a finely polished oval of gleaming walnut. Most of the doctor’s furniture had come from his Boston home and it looked strange here, much as if the contents of a fine Edinburgh mansion were to be moved to a Hebridean croft.

“Will they come tonight?” Mrs. Calef inquired nervously.

“I’m assured no one can navigate the river in the dark,” McLean said, “so no, ma’am, not this night.”

“They’ll be here tomorrow,” Calef averred.

“So I expect.”

“In some force?” Calef asked.

“So the report said, Doctor, though I am denied any specific detail.” McLean flinched as he bit onto a grindstone chip trapped in the cornbread. “Very fine bread, ma’am,” he said.

“We were maltreated in Boston,” Calef said.

“I am sorry to hear that.”

“My wife was insulted in the streets.”

McLean knew what was in Calef’s mind, that if the rebels were to take Majabigwaduce then the persecution of the loyalists would start again. “I regret that, Doctor.”

“I dare say,” Calef said, “that if the rebels were to find me, General, they would imprison me.” The doctor was merely toying with his food, while his wife watched him anxiously.

“Then I must do my utmost,” McLean said, “to keep you from imprisonment and your wife from insult.”

“Scourge them,” Calef said angrily.

“I do assure you, Doctor, that is our intent,” McLean said, then smiled at Calef’s wife. “These are very fine beans, ma’am.”

They ate mostly in silence after that. McLean wished he could offer a greater reassurance to the loyalists of Majabigwaduce, but the arrival of the rebel fleet surely meant an imminent defeat. His fort was unfinished. True, he had made three batteries to cover the harbor entrance. There was one on Cross Island, the large Half Moon Battery down on the shore, and a third, much smaller, on the high bluff above the harbor mouth, but none of those batteries was a fort. They were emplacements for cannon that were there to fire at the enemy ships, but not one of the earthworks could withstand an assault by a company of determined infantry. There had simply not been enough time, and now the enemy was here.

Many years before, while fighting for the Dutch, McLean had been captured by the French and held prisoner. That had not been unpleasant. The French were generous and had treated him with courtesy. He wondered how the Americans would behave and feared, as he ate the tough, undercooked beans, that he was about to find out.

Tomorrow.

Marine Lieutenant Downs of the Tyrannicide took men ashore on the northernmost of the Fox Islands. It was fully dark by the time their longboat grounded on a shingle beach beneath the black shapes of a half-dozen houses that stood on the higher ground. Small lights shone from behind shutters and around doorways and, as the marines dragged their boat higher up the beach, a voice hailed from the darkness. “Who are you?”

“His Majesty’s Royal Marines!” Downs called back. The Fox Islands were notorious for being loyalist and Downs did not want one of his men being killed or wounded by some malevolent Tory shooting out of the night. “A relief fleet for Majabigwaduce!”

“What do you want here?” the voice called, still suspicious.

“Fresh water, news, a couple of women would be welcome too!”

Boots sounded on the shingle and a tall man emerged from the shadows. He carried a musket that he slung on his shoulder when he saw the dozen men about the longboat. He had noticed the white crossbelts, but in the dark of night he could not see that their coats were green and not red. “Strange time to be looking for water,” he said.

“We’re after water and news,” Downs said cheerfully. “General McLean is still at Majabigwaduce?”

“No one’s kicked him out yet.”

“Have you seen him?”

“I was there yesterday.”

“Then, sir, you will do me the honor of accompanying me to my ship,” Downs said. His marines, like those of the Hazard, had been sent to find men who had seen McLean’s fortifications.

The islander took a pace backwards. “What ship are you from?” he asked, still thoroughly suspicious.

“Take him,” Downs ordered and two of his marines seized the man, confiscated his musket, and dragged him back to the longboat. “Don’t make a sound,” Lieutenant Downs warned the man, “or we’ll stove your skull in like an egg.”

“Bastards,” the man said, then grunted as a marine punched him in the belly.

“We are patriots,” Downs corrected him and, leaving two men to guard the prisoner, went to find more loyalists who could tell the expedition just what waited for them upriver.

Dawn brought a thick fog into which Lieutenant John Moore went with twenty men to the small battery that McLean had placed high on Majabigwaduce’s bluff. The battery possessed three six-pounder cannons mounted on naval carriages and served by sailors from HMS North, commanded by a midshipman who, to the eighteen-year-old Moore, looked no older than twelve or thirteen. “I’m fifteen, sir,” the midshipman responded to Moore’s inquiry, “and three years in the Navy, sir.”

“I’m John Moore,” Moore introduced himself.

“Pearce Fenistone, sir, and honored to make your acquaintance.” Fenistone’s battery was no fortress, merely an emplacement for the guns. A space had been cleared in the trees, a patch of ground leveled, and a platform of split logs laid for the carriages. Four trees had been deliberately left unfelled and the gunners used their trunks as anchors for the cannons’ breeching ropes and train-tackle. A ship’s cannon was restrained by its breeching ropes, which were seized to the hull and stopped a gun recoiling across a deck, while the train-tackle was used to run the gun back into position, and Fenistone’s men were using the tree trunks to tame their beasts. “It does check the recoil, sir,” Fenistone said when Moore admired the ingenious arrangement, “though we do get showered with pine needles every time we fire.” The battery had no parapet and its ready magazine was merely a shallow pit dug at the rear of the makeshift decking. Two gratings were piled with round shot beside which were piles of what looked like children’s rope quoits. “Ring-wadding, sir,” Fenistone explained.

“Ring-wadding?”

“The guns point downwards, sir, and the ring-wads hold the balls in the barrel. We’d look a little foolish if we loaded and the balls rolled out before we fired. It’s most embarrassing when that happens.”

The battery had been placed above the harbor’s mouth rather than at the western edge of the bluff. The six-pounders, which had been taken from the North’s portside broadside, were too light to have much effect at long range, but if the enemy ships attempted to enter the harbor they would be forced to sail beneath the three cannon that could fire down onto their decks. “I’d wish for heavier metal, sir,” Fenistone said wistfully.

“And a proper fort to defend your guns?”

“In case their infantry attacks?” Fenistone asked. “Well, fighting infantry isn’t our job, sir, it’s yours.” The midshipman smiled. For a fifteen-year-old, Moore thought, Fenistone was wonderfully confident. “Captain Mowat gave us strict instructions what to do if we are attacked by land, sir,” he went on.

“Which is?”

“Spike the guns and run like buggery, sir,” Fenistone answered with a grin, “and get the gunners back to the North, sir.” He slapped at a mosquito.

Moore looked down at Mowat’s ships, which were wreathed in mist. The three sloops looked formidable enough in their line, though he knew they were lightly armed compared to most warships. Behind them, in a parallel line, were the three transport ships, which looked far larger and more threatening, but in truth were defenseless hulls, merely there to act as an obstacles in the event the enemy managed to pierce Mowat’s first line.

“Are they coming today, sir?” Fenistone asked anxiously.

“So we believe,” Moore said.

“We’ll give them a warm British welcome, sir.”

“I’m sure you will,” Moore said with a smile, then beckoned at his men to stop gawping at the ships’ guns and to follow him westwards through the trees.

He stopped at the brink of the bluff. Ahead of him was the wide Penobscot River beneath its thinning pall of fog. Moore stared southwards, but could see nothing stirring in the distant whiteness. “So they are coming today, sir?” Sergeant McClure asked.

“We must assume so.”

“And our job, sir?”

“Is to take post here, Sergeant, in case the rascals attempt a landing.” Moore looked down the steep slope and thought the rebels would be foolish to attempt a landing on the narrow stony beach at the bluff’s foot. He supposed they would land farther north, perhaps beyond the neck, and he wished he had been posted on the isthmus. There would be fighting and he had never fought; part of him feared that baptism and another part yearned to experience it.

“They’d be daft buggers to land here, sir,” McClure said, standing beside Moore and gazing down the precipitous slope.

“Let us hope they are daft buggers.”

“We’ll shoot the bastards easy, sir.”

“If there are enough of us.”

“That’s true, sir.”

The fog thinned as the wind freshened. Lieutenant Moore had posted himself at the peninsula’s southwestern corner, at Dyce’s Head, and as the sun climbed higher more and more men made their way to that vantage point to watch for the enemy. Brigadier McLean came, stumping with his stick along the narrow path between the pines, leading seven other red-coated officers who all stood gazing southwards down the river that sparkled so prettily under the summer sun. Still more officers arrived, and with them came civilians like Doctor Calef who stood close to the brigadier and tried to make small-talk. Captain Mowat was there with two other naval officers, all of them holding long telescopes though there was nothing to see. The river was empty.

“I forgot to ask you last night,” McLean said to Calef, “how is Temperance?”

“Temperance?” Calef asked, puzzled, then remembered. “Ah, she’s recovering. If a baby survives a day of fever they usually recover. She’ll live.”

“I’m glad,” McLean said. “There are few things so distressing as a sick bairn.”

“You have children, General?”

“I never married,” McLean said, then doffed his hat as more villagers came to the bluff with Colonel Goldthwait. Goldthwait was American and loyalist, a horse-breeder whose rank had been earned in the old Royal Militia. He feared that any rebel force in the river might persecute the loyalists and so he had brought his family to live under the protection of McLean’s men. His two daughters had accompanied him to the bluff, along with Bethany Fletcher and Aaron Bank’s twin daughters, and the presence of so many young women attracted the younger Scottish officers.

Lieutenant Moore steeled himself to approach Bethany. He took off his hat and offered a bow. “Your brother isn’t here?” he asked.

“He went fishing, Lieutenant,” Bethany lied.

“I thought no one was allowed to leave the peninsula?” Moore queried.

“James left before that order was given,” Bethany said.

“I pray he returns safely,” Moore said. “If the rebels catch him, Miss Fletcher, I fear they might detain him.”

“If they catch you, Lieutenant,” Bethany said with a smile, “they might detain you.”

“Then I must ensure I am not caught,” Moore said.

“Good morning, Miss Fletcher,” Brigadier McLean said cheerfully.

“Good morning, General,” Bethany said and lightened the brigadier’s morning with her most dazzling smile. She felt awkward. Her pale-green linen dress was patched with common brown cloth and her bonnet was long-peaked and old-fashioned. The Goldthwait girls wore lovely cotton print dresses that they must have received from Boston before the British had withdrawn from that city. The British officers, Beth thought, must think her very plain.

Thomas Goldthwait, a tall and good-looking man dressed in the faded red coat of the old militia, took McLean aside. “I wanted a word, General,” Goldthwait said. He sounded awkward.

“I’m at your service, sir,” McLean responded.

Goldthwait stared south for a brief while. “I have three sons,” he said finally, still gazing southwards, “and when you arrived, General, I gave them a choice.”

McLean nodded. “‘Choose you this day whom you will serve?’” he guessed, quoting the scriptures.

“Yes,” Goldthwait said. He took a snuff box from a pocket and fiddled with its lid. “I regret,” he went on, “that Joseph and Benjamin chose to join the rebels.” He at last looked directly at McLean. “That was not my wish, General, but I would wish you to know. I did not suggest that disaffection to them, and I assure you we are not a family attempting to ride two horses at the same time.” He stopped abruptly and shrugged.

“If I had a son,” McLean said, “I would hope he would have the same loyalties as myself, Colonel, but I would also pray that he could think for himself. I assure you that we shall not think the less of you because of the folly of your sons.”

“Thank you,” Goldthwait said.

“We shall speak no more of it,” McLean said, then turned abruptly as Captain Mowat called that there were topsails visible.

And for a time no one spoke because there was nothing useful to say.

The enemy had come, the first evidence of their arrival a mass of topsails showing through the remnants of fog above a headland, but gradually, remorselessly, the fleet appeared in the channel beside Long Island and not one of the men or women watching could be anything but awed by the sight of so many sails, so many dark hulls, so many ships. “It’s an Armada,” Colonel Goldthwait broke the silence.

“Dear God,” McLean said softly. He gazed at the mass of shipping making slow progress in the small wind. “Yet it’s a brave sight,” he said.

“Brave, sir?” Bethany asked.

“It’s not often you see so many ships together. You should remember this, Miss Fletcher, as a sight to describe to your children.” He smiled at her, then turned to the three naval officers. “Captain Mowat! Have you determined their number yet?”

“Not yet,” Mowat answered curtly. He was gazing through a telescope that was resting on a redcoat’s shoulder. The enemy fleet had stayed close together as it cleared the treacherous ledges which lay beneath the waters east of Long Island, but now the ships were spreading and running before the wind towards the wide bay west of the peninsula. The warships, quicker than the transports, were stretching ahead and Mowat was making tiny adjustments to the glass as he tried to distinguish the different vessels, a task made difficult by the trees which obscured part of his view. He spent a long time staring at the Warren, counting her gunports and attempting to judge from the number of men visible on her deck how well she was manned. He grunted noncommittally when his inspection was finished, then edged the glass leftwards to count the transports. “As far as I can see, General,” he said at last, “they have twenty transports. Maybe twenty-one.”

“Dear Lord above,” McLean said mildly, “and how many warships?”

“About the same,” Mowat said.

“They do come in force,” McLean said, still mildly. “Twenty transports, you say, Mowat?”

“Maybe twenty-one.”

“Time for some arithmetic, Paymaster,” McLean said to Lieutenant Moore. “How many men did each of our transports carry?”

“Most of the men were in four of our transports, sir,” Moore said, “so two hundred apiece?”

“So multiply that by twenty?”

There was a pause as every officer within earshot attempted the mental arithmetic. “Four thousand, sir,” Moore said finally.

“Ah, you learned the same arithmetic as I did, Mister Moore,” McLean said, smiling.

“Dear God,” a highland officer gazed appalled at the size of the approaching fleet. “In that many ships? They could have five thousand men!”

McLean shook his head. “In the absence of our Lord and Savior,” the brigadier said, “I do believe they’d have trouble feeding that many.”

“Some of their ships are smaller than ours,” Mowat observed.

“And your conclusion, Mowat?” McLean asked.

“Between three and four thousand men,” Mowat said crisply. “Enough, anyway. And the bastards have close to three hundred guns in broadside.”

“I see we shall be busy,” McLean said lightly.

“With your permission, General,” Mowat had finished his inspection and collapsed the glass, “I’ll return to the Albany.”

“Allow me to wish you joy of the day, Mowat,” McLean said.

“Let me desire the same for you, McLean,” Mowat replied, then paused to shake the brigadier’s hand.

The three naval officers left to join their ships. McLean stayed on the bluff, saying little as he watched the enemy draw ever closer. It was a rough-and-ready rule of war that an attacker needed to outnumber a defender by three to one if an assault on a fort was to succeed, but Fort George was unfinished. The bastions were so low that a man could leap over them. The gun emplacements were scarcely begun. A thousand rebels would take the fort easily, and it was plain from the size of the fleet entering the bay that they must have brought at least two or three thousand men. “We must do our best,” McLean finally said to no one in particular, then smiled. “Ensign Campbell!” he called sharply. “To me!”

Six kilted officers responded and Bethany looked puzzled. “We are oversupplied with Campbells,” Moore said.

“The 74th has forty-three officers,” McLean explained more usefully, “and comes from Argyle, Miss Fletcher, which is a place plentifully inhabited by Campbells. Twenty-three of the forty-three officers are named Campbell. Shout that name outside their tent lines, Miss Fletcher, and you can cause chaos.” The brigadier knew that every loyalist watching from the headland was sensing an approaching disaster and he was determined to show them confidence. “It occurs to me,” he spoke to the six young kilted officers, “that Sir Walter Raleigh played bowls as the Armada approached. We can match the English in insouciance, don’t you think?”

“By playing bowls, sir?” one of the Campbells asked.

“I prefer swords to bowls,” McLean said, and drew his broadsword. His lamed right arm made drawing the weapon difficult and he had to use his left hand to help free the blade from its scabbard. He stooped and laid the sword on the turf.

Eleven other swords were placed on the ground. There were no musicians at Dyce’s Head so the brigadier clapped his hands rhythmically and the six ensigns began to dance above the cross-laid blades. Some of the 74th’s other officers sang as they clapped. They sang in Gaelic, and McLean joined in, smiling.

Bethany clapped with the other spectators. The ensigns danced, their feet close but never touching the swords. The Gaelic song finished, McLean indicated the defiant sword-dance could end and the boyish officers grinned as their audience applauded and the blades were retrieved. “To your posts, gentlemen,” McLean said to his officers. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he looked at the civilians, “I cannot foretell what will happen now, but if you stay in your homes I am confident you will be treated with a proper civility.” He was not confident of that at all, but what else could he say? He turned to take one last look at the fleet. A splash and rumble of cable sounded clear across the water as the first ship dropped anchor. Its sails, loosened from the wind’s grip, flapped wildly until men tamed the canvas onto the wide yards. A glint of light from the ship’s afterdeck flashed bright in McLean’s eyes and he knew a rebel was examining the shore with a telescope. He turned away, going back to his unfinished fort.

James Fletcher had spent the night on the Penobscot’s eastern shore, the Felicity safe in a small cove. He watched the Massachusetts fleet appear from the south and he waited till the ships had almost reached Majabigwaduce before rowing out of the sheltered haven. Then the wind caught his mainsail and he could ship the oars and run before the breeze to where the fleet was anchoring. The transports had gone farthest north, anchoring west of the peninsula’s bluff and, like the warships, well out of the range of any cannon the British might have ashore.

Fletcher headed for the largest of the warships, reckoning that would be the commander’s vessel, but long before he reached the Warren he was intercepted by a guard boat manned by a dozen oarsmen and four green-jacketed marines. They hailed him and so he turned the Felicity into the wind and waited for the longboat to reach him. “I’ve got news for the general,” he called to the marine officer.

“You’ll have to see the commodore,” the marine insisted, and pointed to the Warren. Sailors on the frigate took the line Fletcher heaved, then he let the gaff fall and clambered up the frigate’s side.

He stood on deck where a young and nervous midshipman arrived to be his escort. “The commodore is busy, Mister Fletcher,” he explained.

“I’m sure he is.”

“But he will want to see you.”

“I hope so!” James said cheerfully.

The rebels’ warships had anchored due west of the harbor mouth, which was filled by Captain Mowat’s three sloops of war. Those sloops, anchored fore and aft to keep their starboard broadsides pointed towards the bay, had their gunports open and were flying the blue ensign at their sterns while at each masthead, three on each sloop, was the British flag. Twin pulses of white spurted rhythmically from the North’s flank and Fletcher grinned. “They never stop pumping her,” he said.

“Her?”

“The North.” James pointed. “The sloop closest to Dyce’s Head, see? I reckon the rats have chewed clean through her bottom.”

Ensign Fanning gazed solemnly at the enemy ship. “She’s an old ship?” he guessed.

“Old and rotten,” James said, “a pair of cannon-balls through that hull will turn her into firewood.”

“You live here?” Fanning asked.

“All my life.”

Commodore Saltonstall ducked out of his cabin door, followed by a man James Fletcher knew well. John Brewer was a captain in the local militia, though he was so short of recruits that he had few men to command. It had been to Captain Brewer that James Fletcher had sent his map and letter, and Brewer now smiled at seeing him. “You’re welcome, young Fletcher!” Brewer gestured at the commodore. “This is Captain Saltonstall. I dare say young James here has news for you, sir.”

“I do, sir,” James said eagerly.

Saltonstall seemed unimpressed. He looked once at James Fletcher, then turned to the portside rail where he stood for a long time gazing at Mowat’s ships through a telescope. “Mister Coningsby!” he snapped suddenly.

“Sir?” Midshipman Fanning responded.

“The bitter ends of number four’s train-tackle look like a snake’s honeymoon! See to it.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Captain Brewer, a jovial man dressed in homespun and with an ancient broad-bladed cutlass strapped at his waist, grinned at Fletcher while Saltonstall continued to inspect the three ships that guarded the harbor’s mouth. “What is your name?” the commodore inquired brusquely.

James Fletcher decided the question was aimed at him. “James Fletcher, sir. I live in Bagaduce.”

“Then come here, James Fletcher of Bagaduce,” Saltonstall demanded and James went to stand beside the commodore and, like him, gazed eastwards. To the left he could see the heavily wooded bluff that hid the fort from the commodore’s view. Then came the three sloops with their combined broadsides of twenty-eight cannon and, just to their south, the guns on Cross Island. “You live here,” Saltonstall said in a voice which suggested pity for such a fate, “and I see three sloops and a battery, what am I missing?”

“Another battery on Dyce’s Head, sir,” James said, pointing.

“Just as I told you, sir!” Brewer put in cheerfully.

Saltonstall ignored the militia captain. “Of what strength?”

“I saw only three small guns being hauled up there, sir,” James said.

“Six-pounders, probably,” Brewer said.

“But they’ll plunge their fire on us as we reach the harbor mouth,” Saltonstall observed.

“Reckon that’s what they’re up there for, sir,” James said, “and there’s another battery on the harbor shore.”

“So three batteries and three sloops,” Saltonstall said, collapsing the glass and turning to look at Fletcher. He did not seem to like what he saw. “What water in the harbor?”

“What do you draw, sir?”

“Eleven feet, nine inches,” Saltonstall said. He was still talking to James, but now fixed his gaze just past James’s head to stare at the poopdeck companionway.

“Plenty of water for you, sir,” James said with his customary cheerfulness.

“The tide?”

“Fifteen to eighteen feet, near enough,” James said, “but even at low water you can pass her.” He pointed to the Nautilus, the southernmost of Mowat’s ships. “You can get past her, sir, with ten feet to spare, and once you’re inside you’ve not a care in the world.”

“Get past her?” Saltonstall asked scornfully.

“Plenty of room, sir.”

“And a battery not a hundred paces away?” Saltonstall asked harshly, meaning the guns on Cross Island. Those guns were just visible and behind them were tents for the gunners and a British flag high on a makeshift pole. “And once I am inside,” he went on, “how the devil do I get out?”

“Get out?” James asked, disconcerted by the commodore’s evident dislike of him.

“I take your advice,” Saltonstall said sarcastically, “and I sail into Majabigwaduce, but once there I am under the guns of their fort, am I not? And incapable of leaving?”

“Incapable, sir?” James said, nervous of the immaculate Saltonstall.

“For God’s sake, you thickhead!” Saltonstall snapped. “Any fool can sail into that harbor, but how the devil do you sail out again? Answer me that!”

“You don’t need to come out, sir,” James said. The commodore was right, of course, that while it would be easy to use the prevailing wind to enter the harbor it would be a devilish business to tack out again, especially under fire from the fort’s cannon.

“Oh, praise the Lord,” Saltonstall said, “so I am just supposed to lie there, am I, allowing the shore batteries to reduce my ship to wreckage?”

“Lord love you, sir, no. You can sail on up into the Bagaduce River,” James said. “Deep water there, sir, and long beyond the reach of any of their guns.”

“Must be thirty feet at low water up the river,” Brewer put in.

“Twenty, anyway,” James said.

“You seem to be damned knowing about the matter,” Saltonstall turned on Captain Brewer.

“I live here,” Brewer said.

“I am not going to risk my shipping in that damned hole,” Saltonstall said firmly, then turned away again to gaze at the defenses.

“What damned hole, Commodore?” a bright voice interrupted.

Saltonstall turned to look at Peleg Wadsworth who had just arrived on board the frigate. “Good morning, General,” the commodore grunted.

Brigadier Wadsworth looked happy. His concerns about the fitness of the militia had been dissipated by his first sight of the British defenses, which had been visible from the Sally’s deck as it sailed north. Wadsworth had gazed through a telescope at the fort above the settlement and he had seen that the walls were pitifully low, confirming reports that the ramparts were unfinished. Two local men who had been brought to the fleet by marines from the Tyrannicide had also confirmed that McLean’s works were far from completed and that the fort’s guns were still not mounted. “God has been good to us,” Wadsworth said, “and the British are unprepared.” He smiled at Fletcher. “Hello, young man, is that your boat tied alongside?”

“Yes, sir.”

“She looks a very trim craft,” Wadsworth said, then stepped alongside the commodore. “General Lovell is determined to launch an assault this afternoon,” he told Saltonstall.

Saltonstall grunted again.

“And we beg the favor of your marines, sir.”

Saltonstall grunted a third time and then, after a pause, called aloud, “Captain Welch!”

The tall marine stalked across the deck. “Sir?”

“What kind of assault, General?” Saltonstall demanded.

“Straight at the bluff,” Wadsworth said confidently.

“There’s a battery of guns on the bluff,” Saltonstall warned, then waved carelessly at Fletcher and Captain Brewer, “they know.”

“Six-pounders probably,” Captain Brewer said, “but aimed southwards.”

“The guns face the harbor mouth, sir,” James explained. “They don’t point at the bay,” he added.

“Then the guns shouldn’t trouble us,” Wadsworth said cheerfully. He paused as if expecting agreement from the commodore, but Saltonstall just gazed past the brigadier, his long face somehow suggesting that he had better things to do than concern himself with Wadsworth’s problems. “If your marines take the right of the line,” Wadsworth suggested.

The commodore looked at Welch. “Well?”

“It would be an honor, sir,” Welch said.

Saltonstall nodded. “Then you can have my marines, Wadsworth,” he said. “But take good care of them!” This was evidently a jest because the commodore gave a brief bark of laughter.

“I’m most grateful,” Wadsworth said heartily, “and General Lovell asked me to inquire, Commodore, whether you plan an attack on their shipping?” Wadsworth asked the question with the utmost tact.

“You want it both ways, Wadsworth?” the commodore demanded fiercely. “You want my marines to attack on land, but you’d deny me their service in an assault on the enemy shipping? So which do you want, land or sea?”

“I desire the cause of liberty to triumph,” Wadsworth said, knowing he sounded pompous.

Yet the words seemed to jar with the commodore who flinched, then looked at the three enemy sloops again. “They’re the cork in a bottleneck,” he said. “Not much of a cork, you might think, but a damned tight bottle. I can destroy their ships, Wadsworth, but at what price, eh? Tell me that! What price? Half our fleet?”

Captain Brewer and James Fletcher had stepped back respectfully, as if leaving the two senior officers to their discussion, while Captain Welch stood glowering beside the commodore. Wadsworth alone seemed at his ease. He smiled. “Three ships can do that much damage?” he inquired of Saltonstall.

“Not their damned ships, but their damned fort and their damned batteries,” Saltonstall said. “I sail in there, Wadsworth, and my fleet is under their fort’s guns. We’ll be pounded, man, pounded.”

“The fort hasn’t mounted’” Captain Brewer began.

“I know how few guns they have!” Saltonstall turned angrily on Brewer, “but that was yesterday. How many more today? Do we know? We do not! And how many field guns are concealed in the village there? Do we know? We do not. And once inside that damned bottle I can’t get out unless I have an ebbing tide and an easterly wind. And no,” he looked sourly at James Fletcher, “I am not minded to take my ship up a river where enemy field guns can be deployed. So, General,” he turned back to Peleg Wadsworth, “do you wish to explain to the Navy Board the loss of yet another Continental frigate?”

“What I wish, Commodore,” Wadsworth still spoke respectfully, “is for the enemy marines to be aboard their ships and not waiting for us on land.”

“Ah, that’s different,” Saltonstall spoke grudgingly. “You want me to engage their shipping. Very well. But I won’t take my fleet into that damned hole, you understand? We’ll engage them from without the harbor.”

“And I’m certain that threat alone will keep the enemy marines where we wish them to be,” Wadsworth said.

“Have you marked that chart for me?” Saltonstall turned on Captain Brewer.

“Not yet, sir.”

“Then do so. Very well, Wadsworth, I’ll hammer the ships for you.”

Wadsworth stepped back, feeling rather as though he had waved a lit candle over an open barrel of gunpowder and had managed to survive without causing an explosion. He smiled at James Fletcher. “Do I understand that you’re familiar with Majabigwaduce, young man?” he asked.

“Bagaduce, sir? Yes, sir.”

“Then do me the honor of accompanying me. You too, Captain Welch? We must draw up orders.”

The Felicity was left tied to the Warren as James Fletcher was rowed with Wadsworth and Welch to the Sally, which, for the moment, acted as the army’s headquarters. Wadsworth appraised James Fletcher and liked what he saw. “So, Mister Fletcher,” he asked, “why are you here?”

“To fight, sir.”

“Good man!”

The sun sparked off the water, it glittered. The expedition had come to Majabigwaduce and would go straight into battle.

Brigadier McLean had ordered every civilian to stay in their home because, if the rebels came, he did not want unnecessary casualties. Now he stood outside the long storehouse that had been built within the half-finished walls of Fort George. The garrison’s precious supplies were in the long wooden building, all except the artillery’s ammunition, which was buried in stone-lined pits just behind the unfinished ramparts. The union flag flapped noisily above the bastion nearest the harbor entrance. “I think the wind’s rising,” McLean remarked to Lieutenant John Moore.

“I believe it is, sir.”

“A wind to blow our enemy into the harbor,” McLean said.

“Sir?” Moore sounded plaintive.

“I know what you desire, John,” McLean said sympathetically.

“Please, sir.”

McLean paused as a sergeant bellowed at a private to extinguish his damned pipe. No smoking was allowed inside Fort George because the ready magazines were not properly finished, and the powder charges were protected from sparks and the weather by nothing more solid than number three sail canvas. “You’re our paymaster, Lieutenant,” McLean said teasingly, “I can’t afford to lose a good paymaster now, can I?”

“I’m a soldier, sir,” Moore said stubbornly.

McLean smiled, then relented. “Take twenty men. And take Sergeant McClure. Report to Captain Campbell, that’s Archibald Campbell. And John?”

John Moore, thus given permission to join the picquets on the bluff, turned a delighted face on the brigadier. “Sir?”

“The duke won’t thank me if you die. Take care.”

“I’m immortal, sir,” Moore said happily, “and thank you, sir.”

Moore ran and McLean turned to greet Major Dunlop, who was the senior officer of the 82nd and had replaced McLean as that battalion’s commanding officer for as long as McLean had heavier responsibilities. The wind was brisk enough to blow Major Dunlop’s cocked hat from his head. “I’m sending Moore to join the picquets on the bluff, Dunlop,” McLean said as a sentry chased after the errant hat, “I hope you have no objection?”

“None at all,” Dunlop said, “but I doubt he’ll see any action there.”

“I doubt it too, but it’ll keep the young puppy happy.”

“That it will,” Dunlop agreed and the two men talked for a moment before the brigadier walked to the single twelve-pounder cannon that occupied the southwestern bastion of Fort George. The blue-coated men of the Royal Artillery stood as the general approached, but he waved them back down. Their gun pointed towards the harbor mouth, its barrel aimed above the cannon in the Half Moon Battery, which was dug into the shoreline. McLean looked across Mowat’s ships to where he could just make out a handful of the enemy’s warships, though by far the largest part of the enemy’s fleet was hidden beyond the bluff.

“Will they come today, sir?” an artillery sergeant asked.

“What’s your name, Sergeant?”

“Lawrence, sir.”

“Well, Sergeant Lawrence, I fear I cannot tell you what the enemy will do, but if I were in their shoes I’d certainly make an assault today.”

Lawrence, a broad-faced man in his thirties, patted the cascabel of his long-barreled cannon. “We’ll give them a proper English welcome, sir.”

“And a proper Scottish one too,” McLean said reprovingly.

“That as well, sir,” Lawrence responded stoutly.

The brigadier walked north along the rampart. It was a pitiable thing for a defense, no higher than a man’s waist and protected by just two cannon and by a row of wooden spikes in the shallow ditch. McLean had made his dispositions, but he was too old and too experienced to deceive himself. The enemy had come in force. They outnumbered him in ships and men. He reckoned there were only two places they might come ashore. They would either batter their way into the harbor and land on the closest beach, or else put their men ashore at the neck. The companies he had sent to those places would doubtless give a good account of themselves, but eventually they would be forced to retreat into Fort George, and then the rebels would advance against the pathetic ramparts and his cannon would greet them, but what could two guns do against three thousand men or more?

“God’s will be done,” McLean said.

By nightfall, he reckoned, he would be a prisoner. If he was lucky.

Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Revere sat in a corner of the Sally’s overcrowded stern cabin. It was dominated by an unlit black-lead stove around which the expedition’s senior army officers were gathered. Captain Welch, whose marines would join the militia for the assault, was also present. General Lovell stood on the bricks that surrounded the stove, but the cabin beams were so low that he was forced to stoop. A freshening wind buffeted the sloop, making her quiver and jerk on her anchor rode. “General Wadsworth has good news,” Lovell opened the proceedings.

Wadsworth, even taller than Lovell, did not stand, but stayed seated on a sea chest. “We’ve been joined by forty-one Penobscot Indians,” he said. “The enemy attempted to subvert the tribe with wampum and promises, but they are determined to fight for liberty.”

“Praise God,” the Reverend Jonathan Murray put in.

“And more Indians will come, I’m sure,” Wadsworth continued, “and they’re stout fellows.”

“They’re damned savages,” someone muttered from the cabin’s darkest corner.

Wadsworth pointedly ignored the comment and instead gestured to the good-looking young man who squatted at the cabin’s edge, “And Mister Fletcher was in Majabigwaduce just yesterday. He tells us the fort is far from finished, and that the enemy numbers less than a thousand men.”

“Praise be,” the Reverend said.

“So this afternoon,” Lovell took over, “Commodore Saltonstall will attack the enemy’s ships!” He did not explain that the commodore had refused to sail his squadron into the harbor, but had rather elected to bombard the sloops with long-range gunfire. “We pray for the navy’s success,” Lovell continued, “but we shan’t leave all the fighting to them! We’re going ashore, gentlemen. We shall attack the enemy with spirit!” The fierce look that accompanied these words was rather undercut by the general’s cramped posture. “Captain Welch will land on the right, leading his marines.”

“God bless them,” the Reverend interjected.

“Colonel McCobb will detach two companies to support the marines,” Lovell said, “while the rest of his splendid regiment will assault in the center.”

Samuel McCobb, who commanded the Lincoln County militia, nodded. He had a lean, weatherbeaten face in which his eyes were very blue and against which his mustache was very white. He glanced at Captain Welch and seemed to approve of what he saw.

“The men of Cumberland County will attack on the left,” Lovell said, “under Colonel Mitchell. Colonel Davis will assign boats to each transport, isn’t that right, Colonel?”

“The orders are written,” Colonel Davis said curtly. He was one of Lovell’s aides, responsible for liaising with the civilian skippers of the transports.

“And what about us?” a man of about Wadsworth’s age asked. He wore homespun and deerskin, and had a strong, enthusiastic face darkened by the sun. “You’re not leaving the men of York County out of the game, are you, sir?”

“Ah, Major Littlefield,” Lovell acknowledged the man.

“Our fellows are eager to assault, sir, and they won’t be happy being left aboard the ships,” Littlefield said.

“It’s a question of boats and lighters,” Lovell replied. “We don’t have enough to land every man together, so the boats will return for the York County militia.”

“So be sure to have your fellows ready,” Colonel Davis said.

“And you make sure you leave some of the fighting for us!” Daniel Littlefield said, looking disappointed.

“We don’t have enough landing boats?” Revere spoke for the first time. He sounded incredulous. “Not enough boats?”

“Nowhere near,” Davis said brusquely, “so we land what men we can, then the boats return for the rest.”

“So what about my guns?” Revere asked.

“General Wadsworth will command the attack,” Lovell responded, “so perhaps he can answer Colonel Revere?”

Wadsworth smiled at the indignant-looking Revere. “I am hoping, Colonel, that your guns will not be needed.”

“Not needed! I didn’t bring them all the way here just to be ballast!”

“If our information is right,” Wadsworth said emolliently, “then I trust we shall capture the bluff, and then advance straight on the fort.”

“With speed,” Welch insisted.

“Speed?” Lovell asked.

“The faster we go, the greater the shock,” Welch said. “It’s like prize-fighting,” he explained. “We give the enemy a hard blow, then hit him again while he’s dazed. Then hit him again. Keep him dazed, keep him off-balance and keep hitting.”

“Our hope,” Wadsworth said, “is to advance with such fervor that we shall overrun the fort before the enemy gathers his wits.”

“Amen to that,” the Reverend Murray said.

“But if the fort is not captured immediately,” Wadsworth was talking to Revere again, “then your guns shall be fetched ashore.”

“And any guns we capture,” Revere insisted, “belong to the State of Massachusetts. Isn’t that right?”

Captain Welch bridled at that, but said nothing.

“Of course,” Lovell said. “Indeed, everything we capture shall belong to the great State of Massachusetts!” he beamed at the assembly.

“I believe, sir,” John Marston, the general’s secretary, put in quietly, “that the Council decreed that all plunder taken by privateers would be deemed as their private property.”

“Of course, of course!” Lovell said, disconcerted, “but I’m sure there will be more than sufficient plunder to satisfy their investors.” He turned to the Reverend Murray. “Chaplain? A word of prayer before we disperse?”

“Before you pray,” Captain Welch interrupted, “one last thing.” He looked hard at the men commanding the militia. “There’s going to be noise and smoke and confusion. There will be blood and screams. There will be chaos and uncertainty. So have your men fix bayonets. You’re not going to beat these bastards volley to volley, but sharp steel will scare the shit out of them. Fix bayonets and charge straight at the enemy. Shout as you charge and, believe me, they’ll run.” He paused, his hard eyes looking at each of the militia commanders in turn who, all except for Major Daniel Littlefield who had nodded enthusiastic agreement, appeared somewhat daunted by the marine’s grim words. “Use sharp steel and blunt courage,” Welch growled, “and we will win.” He said the last four words slowly, distinctly and with a grim emphasis.

The cabin stayed silent as the men contemplated the marine’s words, then the Reverend Murray cleared his throat. “Gentlemen,” he said, “let us bow our heads.” He paused. “O Lord,” he continued, “Thou hast promised to cover us with Thy strong wings, so protect us now as we go’” He was interrupted by the sound of a cannon firing. The noise was sudden and shockingly loud. The echo of the gun rebounded back from the bluff, then the afternoon was riven by gunfire, by cannon after cannon and by echo after echo, and the rest of the prayer went unspoken as men hurried on deck to watch Commodore Saltonstall’s warships make their first attack.

From the Oath demanded by Brigadier-General Francis McLean of the inhabitants around the Penobscot River, July 1779:Calling the most great and sacred God to the truth of my Intentions, I do most solemnly promise and swear that I will hear true Allegiance and be a faithful subject to his most sacred Majesty George the Third King of Great Britain France and Ireland, and of the Colonies of N. America, Now falsely stiling themselves the United States of America . . .

From the Proclamation to the inhabitants of the Penobscot region, issued by Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell, 29th July 1779:I do hereby assure the Inhabitants of Penobscot and the Country adjacent, that if they are found to be so lost to all the virtues of good Citizens . . . by becoming the first to desert the cause of Freedom of Virtue and of God . . . they must expect to be the first also to experience the just resentment of this injured and betrayed Country, in the condign punishment which their treason deserves.

Excerpt of letter from Colonel John Frost, Massachusetts Militia, to the Council of Massachusetts, July 20th, 1779:I would beg leave to inform your Honors In calling for Officers from the third Regiment in the Brigade to my Surprise I found that their was neither Officer in said Regiment . . . that had a Proper Commission the reason is all the Officers in said Regiment were Commissioned in the year 1776 with the Stile of George the Third King and Colonel Tristrum Jordan then commanded said Regiment but did not take proper care that the Commissions were altered agreable to an Act of this State . . . should be glad of your Honors Direction about the Affair and shall wait your Honors Orders.

Chapter Five

The Tyrannicide, flying the pine-tree flag of the Massachusetts Navy, was the first warship to engage the enemy. She came from the west, sliding before the freshening wind towards the harbor’s narrow entrance. To the men watching from the shore it seemed she was determined to force that entrance by sailing into the small gap between HMS Nautilus and the battery on Cross Island, but then she swung to port so that she sailed northwards, parallel with the British sloops. Her forrard starboard gun opened the battle. The Tyrannicide was armed with six-pounders, seven in each broadside, and her first gun shrouded the brig in thick smoke. The ball struck the sea a hundred yards short of the Nautilus, bounced off a small wave, bounced a second time, and then sank just as the whole British line disappeared behind its own smoke as Captain Mowat’s ships took up the challenge. The Hampden, the big ship from New Hampshire, was next into action, her nine-pounders firing into the British smoke. All that Captain Salter of the Hampden could see of the three enemy sloops were their topmasts above the cloud. “Batter them, boys!” he called cheerfully to his gunners.

The wind was brisk enough to shift the smoke quickly. Titus Salter watched as the North reappeared from the smoke cloud, then another stab of bright flame flashed from one of the British sloop’s gunports and he heard the crash as her round shot struck the Tyrannicide ahead, then his view was again obscured by the gray, acrid smoke of his own guns. “Reload!” a man bellowed. The Hampden sailed out of her smoke and Captain Salter cupped his hands and shouted. “Hold your fire! Hold it!” A British round shot screamed close overhead, smacking a hole through the Hampden’s mizzen sail. “Hold your damned fire!” Salter bellowed angrily.

A brig had suddenly appeared on the Hampden’s starboard quarter. She was a much smaller vessel, armed with fourteen six-pounders, and her skipper, instead of following the New Hampshire ship, was now overtaking her and so putting his ship between the Hampden’s guns and the British sloops. “Damned fool,” Salter growled. “Wait till she’s clear!” he called to his gunners

The brig, flying the pine-tree ensign of the Massachusetts Navy, was the Hazard, and her captain was vomiting from a stomach upset so her first lieutenant, George Little, was commanding her. He was oblivious to the Hampden, concerned only with taking his ship as close to the enemy as he could and then pounding the sloops with his seven-gun broadside. He wished the commodore had ordered a proper assault, an attack straight into the harbor mouth, but if he was ordered to restrict himself to a bombardment then he wanted his guns to do real damage. “Kill the bastards!” he shouted at his gunners. Little was in his early twenties, a fisherman turned naval officer, a man of passion, a patriot, and he ordered his sheets released so that the power went from his sails and the Hazard slowed in the water to give her gunners a more stable platform. “Fire, you bastards!” He gazed at the smoke cloud shrouding the British ship Nautilus and saw it infused with a red glow as a gun fired. The ball struck the Hazard low by the waterline, shuddering the hull. The ship shook again as her own guns fired, the noise seeming to fill the universe. “Where the devil is the Warren?” Little protested.

“He’s holding her back, sir,” the helmsman answered.

“For what?”

The helmsman shrugged. The gunners on the nearest six-pounder were swabbing out the barrel, propelling a jet of steam through the touchhole that reminded Little of a whale spouting. “Cover that touchhole!” he screamed at them. The rush of air caused by a thrust swab could easily ignite powder residue and explode the rammer back into the gunner’s guts. “Use your thumb-stall, man,” he snarled at the gunner, “and block the touchhole when you swab!” He watched approvingly as the charge, wadding, and shot were thrust efficiently down the cleared gun, then as the train-tackle ropes were hauled and the cannon run out. The wheels rumbled on the deck, the crew stepped aside, the gunner touched his linstock to the powder-filled quill and the gun belched its anger and smoke. Little was certain he heard the satisfying crunch of a shot striking home on the enemy. “That’s the way, boys!” he shouted, “that’s the only message the bastards understand! Kill them!” He could not keep still. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot, fidgeting, as if all his energy was frustrated by his inability to get closer to the hated enemy.

Captain Salter had now edged the Hampden ahead of the Hazard again. Earlier in the afternoon the commodore had toured the anchored fleet in the fast schooner Rover to shout his instructions to the captains who would engage the British. Aim for their anchor rodes, he had ordered, and Salter was doing his best to obey. His guns were loaded with bar and chain shot, both designed to slash rigging and, though he doubted his gunners’ accuracy in the smoke-shrouded afternoon, Salter understood what Saltonstall wanted. The three British sloops were held fore and aft by anchors to which springlines were attached, and by tightening or loosening the springs they could adjust their hulls to the wind or current and so keep their wall-like alignment across the harbor mouth. If a spring or an anchor-line could be severed then one of the enemy ships would swing like an opening gate, leaving a massive hole into which a rebel ship could sail to rake the sloops.

The chain shot was two halves of a cannon-ball joined by a thick length of chain. When the shot flew it made a sudden sighing noise, like a scythe. The linked half-balls whirled as they flew, but they vanished into the smoke fog and Salter, staring hard at the mastheads, could see no sign that the scything chains were severing any lines. Instead the British gunners were returning the fire fast, keeping the smoke constant about their three hulls, and more fire, heavier fire, was thumping into the Hampden from the battery on Cross Island. The high bluff of the peninsula was also wreathed in yellow-gray smoke as the smaller battery on Dyce’s Head joined in the fight.

The tide was flooding, drawing the ships closer to the harbor mouth, and Salter ordered his sheets tightened so that the Hampden could sail away from any danger of going aground. The Continental brig Diligent, with its puny three-pounders, sailed into the smoke cloud left by the Hampden and her small broadside spat towards the enemy. The Hazard, realizing the same danger of grounding, had gathered way and now crossed close behind Salter’s stern. “Where the devil is the Warren?” Lieutenant Little shouted across at Salter.

“Anchored still!” Salter called back.

“She’s got eighteen-pounders! Why the devil isn’t she battering the’?”

Salter did not hear the last word because a six-pounder ball, fired from Dyce’s Head, smacked into his deck and gouged long splinters from the planks before vanishing off the portside. By a miracle no one was hurt. Two more ships were now following the Diligent into the smoke, their guns spitting fire and iron at the king’s sloops. The noise was constant, a ceaseless ear-pounding percussion. Lieutenant Little was still shouting, but the Hazard had drawn away and Salter could not hear him over the sky-filling noise. A ball screamed overhead and Salter, looking up, was surprised to see a second hole in his mizzen sail. Another round shot cracked into the hull, shaking the big ship, and he listened for a scream, relieved when none sounded. The shifting smoke that hid the three British sloops was being constantly lit by gunflashes so that the gray cloud would glow for an instant, fade, then glow again. Glow after glow, relentless, flickering along the line of smoke, sometimes melding to a brighter red as two or three or four flames flared at once, and Salter recognized the skill that lay behind the frequency of those flashes. The gunners were fast. Mowat, he thought grimly, had trained his men well. “Maybe the bastards will run out of ammunition,” he said to no one in particular, and then, as his ship turned west beneath Dyce’s Head, he looked up to see redcoats among the trees on the high bluff. A puff of smoke lingered there, and Salter assumed a musket had been fired at his ship, but where the ball went he had no idea. Two more gouts of smoke showed among the trees, and then the Hampden was in open water, running down towards the anchored transports, and Salter wore ship to take the Hampden around again.

The Hazard’s carpenter, his trousers soaked to the waist, appeared from the after-hatch. “We took a shot just under the waterline,” he reported to Lieutenant Little.

“How bad?”

“Nasty enough. Broke a pair of strakes. Reckon you’ll need both pumps.”

“Plug it,” Little said.

“It killed a rat too,” the carpenter said, evidently amused.

“Plug it!” Little shouted at the man, “because we’re going around again. Double-shot the guns!” He called the last command down the deck, then turned an angry face on the helmsman. “I want to get closer next time!”

“There are rocks off the entrance,” the helmsman warned.

“Closer, I said!”

“Aye aye, sir, closer it is, sir,” the helmsman said. He knew better than to argue, just as he knew better than to steer the ship any closer to Cross Island than he already had. He shifted a wad of tobacco in his mouth and spun the wheel to take the brig back southwards. A British round shot whipped just forrard of the Hazard’s jib-boom, skipped off a small wave, and finally splashed and sank a couple of hundred paces short of the anchored Warren.

Lieutenant John Moore watched from the height of Dyce’s Head. The battle seemed very slow to him. The wind was brisk, yet the ships seemed to crawl across the smoke-shrouded water. The guns jetted smoke in huge billows through which the big ships moved with a stately grace. The noise was fearsome. At any one moment thirty or forty guns were being served and their reports elided into a rolling concussion louder and more prolonged than any thunder. The flames made the smoke momentarily lurid and Moore was suddenly besieged by the thought that hell itself would appear thus, yet for all the sound and fury there seemed to be little damage on either side. Mowat’s three ships were immovable, their broadsides undiminished by the enemy fire, while the American ships sailed serenely through the splashes of the British bombardment. Some balls struck their targets; Moore distinctly heard the crash of splintering timber, yet he saw no evidence of damage and the scrubbed decks of the enemy ships appeared unstained by blood.

One enemy ship, larger than the rest, sailed close beneath Dyce’s Head and Moore allowed his men to shoot their muskets down onto the enemy, though he knew the range was extreme and their hopes of hitting anything other than water were slim to nothing. He distinctly saw a man on the ship’s afterdeck turn and gaze up at the bluff and Moore had the absurd instinct to wave at him. He checked himself. A sudden gust of stronger wind cleared the smoke from about the three Royal Navy sloops and Moore could see no injury to their hulls, while their masts still stood and their flags yet flew. A gun fired from the Albany and, just before the smoke obscured the ship again, Moore saw the water ahead of the gunport flatten and flee outwards in a fan pattern.

Nine enemy ships were attacking Mowat’s line, yet, to Moore’s surprise, none tried to break that line. Instead they were circling and taking turns to hammer their broadsides at the sloops. Just behind Mowat’s sloops, and anchored in a similar line, were the three big transport ships that had helped carry McLean’s men to Majabigwaduce. Their crews leaned on their gunwales and watched the cannon smoke. Some enemy round shot, passing between the sloops, crashed into the transports, whose job was to wait and see if any American ship succeeded in breaking through Mowat’s line, then attempt to entangle that ship, but no enemy appeared willing to sail straight through the harbor mouth.

Lieutenant George Little wanted to sail into the harbor, but his orders were to stay west of the entrance and so he circled the Hazard, her sails banging like cannon-fire as he wore ship, then ran the small brig straight towards Cross Island. A cannon-ball, fired from the island’s battery, screamed down the deck, just missing the helmsman. “Waste of damned powder,” Little grumbled. “Keep her steady.”

“Rock ledges ahead, sir.”

“Damn the ledges, damn you and damn the British. Get closer!”

The helmsman spun the wheel anyway, trying to take the Hazard north so her broadside could spit iron and defiance at the British sloops, but Little seized the wheel and turned it back. “Get closer, I said!”

“Sweet Jesus Christ,” the helmsman said, surrendering the wheel.

Another round shot, heavy by its sound, smashed into the Hazard’s bows, then the ship shuddered and there was a grating sound as her hull struck a submerged rock. Little grimaced, then turned the wheel and the Hazard hesitated. The grinding noise continued deep below, but then the brig lurched and loosed herself from the rock and settled on her new course. “Hands to the pumps!” Little called. “And gunners! Aim well!” The guns crashed back against their breech ropes and the smoke blossomed, and a British ball struck the belaying pins aft of the forward mast and splintered them, and Little was bellowing at his gunners to reload.

High on the bluff Moore watched the small brig. For a moment he thought its captain intended to ram the Nautilus, but then the brig turned to sail into the smoke left by the guns of the Black Prince, a big privateer. The brig spat its fire and iron. “A brave little ship,” Moore said.

“He gets any closer and he’ll be selling his hull for firewood, sir,” Sergeant McClure said.

Moore watched the Hazard sail down the line. He saw round shot strike her hull, but her rate of fire never diminished. She turned west beneath him and Moore saw her gunners reloading. “A terrier, that one,” he said.

“But we’re not rats, sir, are we?”

“We are not rats, Sergeant,” Moore said, amused. Pearce Fenistone’s small guns just behind the picquet fired, their balls slashing down at the enemy ships and their smoke filling the trees. The sun was low in the west now and made the smoke glow.

“Captain Campbell coming, sir,” McClure muttered in a low warning to Moore.

Moore turned to see the tall, kilted figure of Captain Archibald Campbell approaching from the north. Campbell, a highlander of the 74th, commanded all the picquets on the bluff. “Moore,” he greeted the Lieutenant, “I think the Yankees plan to inconvenience us.”

“It’s why they came, sir,” Moore replied happily.

Campbell blinked at the younger man as if suspecting he was being mocked. He flinched as the nearest cannon recoiled, its noise huge among the trees. The three guns’ breech ropes had been seized to the pine trees and every shot provoked a rain of needles and cones. “Come and look,” Campbell ordered, and Moore followed the lanky highlander back along the bluff’s top to a place where a gap in the trees offered a view of the wider bay.

The enemy’s transport ships were anchored in the bay, which was being whipped into white scudding waves by the brisk wind. The gaggle of ships was well out of range of any cannon McLean might have positioned on the high ground. “See?” Campbell pointed at the fleet, and Moore, shading his eyes against the setting sun, saw longboats nestling against the hulls of the transports.

Moore took a small telescope from a pocket and opened its tubes. It took a moment to train and focus the glass, then he saw men in green coats clambering down into one of the longboats. “I do believe,” he said, still gazing at the sight, “that they plan to call on us.”

“I don’t have a glass,” Campbell said resentfully.

Moore took the hint and offered the glass to the captain who took an age to adjust the lenses. Campbell, like Moore, saw the men filling the small boats. He saw too that they were carrying muskets. “You think they’ll attack us?” he asked, sounding surprised at such a thought.

“I think we’d best assume so,” Moore suggested. It was possible that the men were being redistributed among the transport ships, but why do that now? It seemed far more likely that the Americans planned a landing.

“Bring your fellows here,” Campbell ordered.

The American warships were still shooting at Mowat’s sloops, though their fire was desultory now and none, not even the Hazard, was venturing close to the harbor mouth. Two of the attacking ships had already sailed out of range and dropped their anchors. Moore brought his men to join the rest of Campbell’s picquets just as the longboats left the shelter of the transports’ hulls and pulled towards the shore. The sun was very low now, dazzling the redcoats among the bluff’s trees. “They’re coming!” Captain Campbell sounded astonished.

“Are the men’s muskets loaded, Sergeant?” Moore asked McClure.

“Aye, sir.”

“Leave the muskets uncocked,” Moore ordered. He did not want a shot wasted by a careless man accidentally pulling the trigger.

“Ensign Campbell, John Campbell!” Captain Campbell shouted, “run back to the fort and tell the brigadier the rascals are coming!”

The kilted ensign left and Moore watched the approaching boats, noting that they were having a hard time in the rising wind. The bay’s waves were short and sharp, smacking hard against the big rowboats to smother their oarsmen and passengers with spray.

“McLean had best send reinforcements,” Campbell said nervously.

“We can see those fellows off,” Moore responded, surprised at how confident he felt. There were some eighty redcoats on the bluff and the enemy, he guessed, numbered at least two hundred men, but those two hundred had to clamber up the bluff and the first fifty or sixty feet were so steep that no man could climb and use a musket at the same time. After that the slope flattened somewhat, but it was still precipitous, and the redcoats, positioned at the summit, could fire down at men struggling up the hill. A last flurry of cannon-fire sounded from the south, the thunder echoing briefly, and Moore, without asking for orders from Campbell, leaped a few paces down the upper slope to a place where he could see the attackers more clearly.

“We’ll wait for the brigadier’s reinforcements,” Campbell called reprovingly.

“Of course, sir,” Moore said, hiding his disdain for the tall highlander. Campbell had sent the ensign back to the fort, but that was a journey of almost three quarters of a mile, much of it through tangling undergrowth, and McLean’s reinforcements had to make the same journey back. By the time they arrived the Yankees would long have landed. If the Americans were to be stopped then Campbell’s men must do the job, but Moore sensed his commander’s nervousness. “Bring the men down here, Sergeant,” he called to McClure and, ignoring Archibald Campbell’s plaintive inquiry as to what he thought he was doing, led McClure and the other Hamiltons north along the bluff’s shoulder. They were at the place where the easier upper slope ended, just above the steepest part of the hill, and Moore was positioning his men so that they would be directly above the beach to which the Americans rowed. He was feeling a sudden excitement. He had dreamed of battle for so long and now it was imminent, though it was nothing like his dreams. In those dreams he was on a wide-open field and the enemy was in dense ranks beneath their flags, and cavalry was on the flanks, and bands were playing and Moore had often imagined surviving the enemy volleys until he ordered his own men to fire back, but instead he was scrambling through bushes and watching a flotilla of large longboats pull hard for the shore.

Those boats were close now, not more than a hundred paces from the narrow beach where the short, wind-driven waves broke white. Then a gun sounded. Moore saw a cloud of smoke appear amidships on one of the transport ships and realized it had been a small cannon aboard that ship. The round shot crashed noisily through the bluff’s trees, startling birds into the evening sky, and Moore thought the single shot must presage a bombardment, but no more guns fired. Instead two flags broke from the ship’s yardarm and the longboats suddenly rested their oars. The boats wallowed in the turbulent water, then began to turn around. They were going back.

“God damn them,” Moore said. He watched the boats turn clumsily and realized the Americans had abandoned their plans. “Give them a volley,” he ordered McClure. The range was long, but Moore’s frustration seethed in him. “Fire!” he snapped at the Sergeant.

The Hamiltons cocked their muskets, aimed, and let loose a ragged volley. The musket sound stuttered in the trees. Moore was standing to one side and was certain he saw a man in the nearest rowboat thrown violently forward. “Hold your fire!” Campbell shouted angrily from the summit.

“We hit a man,” Moore told McClure.

“We did?” the Sergeant sounded disbelieving.

“One less rebel, Sergeant,” Moore said, “God damn their disloyal souls.”

The wind carried the musket smoke away and the sun, which had momentarily been obscured by a ribbon of cloud above the bay’s western shore, suddenly flared bright and dazzling. There was a silence, except for the rush of wind and the fret of breaking waves.

A cheer sounded as the sun set. Brigadier McLean had led his officers down to the shore and along the beach to a place just beyond the Half Moon Battery and there, within easy earshot of the three Royal Navy sloops, he saluted them. To McLean, watching from the low unfinished ramparts of Fort George, it had appeared that the Americans had tried to enter the harbor but had been repulsed by Mowat’s guns, and so McLean wanted to thank the navy. His officers faced the ships, raised their hats and McLean led them in three heartfelt cheers.

The Union flag still flew above Fort George.

* * *

“An Indian named John,” Wadsworth said.

“What was that? Who?” General Lovell had been whispering to his secretary and missed his deputy’s words.

“The man who died, sir. He was an Indian named John.”

“And then there were forty,” a man spoke from the cabin’s edge.

“Not one of ours, then,” Saltonstall said.

“A brave man,” Wadsworth said, frowning at both comments. The Indian had been struck by a musket-ball the previous evening, just after the assault boats had turned away from the shore. A small volley of musketry had crackled from the woods on the bluff and, though the range war far beyond any hope of accuracy, the British ball had struck the Indian in the chest, killing him in seconds. Wadsworth, on board the Sally, had seen the survivors climb aboard, their coats spattered with John’s blood.

“Just why did we abandon last night’s landing?” Saltonstall asked dourly. The commodore had tipped his chair back so that he looked at the army officers down his long nose.

“The wind was too strong,” Lovell explained, “and we discerned that we should have difficulties returning the boats to the transports to embark the second division.”

The leaders of the expedition were meeting for a council of war in the commodore’s cabin on board the Warren. Twenty-one men crowded about the table, twelve of them captains of the warships while the rest were majors or colonels from the militia. It was Monday morning, the wind had dropped, there was no fog and the skies above Penobscot Bay were clear and blue. “The question,” Lovell opened the proceedings by tapping a long finger against the commodore’s polished table, “is whether we should exert our full force against the enemy today.”

“What else?” Captain Hallet, who commanded the Massachusetts Navy brigantine Active, asked.

“If the ships were to assault the enemy vessels,” Lovell suggested diffidently, “and we were to land the men, I think God would prosper our endeavors.”

“He surely would,” the Reverend Murray said confidently.

“You want me to enter the harbor?” Saltonstall asked, alarmed.

“If that is necessary to destroy the enemy shipping?” Lovell responded with a question.

“Let me remind you,” the commodore let his chair fall forward with a sharp bang, “that the enemy presents a line of guns supported by batteries and beneath the artillery of a fortress. To take ships into that damned hole without a reconnaissance would be the very height of madness.”

“Fighting madness,” someone muttered from the after part of the cabin, and Saltonstall glared at the officers there, but made no comment.

“You are suggesting, perhaps, that we have not reconnoitered sufficiently?” Lovell still spoke in questions.

“We have not,” Saltonstall said firmly.

“Yet we know where the enemy guns are situated,” Wadsworth said, just as firmly.

Saltonstall glared at the younger brigadier. “I take my fleet into that damned hole,” he said, “and I get tangled with their damned ships and all you have is a mess of wreckage, maybe ablaze, and all the while the damned enemy is pouring shot at us from their land batteries. You wish to explain to the Navy Board that I lost a precious frigate at the insistence of the Massachusetts Militia?”

“God will watch over you,” the Reverend Murray assured the commodore.

“God, sir, is not manning my guns!” Saltonstall snarled at the clergyman. “I wish to God He were, but instead I have a crew of pressed men! Half the bastards have never seen a gun fired!”

“Let us not be heated,” Lovell put in hastily.

“Would it help, Commodore, if the battery on Cross Island were to be removed?” Wadsworth asked.

“Its removal is essential,” Saltonstall said.

Lovell looked helplessly at Wadsworth who began to think what troops he could use to assault the island, but Captain Welch intervened. “We can do that, sir,” the tall marine said confidently.

Lovell smiled in relief. “Then it seems we have a plan of action, gentlemen,” he said, and so they did. It took an hour of discussion to resolve the plan’s details, but when the hour was over it had been decided that Captain Welch would lead over two hundred marines to attack the British battery on Cross Island and while that operation was being conducted the warships would again engage the three sloops so that their guns could not be trained on Welch’s men. At the same time, to prevent the British from sending reinforcements south across the harbor, General Lovell would launch another attack on the peninsula. Lovell offered the plan for the Council’s approval and was rewarded with unanimous consent. “I feel confident,” Lovell said happily, “supremely confident, that Almighty God will shower blessings on this day’s endeavors.”

“Amen,” the Reverend Murray said, “and amen.”

Captain Michael Fielding sought out General McLean shortly after dawn. The general was seated in the new sunlight outside the large store-hut that had just been completed inside the fort. A servant was shaving McLean who smiled ruefully at Fielding. “Shaving’s difficult with a gimped right arm,” the general explained.

“Lift your chin, sir,” the servant said, and there was no talking for a moment as the razor scraped up the general’s neck.

“What’s on your mind, Captain?” McLean asked as the razor was rinsed.

“An abatis, sir.”

“An excellent thing to have on your mind,” McLean said lightly, then was silent again as the servant toweled his face. “Thank you, Laird,” he said as the cloth was taken from his neck. “Have you breakfasted, Captain?”

“Thin commons, sir.”

McLean smiled. “I’m told the hens have begun to lay. Can’t have you fellows starving. Laird? Be a good fellow and see if Graham can conjure up some poached eggs.”

“Aye, sir,” the servant gathered his bowl, towel, razor, and strop, “and coffee, sir?”

“I shall promote you to colonel if you can find me coffee, Laird.”

“You promoted me to general yesterday, sir,” Laird said, grinning.

“I did? Then give me cause to preserve your exalted rank.”

“I shall do my best, sir.”

McLean led Fielding to the fort’s western rampart, which faced towards the high wooded bluff. It was ridiculous to call it a rampart, for it was still unfinished and a fit man could leap it easily. The ditch beyond was shallow and the pointed stakes in its bed would hardly delay the enemy for a moment. McLean’s men had begun work to heighten the wall at dawn, but the general knew he needed another week’s uninterrupted labor simply to make the ramparts high enough to deter an attack. He used his stick to help himself up the mound of logs and hard-packed soil that formed the rampart and stared across the harbor, beyond Mowat’s flotilla, to where the enemy warships were anchored in the bay. “No fog this morning, Captain.”

“None, sir.”

“God smiles on us, eh?”

“He is an Englishman, sir, remember?” Fielding suggested with a smile. Captain Michael Fielding was also an Englishman, an artilleryman in a dark blue coat. He was thirty years old, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and disconcertingly elegant, looking as if he would be far more at home in some London salon than in this American wilderness. He was the epitome of the kind of Englishman McLean instinctively disliked, he was too languid, too superior, and too handsome, but to McLean’s surprise Captain Fielding was also efficient, cooperative, and intelligent. He led fifty gunners and commanded a strange assortment of cannon: six-pounders, nine-pounders, and twelve-pounders; some on field carriages, a few on garrison carriages, and the rest on naval trucks. The guns had been scraped together from the depots in Halifax to form makeshift batteries, but then, McLean thought, everything about this expedition was makeshift. He did not have enough men, enough ships, or enough guns.

“Aye,” McLean said wistfully, “I would like an abatis.”

“If you can lend me forty men, sir?” Fielding suggested.

McLean thought about the request. He had almost two hundred men scattered in a picquet line guarding those places where the Yankees might attempt a landing. He reckoned the enemy’s approach to the bluff the previous evening had been just that, a bluff. They wanted him to think they would assault the peninsula’s western end, but he was certain they would choose either the harbor or the neck, and the neck was by far the likeliest landing place. Yet he had to guard all the possible landing places, and the picquets watching the shore consumed almost a third of his men. The rest were laboring to deepen the fort’s well and raise the fort’s walls, but if he were to grant Fielding’s request then he must detach some of those men, which meant slower progress on the vital ramparts. Yet the abatis was a good idea. “Will forty men be enough?”

“We’d need an ox team too, sir.”

“Aye, you will,” McLean said, but his ox teams were busy hauling material from the harbor’s beach, where most of Fielding’s guns were still parked.

McLean glanced at the twin bastions that flanked the fort’s western wall. So far he only had two guns mounted, which was a paltry defense. It would be easy enough to bring more guns into the fort, but the wall was now just at the height where those guns needed platforms, and platforms took time and men. “Where would you place the abatis?” he asked.

Fielding nodded westwards. “I’d cover that approach, sir, and the northern side.”

“Aye,” McLean agreed. An abatis curving around the west and north of the fort would obstruct any Yankee attack from either the bluff or the neck.

“Much of the timber’s already cut, sir,” Fielding said, attempting to persuade McLean.

“So it is, so it is,” McLean said distractedly. He beckoned the Englishman off the wall and across the ditch so they were out of earshot of the working parties that laid logs on top of the rampart. “Let me be frank with you, Captain,” McLean said heavily.

“Of course, sir.”

“There are thousands of the rebel rascals. If they come, Captain, and they will come, then I must suppose that two or three thousand will attack us. You know what that means?”

Fielding was silent for a few seconds, then nodded. “I do, sir.”

“I’ve seen enough war,” McLean said ruefully.

“You mean, sir, we can’t stand against three thousand men?”

“Oh, we can stand, Captain. We can give them a bloody nose, right enough, but can we defeat them?” McLean turned and gestured at the half-finished wall. “If that rampart was ten feet high I could die of old age inside the fort, and if we had a dozen guns mounted then I dare say we could defeat ten thousand men. But if they come today? Or tomorrow?”

“They’ll overrun us, sir.”

“Aye, they will. And that’s not cowardice speaking, Captain.”

Fielding smiled. “No one, sir, can accuse General McLean of cowardice.”

“I thank you, Captain,” McLean said, then stared west towards the high ground. The ridge rose gently, studded with the stumps of felled trees. “I’m being candid with you, Captain,” he went on. “The enemy is going to come, and we’re going to show defiance, but I don’t want a massacre here. I’ve seen that happen. I’ve seen men enraged to fury and seen them slaughter a garrison, and I did not come here to lead good young Scotsmen to an early grave.”

“I understand you, sir,” Fielding said.

“I hope you do.” McLean turned to look north where the cleared ground dropped away to the woods that screened the wide neck. That was where he thought his enemy would appear. “We’ll do our duty, Captain,” he said, “but I’ll not fight to the last man unless I see a chance of defeating the rascals. Enough mothers in Scotland have lost their sons.” He paused, then gave the artillery officer a smile, “But I’ll not surrender too easily either, so this is what we’ll do. Make your abatis. Start on the northern side, Captain. How many field-mounted guns do you have?”

“Three nine-pounders, sir.”

“Put them just outside the fort on the northeastern corner. You have case-shot?”

“Plenty, sir, and Captain Mowat’s sent some grape.”

“Well and good. So if the enemy comes from the north, which I think they will, you can give them a warm welcome.”

“And if they come this way, sir?” Fielding asked, pointing to the high western bluff.

“We lose our gamble,” McLean admitted. He hoped he had judged the tall Englishman right. A foolish man might construe the conversation as cowardice, even treasonable cowardice, but McLean reckoned Fielding was subtle and sensible enough to understand what had just been said. Brigadier Francis McLean had seen enough war to know when fighting was pointless, and he did not want hundreds of needless deaths on his conscience, but nor did he want to hand the rebels an easy victory. He would fight, he would do his duty, and he would cease to fight when he saw that defeat was inevitable. McLean turned back towards the fort, then suddenly remembered a matter that needed to be aired. “Have your rogues been stealing potatoes from Doctor Calef’s garden?” he asked.

“Not that I know of, sir.”

“Well someone has, and the doctor’s not happy!”

“Isn’t it early for potatoes, sir?”

“That won’t stop them! And doubtless they taste well enough, so tell your fellows I’ll be flogging the next man caught stealing the doctor’s potatoes. Or anyone else’s vegetables for that matter. Dear me, I do despair of soldiers. You could march them through heaven and they’d steal every last harp.” McLean gestured towards the fort. “Now let’s see if those eggs are cooked.”

There was a chance, McLean thought, just a slender chance that a rebel attack could be repulsed and Fielding’s proposed abatis would increase that chance a little. An abatis was simply an obstacle of rough timber; a line of big branches and untrimmed trunks. An abatis could not stop an assault, but it would slow an enemy attack as men sought a way through the tangle of timber and, as the Yankees bunched behind the web of branches, Fielding’s guns could hammer them with case-shot like giant shotguns. McLean would place the three nine-pounders on his right flank so that as the enemy came round the open space at the end of the abatis they would advance straight into the cannon-fire, and raw troops, inexperienced in war, would be cowed by such concentrated artillery fire. Maybe, just maybe, the abatis would give the guns time enough to persuade the enemy not to press home their attack. That was a slim chance, but if the Yankees came from the west, from the bluff, then McLean reckoned there was no chance at all. He simply did not have enough artillery and so he would greet them with shots from the two guns emplaced on the western ramparts and then submit to the inevitable.

Laird had poached eggs waiting on a table set in the open air. “And you have fried potatoes, sir,” he said happily.

“Potatoes, Laird?”

“New little potatoes, sir, fresh as daisies. And coffee, sir.”

“You’re a rogue, Laird, you’re an unprincipled damned rogue.”

“Yes, sir, I am, sir, and thank you, sir.”

McLean sat to his breakfast. He looked up at the flag that flew so bright in the day’s new light and wondered what flag would fly there as the sun set. “We must do our best,” he told Fielding, “and that’s all we can do. Our best.”

The marines would be attacking the British battery on Cross Island, which meant General Wadsworth could not use them in the assault on the bluff. “That really doesn’t signify,” Solomon Lovell had declared. “I’m sure the marines are very fine fellows,” he had told Wadsworth, “but we Massachusetts men must do the work! And we can do the work, upon my soul, we can!”

“Under your inspired leadership, General,” the Reverend Murray chimed in.

“Under God’s leadership,” Lovell had said reprovingly.

“The good Lord chooses His instruments,” Murray said.

“So this will be a victory for the militia alone,” Lovell had told Wadsworth.

And Wadsworth thought that perhaps Lovell was right. He felt that hope as he stood on the afterdeck of the sloop Bethaiah and listened to Major Daniel Littlefield talk to the men of the York County militia. “The redcoats are just boys!” Littlefield told his men. “And they’re not trained to fight the way we fight. Remember all those evenings on the training field? Some of you groused about that, you’d rather have been drinking Ichibod Flander’s spruce beer, but you’ll thank me when we’re ashore. You’re trained! And you’re better than any damned redcoat! They’re not cunning like you are, they don’t shoot as straight as you do, and they’re frightened! Remember that! They’re frightened young boys a long way from home.” Littlefield grinned at his men, then pointed at a bearded giant who crouched in the front row of his assembled troops. “Isaac Whitney, you tell me this. Why do British soldiers wear red?”

Whitney frowned. “Maybe so the blood don’t show?”

“No!” Littlefield cried. “They wear red to make themselves easy targets!” The men laughed. “And you’re all good shooters,” Littlefield went on, “and today you shoot for liberty, for your homes, for your wives, for your sweethearts, and so that none of us has to live under a foreign tyranny!”

“Amen to that,” a man called.

“No more taxes!” another man shouted.

“Amen to that!” Littlefield said. The York County captain exuded confidence, and Wadsworth, watching and listening, felt immensely cheered. The militia was understrength and too many of its men were graybeards or else hardly men at all, yet Daniel Littlefield was inspiring them. “We’re going ashore,” Littlefield said, “and we have to climb that rare steep slope. See it, boys?” He pointed to the bluff. “It’ll be a hard enough climb, but you’ll be among trees. The redcoats can’t see you among the trees. Oh, they’ll shoot, but they won’t be aiming, and you just climb, boys. If you don’t know where to go, follow me. I’ll be going straight up that slope and at the top I’m going to shoot some of those red-coated boys all the way back across the ocean. And remember,” he paused, looking earnestly at his men one by one, “remember! They’re much more frightened of you than you are of them. Oh, I know they look very fine and fancy on parade, but it’s when you’re in the woods and the guns begin to speak that a soldier earns his pay, and we’re the better soldiers. You hear that? We’re the better soldiers, and we’re going to kick their royal backsides from here to kingdom come!” The men cheered that sentiment. Littlefield waited for the cheer to stop. “Now, boys, go clean your guns, oil your locks, and sharpen your bayonets. We have God’s great work to do.”

“A fine speech,” Wadsworth congratulated the major.

Littlefield smiled. “A true speech, sir.”

“I never doubted it.”

“Those redcoats are just frightened boys,” Littlefield said, looking towards the bluff where, he assumed, the British infantry was waiting among the trees. “We magnify the enemy, sir. We think because they wear red coats that they must be ogres, but they’re just boys. They march very prettily, and they know how to stand in a straight line, but that doesn’t make them soldiers! We’ll beat them. You were at Lexington, I think?”

“I was.”

“Then you saw the redcoats run!”

“I saw them retreat, yes.”

“Oh, I don’t deny they’re disciplined, sir, but you still beat them back. They’re not trained for this sort of fight. They’re trained to fight big battles in open land, not to be murdered in the undergrowth, so don’t you have any doubts, sir. We shall win.”

And the major was right, Wadsworth reflected, the redcoats were trained to fight great battles where men had to stand in the open and exchange musket volleys. Wadsworth had seen that at Long Island and he had reluctantly admired the enemy’s iron discipline, but here? Here among Majabigwaduce’s dark trees? The discipline would surely be eroded by fear.

The British battery atop the bluff bellowed noise and smoke. It was invisible from the Bethaiah because the redcoats had positioned it to fire south towards the harbor entrance rather than west towards the anchored transports. The guns were shooting towards the Hampden, which was again cannonading the British sloops. The Tyrannicide and Black Prince sailed behind the New Hampshire ship, their job to distract the British and keep the Royal Marines on board the sloops. Wadsworth wondered how well the guns on the heights of Dyce’s Head were protected. “Your task,” he said to Littlefield, “is merely to threaten the enemy. You understand that?”

“A demonstration, sir, to dissuade the enemy from reinforcing Cross Island?”

“Precisely.”

“But if we perceive an opportunity?” Littlefield asked with a smile.

“It would certainly be a blessing to the commodore if we could destroy those guns,” Wadsworth said, nodding towards the fog of powder smoke lingering around the bluff.

“I make no promises, sir,” Littlefield said, “but I reckon my men will feel happier with God’s good earth under their feet. Let me sniff the enemy, sir. If they’re few, then we’ll make them fewer still.”

“But no undue risks, Major,” Wadsworth said sternly. “We’ll land in force tomorrow. I don’t want to lose you this evening!”

“Oh, you won’t lose me!” Littlefield said with amusement. “I intend to watch the very last redcoat leave America, and I’ll help him on his way with a boot up his royal backside.” He turned back to his men. “Right, you rogues! Into the boats! We’ve got redcoats to kill!”

“Be careful, Major,” Wadsworth said, and immediately regretted the words because, to his ears, they sounded weak.

“Don’t you worry, sir,” Littlefield said, “we’re going to win!”

And Wadsworth believed him.

That afternoon as the American ships again closed on the harbor mouth and opened fire against the three British vessels, Marine Captain Welch was on board the Continental sloop Providence, which was leading the two Massachusetts Navy brigs, the Pallas and Defence. The wind was light and the three small ships were all under oars. “We call it the white ash wind,” Hoysteed Hacker, the captain of the Providence, told Welch.

The ash oars were monstrously long and very awkward to pull, but the navy crew worked enthusiastically to drive the sloop southwards against the flooding tide. They were rowing towards the channel which ran south of Cross Island. “There’s a rock right in the damned center of the channel,” Hacker said, “and no one knows how deep it lies. But the tide will help us once we’re in the channel.”

Welch nodded, but said nothing. He was gazing back north. The American ships were again bombarding the three British sloops who were now firing back, blanketing their hulls in gray-white smoke. More smoke shrouded the northern side of Cross Island where the British battery was hammering its shot at the attacking Americans. Further north Welch could see the longboats pulling away from the transport ships. Good. The British must know why the Providence, Pallas, and Defence were working their way around Cross Island, but they dared not send reinforcements across the harbor, not while a major attack threatened the bluff. “We land soon,” Welch growled at his men as the oarsmen turned the sloop into the narrow channel, “and we fix bayonets, and we go fast! You understand? We go fast!”

But just then a grinding noise sounded deep in the Providence’s hull and the sloop jarred to an instant stop. “Rock,” Hoysteed Hacker explained laconically.

So the marines, over two hundred of them, could not go fast, because they had to wait while the tide lifted the Providence’s hull over the sunken rock. Welch simmered. He wanted to kill, he wanted to fight, and instead he was stranded in the channel and all he could see now was the wooded hump of Cross Island with the smoke discoloring the sky above. The sound of the guns was incessant, a melding thunder, and sometimes amidst that devil’s drumroll would come the crunch of a shot striking timber. Welch fidgeted. He imagined redcoats being ferried across the harbor, and still the Providence could make no headway.

“Damn it!” Welch burst out.

“Tide’s rising,” Hoysteed Hacker said. He was a large man, as tall as Welch, whose broad shoulders strained the seams of his naval uniform. He had a heavy face, thick-browed and lantern-jawed, with a ragged scar on the left cheek. The scar had been caused by a boarding pike wielded by a British sailor on HMS Diligent, the brig Hacker had captured. That sailor had died, gutted by Hacker’s heavy cutlass, and the Diligent was now anchored in Penobscot Bay and flying the ensign of the Continental Navy. Hoysteed Hacker was not going to be intimidated by Welch’s impatience. “Can’t hurry the tide,” he said.

“How long, for God’s sake?”

“Long as it takes.”

They had to wait half an hour, but at last the Providence’s keel cleared the sunken rock and the sloop pulled on towards a small stony beach. Her bows touched the land and were held there by the light wind. The two smaller brigs grounded on either side and green-coated marines leaped into the water and waded ashore, carrying cartridge cases and muskets above their heads. Welch was leading one company while Captain Davis, who still wore the blue coat of the Continental Army rather than marine green, led the other. “Let’s go,” Welch said.

The marines fixed bayonets. The trees muffled the sound of the battery’s guns only three hundred yards to the north. The British had posted no sentinels on the island’s southern side, but Welch knew they would have seen the masts above the trees and he supposed they would be turning a cannon to face the expected attack. “Make it quick!” Welch shouted as he led the way.

Two hundred and twenty marines went into the trees. They advanced in rough order, their bayonets glinting in the lowering sun that flickered through the thick pines. They climbed the island’s slope, breasted the summit, and there, below them and just visible through the thick trunks, was a small encampment on the beach. There were four tents, a flagpole, and the battery where blue and red coats showed, and Welch, seeing the enemy close, felt the rage of battle rise in him, a rage fed by his hatred of the British. No gun faced him. The damned enemy was still firing at the American ships. He would teach them to kill Americans! He slid the naval cutlass from its scabbard, screamed a war shout, and led the charge down the hill.

Twenty-two artillerymen manned the battery and twenty Royal Marines guarded them. They heard the enemy marines shouting, they saw the reflected sunlight glinting from the long blades, and the artillerymen ran. They had longboats beached close to the battery, and they abandoned the guns, abandoned everything, and sprinted for their boats. They shoved the three boats off the shingle and scrambled aboard just as the American marines burst from the trees. One boat was slow. It was afloat, but when the two men who had been pushing its bows tumbled over the gunwale, the boat grounded again. A gunner sergeant jumped out and heaved at the boat afresh, and a voice shouted a warning as a tall marine ran into the shallows. The sergeant heaved again at the boat’s bows, then his coat was seized and he was flung back towards the beach. The longboat floated free and its oarsmen pulled desperately, turning and driving the boat towards the Nautilus, the nearest British sloop. The green-coated marines fired at the rowers. Musket-balls thumped into the gunwales, an oarsman let go of his loom to clap a hand on an arm suddenly bright with blood, then a volley of musketry banged from the Nautilus’s forecastle and the balls whistled about the marines’ heads.

The blue-coated artillery sergeant took a swing at Welch who blocked the fist with his left hand and, in a rage, slashed his cutlass at the sergeant’s neck. The blade hit home, Welch sawed it, and blood sprayed high. Welch was still screaming. Red misted his vision as he grabbed the wounded man’s hair and pulled him onto the newly sharpened blade, and there was still more blood jetting now, and the gunner sergeant was making a choking, gurgling noise and Welch, his green coat darkened with spatters of British blood, was grunting as he tried to slice the blade deeper still. The tide diluted the blood, and then the sergeant fell and the shallow water momentarily clouded around his twitching body. Welch put a boot on the man’s head and forced him underwater. He held the dying man there until the body was still

More muskets fired from the Nautilus, though the Royal Marines on the sloop’s forecastle were shooting at long musket range and none of the Americans on Cross Island’s beach was hit. The Nautilus’s broadside faced west, and no guns could be levered round to face the beach and so the Royal Marines shot muskets instead. “Into the battery!” Captain Davis called. The captured battery faced northwest and a low hump of rocky land protected it from the Nautilus so that the rebels were safe enough when they were within its low breastworks. They discovered four guns in the emplacement. Two still had barrels too hot to touch from firing at the American ships, but the other pair had yet to be mounted on their carriages, which stood forlorn beside a rough pit that had been dug as a ready magazine. Captain Davis traced a finger over the royal cipher on one of the unmounted barrels and thought it was kind of King George to provide guns for liberty. Men plundered the tents. There were blankets, bone-handled knives, a fragment of mirror, and a walnut case which held three ivory-handled razors. There was a Bible, evidently much-thumbed, two packs of playing cards, and a set of scrimshaw dice. There was an open barrel of salt pork, a box of ship’s biscuits, and two small casks of rum. Beside the guns were the mallets and iron spikes that should have been used to make the cannon useless, but the speed of the attack had driven the British off before the guns could be spiked.

The British flag still flew. Welch hauled it down and, for the first time that day, a smile showed on his blood-streaked face. He folded the flag carefully, then beckoned to one of his sergeants. “Take this rag back to the Providence,” he ordered, “and ask Captain Hacker for the loan of a boat and crew. He expects to be asked. Then take the flag to General Lovell.”

“To General Lovell?” the sergeant asked, surprised. “Not to the commodore, sir?” Commodore Saltonstall was the marine’s commander, not the brigadier.

“Take it to General Lovell,” Welch said. “That flag,” he pointed over the rocky hump of land where, in the evening light, the flag above Fort George just showed, “that flag will belong to the marines.” He looked down at the folds of sun-faded cloth in his big hands, then, with a shudder, spat on the flag. “Tell General Lovell this is a gift.” He thrust the flag into the sergeant’s hands. “You got that? Tell him it’s a gift from the marines.”

Because Welch reckoned Brigadier-General Goddamned Solomon Lovell needed to know who was going to win this campaign. Not Lovell’s militia, but the marines. The marines, the best, the winners. And Welch would lead them to victory.

From a Petition signed by thirty-two officers belonging to the American warships in Penobscot Bay and sent to Commodore Saltonstall, July 27th, 1779:To the Honorable the Commodore and Commander in Chief of the Fleet . . . we your petitioners strongly Impress’d with the importance of the Expedition, and earnestly desire to render our Country all the Service in our power Wou’d represent to your Honor, that the most spedy Exertions shou’d be used to Accomplish the design we came upon. We think Delays in the present Case are extremely dangerous: as our Enemies are daily Fortifying and Strengthening themselves. . . . We don’t mean to Advise, or Censure Your past Conduct, But intend only to express our desire of improving the present Opportunity to go Immediately into the Harbor, and Attack the Enemys Ships.

From the Journal of Sergeant William Lawrence, Royal Artillery, 13th July 1779:The night is thought by our enemy to be the most Favorable time for storming Encampments . . . and None are so ready of taking that Advantage than his Majesty’s subjects now in Rebellion, who in the Open field tremble for a British soldier.

From General Lovell’s orderly book, July 24th, 1779, Head-Quarters on board the Transport Sally:The Officers will be careful that every man is compleatly Equipt in Arms and Ammunition and that they have drink in their Canteens and a Morcel for their Pockets . . . the General flatters himself that should there be an Opportunity he will have the utmost exertions of every Officer and Soldier not only to maintain, but to add new Lustre to the Fame of the Massachusetts Militia.

Chapter Six

The daylight was fading. The western sky glowed red and its light was reflected in lurid, shifting ripples across the bay. The rebel ships had been firing at the three British sloops, but, just as on the previous day, none had tried to pierce Mowat’s line and so enter the harbor. They fired from a distance, aiming at the lingering cloud of red-touched, mast-pierced powder-smoke that shrouded the king’s ships.

A cheer sounded from the rebel ships when they saw the flag taken down on Cross Island. Every man knew what that meant. The British had lost the battery to the south of the harbor entrance and the Americans could now make their own battery there, a battery that would be close to Mowat’s line and could hammer his three ships mercilessly. The southern bulwark of the harbor, Cross Island, was captured and, as the sun leaked scarlet fire across the west and as the rebel ships still pounded their shots towards the distant sloops, Major Daniel Littlefield’s militia was being rowed towards the northern bulwark.

That bulwark was Dyce’s Head, the high rocky bluff on which the redcoats waited and from where the battery of six-pounders fired down at the bombarding ships. The evening was so calm that the smoke of the guns hung in the trees, indeed there was scarce enough breeze to move the American ships that belched flame, bar shot, chain shot, and round shot towards Mowat’s three sloops, but a vagary of that small wind, a sudden stirring of the summer air, lasted just long enough to blow the smoke away from HMS Albany, which lay at the center of Mowat’s line, and the Scottish captain, standing on his afterdeck, saw the longboats pulling away from the American transports and heading towards the bluff. “Mister Frobisher!” Mowat called.

The Albany’s first lieutenant, who was supervising the starboard guns, turned towards his captain. “Sir?”

A shot whistled overhead. Bar or chain shot, Mowat reckoned from the sound. The rebels seemed to have been aiming at his rigging mostly, but their gunnery was poor and none of the sloops had suffered significant damage. A few shrouds and halliards had been parted, and the hulls were scarred, but the sloops had lost neither men nor weapons. “There are launches approaching the shore,” Mowat called to Frobisher, “d’you see them?”

“Aye aye, sir, I see them!”

Frobisher tapped a gun captain on the shoulder. The gunner was a middle-aged man with long gray hair twisted into a pigtail. He had a scarf wrapped about his ears. He saw where Frobisher was pointing and nodded to show he understood what was wanted. His cannon, a nine-pounder, was already loaded with round shot. “Run her out!” he ordered, and his crew seized the train-tackle and hauled the cannon so that the muzzle protruded from the gunwale. He shouted at his gun-deafened men to turn the heavy carriage, which they did with long spikes that gouged Mowat’s carefully holy-stoned deck. “Don’t suppose we’ll hit the buggers,” the gun captain said to Frobisher, “but we might make ’em wet.” He could no longer see the rebel rowboats because the vagary of wind had died and thick pungent smoke was again enveloping the Albany, but he reckoned his cannon was pointed in the right general direction. The gun captain thrust a thin spike through the touchhole to pierce the canvas powder bag in the breech, then slid a portfire, a quill filled with finely mealed powder, into the hole he had made. “Stand back, you bastards!” he bellowed and touched fire to the quill.

The gun shattered the evening air with its noise. Smoke, thick as a London fog, billowed and stank. A flame stabbed the smoke, lighting it and fading instantly. The gun leaped back, its truck wheels screaming until the breech ropes were snatched bar-tight to check the recoil. “Swab out!” the gun captain shouted, plunging his leather-protected thumb onto the touchhole.

“Give those launches one more shot,” Frobisher shouted over the noise of the guns, “then aim at their ships again.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

The cannons had been firing at the American ships which maneuvered three quarters of a mile to the west. The launches were about the same distance away, so the gun captain had not needed to change his barrel’s very slight elevation. He had used a fourth-weight charge, two and a quarter pounds of powder, and the round shot left the muzzle traveling at nine hundred and eighty feet every second. The ball lost some speed as it covered the four thousand three hundred feet before striking the water, but it had taken the shot less than five seconds to cover that distance. It slapped onto a wave, ricocheted shallowly upwards and then, trailing a shower of spray, it struck Major Littlefield’s longboat plumb amidships.

To General Wadsworth, watching from the Bethaiah, it seemed as if the leading longboat simply disintegrated. Strakes of wood flew in the air, a man turned end over end, there was a flurry of white water and then nothing but floating oars, shattered scraps of timber, and men struggling to stay afloat. The other longboats went to the rescue, pulling swimmers from the water as a second round shot splashed harmlessly nearby.

The longboats had stopped pulling for the bluff now. Wadsworth had expected them to land and then return to collect more men, indeed he had planned to go ashore with that second group, but instead the rowboats turned and headed back towards the transports. “I hope Littlefield’s not wounded,” Wadsworth said.

“Take more than a round shot to put the major down, sir,” James Fletcher commented cheerfully. Fletcher was now attached to Wadsworth’s staff as an unofficial aide and local guide.

“I must assume Littlefield decided not to land,” Wadsworth said.

“Hard to fight when you’re wet as a drowned rat, sir.”

“True,” Wadsworth said with a smile, then consoled himself that the threat to the bluff appeared to have achieved its purpose, which was to prevent the British sending reinforcements or a counterattacking force to Cross Island.

The light faded fast. The eastern sky was already dark, though no stars yet showed, and the gunfire died with the day. The American warships sailed slowly back to their anchorage while Mowat’s men, unscarred by the evening’s duel, secured their guns. Wadsworth leaned on the Bethaiah’s gunwale and looked down at the shadowy boats as they approached the sloop. “Major Littlefield!” he hailed. “Major Littlefield!” he called again.

“He’s drowned, sir,” a voice called back.

“He’s what?”

“He and two other men, sir. Lost, sir.”

“Oh, dear God,” Wadsworth said. On shore, at the top of the bluff, a fire showed through the trees. Someone brewing tea, maybe, or cooking a supper.

And Major Littlefield was dead.

“Tragic,” General Lovell said when Wadsworth told him the news of Daniel Littlefield’s death, though Wadsworth was not entirely sure that his commanding officer had listened to what he said. Lovell, instead, was examining a British flag that had been brought on board the Sally by a squat marine sergeant. “Isn’t it splendid!” Lovell exclaimed. “We shall present it to the General Court, I think. A first trophy, Wadsworth!”

“The first of many that your Excellency will send to Boston,” the Reverend Jonathan Murray observed.

“It’s a gift from the marines,” the sergeant put in stolidly.

“So you said, so you said,” Lovell said with a hint of testiness, then he smiled, “and you must render Captain Welch my sincerest gratitude.” He glanced at the table which was covered with papers. “Lift those documents a moment, Marston,” he ordered his secretary and, when the table was clear of paper, ink, and pens, he spread the flag beneath the gently swinging lanterns. It was dark now, and the cabin was lit by four lanterns. “’Pon my soul!”’Lovell stood back and admired the trophy’“but this will look impressive in Faneuil Hall!”

“You might think of sending it to Major Littlefield’s wife,” Wadsworth said.

“To his wife?” Lovell asked, evidently puzzled by the suggestion. “What on earth would she want with a flag?”

“A reminder of her husband’s gallantry?”

“Oh, you’ll write to her,” Lovell said, “and assure her that Major Littlefield died for the cause of liberty, but I can’t think that she needs an enemy flag. Really I can’t. It must go to Boston.” He turned to the marine sergeant. “Thank you, my fine fellow, thank you! I shall make certain the commodore knows of my approbation.”

Lovell had summoned his military family. John Marston, the secretary, was writing in the orderly book, Wadsworth was leafing through the militia rosters, while Lieutenant-Colonel Davis, the liaison officer for the transport ships, was tallying the small craft available for a landing. The Reverend Murray was beaming helpfully, while Major Todd was cleaning a pistol with a scrap of flannel. “You did send my orders to the Artillery Regiment?” Lovell demanded of Todd.

“Indeed, sir,” Todd said, then blew on the pistol’s frizzen to clear some dust.

“Colonel Revere understands the need for haste?”

“I made that need abundantly clear, sir,” Todd said patiently. Lieutenant-Colonel Revere had been commanded to take guns to the newly captured Cross Island, which would now be defended by a garrison of sailors from the Providence and Pallas under the command of Hoysteed Hacker.

“So Colonel Revere’s cannons should be active by dawn?” Lovell asked.

“I see no reason why not,” Wadsworth said.

“And that should dispose of the enemy shipping,” Lovell said happily, “and so open the path to our success. Ah, Filmer! Thank you!”

Filmer, a servant, had brought supper of bacon, beans, and cornbread, which Lovell and his companions ate at the table where the captured flag made a convenient napkin for the general’s greasy hands. “The marines are back on their ships?” Lovell asked.

“They are, sir,” Wadsworth answered.

“Though I suppose we must beg the commodore for their use again,” Lovell said resignedly.

“They are formidable,” Wadsworth said.

Lovell looked mischievous, a small half-smile on his usually solemn face. “Did you hear that the naval officers sent the commodore a letter? Dear me! They chided him for not sailing into the harbor! Can you believe such a thing?”

“The letter shows admirable zeal, sir,” Wadsworth said evenly.

“And it must have caused him embarrassment!” Lovell said, plainly pleased with that thought. “Poor man,” he added dutifully, “but perhaps the remonstrance will spur him to a greater effort?”

“One prays so,” the Reverend Murray said.

“Let us pray it doesn’t make him more obstinate in his dealings,” Wadsworth said, “especially as we shall need his marines when we attack in earnest.”

“I suppose we will need them,” Lovell said grudgingly, “if the commodore is agreeable, of course.”

“It means using a dozen longboats to land all his marines,” Davis said, “and we already lack sufficient boats.”

“I do dislike the idea of landing piecemeal,” Lovell said, evidently toying with the idea of attacking without the marines and so keeping all the glory of victory to the militia.

“Why not use one of the smaller schooners?” Wadsworth suggested. “I’ve seen them being rowed. I’m sure we could take one close enough inshore, and a schooner could carry at least a hundred men.”

Davis considered that solution, then nodded. “The Rachel doesn’t draw much,” he said.

“And we do need the marines,” Wadsworth said pointedly.

“I suppose we do, yes,” Lovell allowed. “Well, we shall request their assistance.” He paused, tapping his knife against the pewter plate. “When we capture the fort,” he said ruminatively, “I don’t want any redcoats escaping north across the isthmus. We should put a force to the north there? A blocking force?”

“Use the Indians?” Major Todd suggested, his spectacles reflecting the lantern-light. “The British are scared of our savages.”

“They’re much too valuable as fighters,” Wadsworth said hastily, “I want them in the assault.”

“Valuable, maybe, when they’re sober,” Major Todd said with a visible shudder, “but they were inebriated again this morning.”

“The Indians?” Lovell asked. “They were drunk?”

“Insensible, sir. The militiamen give them rum as an amusement.”

“The devil is in our midst,” Murray said darkly, “and must be extirpated.”

“He must indeed, Chaplain,” Lovell said and looked at Marston, “so add a command in tonight’s daily orders. No man is to supply rum to the Indians. And, of course, add a mention regretting the death of Major . . .” he paused.

“Littlefield,” Wadsworth said.

“Littlefield,” Lovell went on as if there had been no pause. “Poor Littlefield. He came from Wells, did he not? A fine town. Perhaps his men can block the isthmus? Oh, and Marston, make some acknowledgment of the marines, will you? We must give praise where it’s due, especially if we’re to request the use of them again.” He mopped the grease on his plate with a piece of bread and put it into his mouth just as a hard knock sounded on the cabin door. Before anyone could respond the door was thrust open to reveal an indignant Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who came to the table’s end and stared at Lovell who, his mouth full, could only wave a genial greeting.

“You ordered me to go ashore with the guns,” Revere said accusingly.

“So I did,” Lovell managed to say through his mouthful, “so I did. Are they emplaced already?”

“You can’t mean me to go ashore,” Revere said, with evident indignation. He gave his enemy, Major Todd, a dispassionate glance, then looked back to the general.

Lovell gazed at the commander of his artillery train with some bemusement. “We need guns on Cross Island,” he said finally, “and a new battery. Your task, surely, is to emplace them?”

“I have duties,” Revere said forcefully.

“Yes, Colonel, of course you do,” Lovell said.

“Your duty is to establish a battery on the island,” Wadsworth said forcibly.

“I can’t be everywhere,” Revere declared to Lovell, ignoring Wadsworth, “it isn’t possible.”

“I believe my orders were explicit,” the general said, “and required you to take the necessary guns ashore.”

“And I tell you I have responsibilities,” Revere protested.

“My dear Colonel,” Lovell said, leaning back from the table, “I want a battery on Cross Island.”

“And you shall have one!” Revere said firmly. “But it isn’t a colonel’s job to clear ground, to dig magazines, or to cut down trees to clear fields of fire!”

“No, no, of course not,” Lovell said, flinching from Revere’s anger.

“It is a colonel’s job to establish and to command a battery,” Wadsworth said.

“You’ll have your battery!” Revere snarled.

“Then I shall be satisfied,” Lovell said soothingly. Revere stared at the general for a brief moment and then, with a curt nod, turned and left. Lovell listened to the heavy footsteps climb the companionway, then let out a long breath. “What on earth provoked that display?”

“I can’t say,” Wadsworth answered, as puzzled as Lovell.

“The man is a troublemaker,” Todd said acidly, throwing an accusing look at Wadsworth, who he knew had cleared Revere’s appointment to command the artillery.

“A misunderstanding, I’m sure,” Lovell said. “He’s a very fine fellow! Didn’t he ride to warm you at Lexington?” he asked the question of Wadsworth.

“He and at least twenty others,” Todd answered before Wadsworth could respond, “and who do you suppose was the one rider who failed to reach Concord? Mister Revere,” he stressed the “mister” maliciously, “was captured by the British.”

“I do remember Revere bringing us warning that the regulars were coming,” Wadsworth said, “he and William Dawes.”

“Revere was captured by the British?” Lovell asked. “Oh, poor fellow.”

“Our enemies let him go, sir,” Todd said, “but kept his horse, thus showing a nice appreciation of Mister Revere’s value.”

“Oh, come now, come,” Lovell chided his brigade-major. “Why do you dislike him so?”

Todd took off his spectacles and polished them with the edge of the flag. “It seems to me, sir,” he said, and the tone of his voice indicated he had taken the general’s question with great seriousness, “that the essentials of military success are organization and cooperation.”

“You’re the most organized man I know!” Lovell put in.

“Thank you, sir. But Colonel Revere, sir, resents being under command. He believes, I assume, that he should command. He will go his own way, sir, and we shall go ours, and we shall receive neither cooperation nor organization.” Todd carefully hooked the spectacles back over his ears. “I served with him, sir, in the artillery, and there was constant abrasion, irritation, and conflict.”

“He’s efficient,” Lovell said uncertainly, then more vigorously, “everyone assures me he’s efficient.”

“In his own interests, yes,” Todd said.

“And he knows his guns,” Wadsworth asserted.

Todd looked at Wadsworth and paused before speaking. “I do hope so, sir.”

“He’s a patriot!” Lovell said in a tone of finality. “No one can deny that! Now, gentlemen, back to work.”

The moon was full and its light whispered silver across the bay. The tide was ebbing to carry the Penobscot’s waters out to the wide Atlantic while on Cross Island the rebels were digging a new emplacement for the guns that would hammer Mowat’s ships.

And on the bluff the redcoat picquets waited.

General McLean had been inordinately grateful for the two days’ respite the rebels had granted him. The enemy fleet had arrived on Sunday, now it was late on Tuesday evening and there had still been no attack on Fort George, which had given him the opportunity to emplace two more guns and to raise the parapet by another two feet. He knew only too well how vulnerable his position was. He was resigned to that. He had done his best.

That night he stood at Fort George’s gate, which was nothing more than a brushwork barricade that could be pulled aside by the two sentries. He gazed southwards, admiring the sheen of moonlight on the harbor water. It was a pity that the artillerymen had been driven from their battery on Cross Island, but McLean had always known that position was indefensible. Wer alles verteidigt, verteidigt nichts. Making that battery had consumed men and time that might have been better spent on strengthening Fort George, but McLean did not regret it. The battery had done its work, deterring the American ships from entering the harbor and thus buying the last two days, but now, McLean supposed, the rebel ships would make their assault and with them would come the rebel infantry.

“You look pensive, sir,” Lieutenant Moore joined the general in the gateway.

“Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?”

“I am, sir. This is but a dream.”

McLean smiled. “When are you on duty?”

“Another two hours yet, sir.”

“Then you might accompany me,” the general suggested and led the way eastwards. “You heard the enemy approached the bluff again?”

“Major Dunlop told me, sir.”

“And withdrew again,” McLean said, “which suggests to me they are trying to deceive us.”

“Or lack the nerve to make an assault, sir?”

McLean shook his head. “Never underestimate an enemy, Lieutenant. Treat every foe as though he holds the winning cards and then, when his hand is declared, you won’t be unpleasantly surprised. I think our enemy means us to believe he will assault the bluff, and so force us to commit troops there, while in truth he plans to land elsewhere.”

“Then post me elsewhere, sir.”

“You will stay on the bluff,” McLean said firmly. The general had decided to thicken the picquet line facing north towards the marshy isthmus that joined Majabigwaduce to the mainland, for he still believed that to be the likeliest enemy approach. That picquet line should delay the rebels, and the tangle of the abatis would hold them for a few more moments, but inevitably they would break both those defenses and charge the fort. “If the enemy does land on the neck,” he told Moore, “then I shall recall your picquet and you’ll help defend the fort.”

“Yes, sir,” Moore said resignedly. He feared battle and he wanted battle. If the main fight tomorrow, if a fight even came tomorrow, was to be at the neck then Moore wanted to be there, but he knew he would not change McLean’s mind, and so did not try.

The two men, one so young and the other a veteran of Flanders and Portugal, walked the path just north of the Hatch cornfield. Lamplight glowed bright from the windows of Doctor Calef’s house, their destination. The doctor must have seen them approach in the moonlight because he threw open his door before McLean could knock. “I have a house full of women,” the doctor greeted them morosely.

“Some men are more blessed than others,” McLean said. “Good evening to you, Doctor.”

“There’s tea, I believe,” Calef said, “or something stronger?”

“Tea would be a pleasure,” McLean said.

A dozen women were gathered in the kitchen. The doctor’s wife was there, as were Colonel Goldthwait’s two daughters, the Banks girls, and Bethany Fletcher. They sat on chairs and stools about the big table, which was covered with scraps of cloth. It was evident that the evening gathering was ending, because the women were stowing their work into bags. “A sewing circle?” McLean asked.

“War doesn’t stop a woman’s work, General,” Mrs. Calef answered.

“Nothing does,” McLean said. The women appeared to have been making and mending clothes for children, and McLean remembered his own mother joining just such a group every week. The women would talk, tell stories, and sometimes sing as they darned and stitched. “I’m glad you’re all here,” McLean said, “because I came to warn the good doctor that I expect a rebel attack tomorrow. Ah, thank you,” this last was to the maid who had brought him a mug of tea.

“You’re sure about tomorrow?” Doctor Calef asked.

“I cannot speak for the enemy,” McLean said, “but if I were in his shoes then I would come tomorrow.” In truth, had McLean been in the enemy’s shoes, he would have attacked already. “I wished to tell you,” he went on, “that in the event of an assault you must stay indoors.” He looked at the anxious lamplit faces around the table. “There’s always a temptation to witness a fight, but in the confusion, ladies, a face seen through smoke can be mistaken for an enemy. I have no reason to believe the rebels will want to capture any of your houses, so you should be safe inside your own walls.”

“Wouldn’t we be safer inside the fort?” Doctor Calef asked.

“The very last place to be,” McLean said firmly. “Please, all of you, stay home. This is excellent tea!”

“If the rebels . . .” Mrs. Calef began, then thought better of what she had been about to say.

“If the rebels capture the fort?” McLean suggested helpfully.

“They’ll find all those sworn oaths,” Mrs. Calef said.

“And take revenge,” Jane Goldthwait, whom everyone called Lil for a reason long forgotten, added.

“Mister Moore,” McLean looked at the young lieutenant, “if it looks likely that the fort will fall, then you will be responsible for burning the oaths.”

“I’d rather be killing the enemy on the ramparts, sir.”

“I am sure you would,” McLean said, “but you will destroy the oaths first. That’s an order, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir,” Moore said in a chastened voice.

Over six hundred local people had come to Majabigwaduce and signed the oath of loyalty to King George, and Lil Goldthwait was right, the rebels would want revenge on those folk. Dozens of families who lived about the river had already been forced from their homes in and near Boston and now they faced yet another eviction. McLean smiled. “But we place the carriage in front of the horses, ladies. The fort has not fallen and, I can assure you, we shall do our utmost to repel the enemy.” That was not true. McLean had no wish to stand to the last man. Such a defense would be heroic, but utterly wasteful.

“There are men here who would willingly man the walls with you,” Doctor Calef said.

“I am grateful,” McLean replied, “but such an action would expose your families to the enemy’s anger and I would rather that did not happen. Please, all of you, remain in your homes.”

The general stayed to finish his tea, then he and Moore left. They stood a moment in the doctor’s garden and watched the flicker of moonlight on the harbor. “I think there’ll be a fog tomorrow,” McLean said.

“The air’s warm,” Moore said.

McLean stepped aside as a group of women came from the house. He bowed to them. The Banks girls, both young, were walking back to their father’s house on the western side of the village beneath the fort, while Bethany Fletcher was going directly down the hill to her brother’s house. “I haven’t seen your brother lately, Miss Fletcher,” McLean said.

“He went fishing, sir,” Bethany said.

“And hasn’t returned?” Moore asked.

“He’s sometimes away for a week,” Bethany said, flustered.

“Mister Moore,” McLean said, “do you have time to escort Miss Fletcher safely home before you report for duty?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then pray do so.”

“I’m safe, sir,” Bethany said.

“Indulge an old man’s wishes, Miss Fletcher,” the general said, then bowed, “and I bid you a good night.”

Moore and Bethany walked downhill in silence. It was not far to the small house. They stopped by the woodpile, both feeling awkward. “Thank you,” Bethany said.

“My pleasure, Miss Fletcher,” Moore said, and did not move.

“What will happen tomorrow?” Bethany asked.

“Maybe nothing.”

“The rebels won’t attack?”

“I think they must,” Moore said, “but that is their decision. They should attack soon.”

“Should?” Bethany asked. The moonlight glossed her eyes silver.

“We sent for reinforcements,” Moore said, “though whether any such will come, I don’t know.”

“But if they attack,” Bethany said, “there will be a fight?”

“It’s why we’re here,” Moore said and felt his heart give a lurch at the thought that tomorrow he would discover what soldiering really was, or perhaps the lurch came from gazing at Bethany’s eyes in the moonlight. He wanted to say things to her, but he felt confused and tongue-tied.

“I must go indoors,” she said. “Molly Hatch is sitting beside my mother.”

“Your mother is no better?”

“She will never be better,” Bethany said. “Good night, Lieutenant.”

“Your servant, Miss Fletcher,” Moore said, bowing to her, but even before he straightened she was gone. Moore went to collect his men who would take over the picquet duty on Dyce’s Head.

Dawn was fog-shrouded, though from the new battery on Cross Island the British ships were clearly visible. The closest, HMS Nautilus, was now only a quarter-mile from the big guns that Revere’s men had taken ashore. Those men had worked all night and they had worked well. They had cut a path through the trees of Cross Island and dragged a pair of eighteen-pounder cannon, one twelve-pounder, and a five-and-a-half-inch howitzer to the island’s summit, where the rocky land made a perfect artillery platform. More trees had been felled to open a field of fire for the cannon and in the dawn Captain Hoysteed Hacker, whose sailors were armed with muskets to protect the gunners, gazed at the three British sloops. The furthest away, the North, was a gray shape in the gray fog and mostly hidden by the bulk of the other two sloops, but the closest, Nautilus, was clearly visible. Her figurehead was a bare-chested sailor whose blond hair was wreathed with seaweed. “Aren’t we supposed to be turning that ship to splinters?” Hacker asked the artillery officer. The gunners were standing about their formidable weapons, but no man seemed to be either loading or aiming the guns.

“We lack wadding,” Lieutenant Philip Marett, a cousin of Colonel Revere and the officer commanding the battery, explained.

“You what?”

Marett looked sheepish. “We seem to lack ring-wadding, sir.”

“The round shot is the wrong size too,” a sergeant said grimly.

Hacker scarcely believed what he was hearing. “The round shot? Wrong size?”

The sergeant demonstrated by lifting a round shot and pushing it into the barrel of one of the two eighteen-pounders. One of his men rammed the shot, thrusting the ball up the long gun which, because it was mounted on the highest point of Cross Island, was aimed slightly downwards so that it pointed at the bows of the Nautilus. The gunner pulled the rammer clear and stepped aside. Hacker heard a slight noise from the gun. The rumbling, metal on metal, became louder as the ball rolled slowly down the barrel and then, pathetically, dropped from the muzzle to thump onto the pine needles that coated the ground. “Oh God,” Hacker said.

“There must have been confusion in Boston,” Marett said helplessly. He pointed to a neat pyramid of round shot. “It seems they’re for twelve-pounders,” he went on, “and even if we could wad them the windage would make it near useless.” Windage was the tiny gap between a missile and the cannon’s barrel. All guns suffered from windage, but if the gap was too great then much of the gun’s propellant would waste itself around the ball’s edges.

“You’ve sent for Colonel Revere?”

Marett’s eyes darted round the cleared space as if searching for somewhere to hide. “I’m sure there’s eighteen-pounder ammunition on the Samuel, sir,” he said evasively.

“Suffering Christ,” Hacker said savagely, “it’ll take two hours to fetch it downriver!” The Samuel was anchored well to the north, a long way from the creek south of Cross Island.

“We could open fire with the twelve-pounder,” Marett suggested.

“You have wadding for that?”

“We could use turf?”

“Oh for God’s sake, let’s do it properly,” Hacker said, then had a sudden inspiration. “The Warren mounts eighteen-pounders, doesn’t she?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“She does, and she’s a hell of a lot closer than the Samuel! We’ll ask her for ammunition.”

Hoysteed Hacker’s inspiration proved a happy one. Commodore Saltonstall snorted derision when he heard of the request for ammunition, but he acceded to it, and Captain Welch sent to the General Putnam and ordered Captain Thomas Carnes to assemble a work party of marines to carry the necessary wadding and round shot ashore. Carnes, before he joined the marines, had served in Colonel Gridley’s Artillery Regiment and afterwards commanded a battery of the New Jersey Artillery in the Continental Army and he was a cheerful, energetic man who rubbed his hands with delight when he saw how close the Nautilus lay to the guns. “We can use the twelve-pounder shot in the eighteens,” he declared.

“We can?” Marett asked.

“We’ll double-shot,” Carnes said. “Load an eighteen-pound ball by the charge and wad a twelve on top. We’re going to splinter that nearest ship, boys!” He watched the Massachusetts gunners, all imbued now with enthusiasm from Carnes’s energy, load and lay the cannon. Carnes stooped by the barrel and peered along its upper side. “Aim slightly higher,” he said.

“Higher?” Marett asked. “You want us to aim for the masts?”

“A cold barrel shoots low,” Carnes said, “but as it heats up she’ll shoot true. Lower her elevation after three shots, and take it one degree lower than you reckon necessary. I don’t know why, but round shot always rises from a barrel. It’s just a fraction, but if you compensate then you’ll hit true and hard when the guns are hot.”

The sun was glowing bright in the fog when, at last, the battery opened fire. The two big eighteen-pounders were the ship-killers and Carnes used them to shoot at the Nautilus’s hull while the twelve-pounder fired bar shot at her rigging and the howitzer lobbed shells over the Nautilus to ravage the decks of the North and Albany.

The guns recoiled hard and far on the rocky ground. They needed realigning after each shot, and every discharge filled the space between the cleared trees with thick powder smoke that lingered in the still air. The smoke thickened the fog to such an extent that aiming was impossible until the view cleared, and that necessity slowed the rate of fire, but Carnes heard the satisfying crunch of round shots striking timber. The British could not return the fire. The Nautilus had no bows chasers, and her broadside of nine cannon was aimed west towards the harbor approach. Captain Tom Farnham, who commanded the Nautilus, might have warped his ship around to face Cross Island, but then Mowat would have lost a third of the cannons guarding the channel, and so the sloop had to endure.

The commodore, satisfied that the battery was at last in action, sent an order that Carnes and his handful of marines were to return to their ships, but before he left Carnes used a small telescope to stare at the Nautilus and saw the holes ripped in her bows. “You’re hitting her hard, Captain!” he told Marett. “Remember! Aim low at this range and you’ll sink that bastard by noon! Good day to you, sir!” This last greeting was to Brigadier-General Lovell who had come to watch the new battery in action.

“Good morning! Good morning!” Lovell beamed at the gunners. “’Pon my word, but you’re hitting that ship hard, lads!” He borrowed Carnes’s telescope. “My word, you’ve knocked an arm off that ugly figurehead! Well done! Keep going and you’ll sink her soon enough!”

The Nautilus was still afloat an hour before noon when Colonel Revere arrived with eighteen-pounder ammunition from the Samuel. He came in his smart white-painted barge, which belonged to the Castle Island garrison and which Revere had commandeered for the expedition. Revere ordered sailors from the Providence to carry the round shot to the battery, then strode uphill to discover General Lovell still standing beside the guns. The fog had lifted and the general was peering through a glass that he rested on a gunner’s shoulder. “Colonel!” he greeted Revere cheerfully, “I see we’re striking hard!”

“What the devil do you mean, the wrong ammunition?” Revere ignored Lovell and challenged Captain Marett who pointed to the twelve-pounder round shot and began a halting explanation of his difficulties, but Revere brushed him aside. “If you brought the wrong round shot,” he said, “then you’re to blame.” He watched as the gunners hauled one of the huge eighteen-pounders back into place. The gunner squinted down the barrel, then used a long-handled maul to drive a wedge deeper under the breech. The wedge slightly lifted the rear of the barrel, lowering the muzzle, and the gunner, satisfied with the angle, nodded at his crew to reload the cannon.

“They must be suffering, Colonel,” Lovell said happily. “I can see distinct damage to her hull!”

“What are you doing?” Revere again ignored Lovell, rounding on Marett instead. The colonel had peered down the barrel and had not liked what he saw. “Are you shooting at the water, Captain? What’s the use of shooting into the water?”

“Captain Carnes’” Marett began.

“Captain Carnes? Is he an officer in this regiment? Sergeant! I want the barrel raised. Loosen the breech wedge by two degrees. Good day, General,” he at last greeted Lovell.

“I came to congratulate the gunners,” Lovell said.

“We’re just doing our duty, General,” Revere said briskly and again crouched behind the gun after the sergeant had loosened the wedge. “Much better!”

“I trust you’ll be at the Council of War this afternoon?” Lovell said.

“I shall be there, General. What are you waiting for?” This last was to the gunners. “Give the bastards some iron pills!”

The sergeant had pierced the powder bag with a spike and now inserted the portfire. “Stand back!” he shouted, then, satisfied that the space behind the gun was clear, he touched the burning slow-fuse to the portfire. There was a hiss, a puff of smoke from the touchhole, then the gun roared and smoke billowed to fill the sky around the battery. The cannon leaped back, its wheels bouncing off the stony soil.

The shot flew down the Nautilus’s deck and narrowly missed her masts, though it passed close enough to shatter a stand of boarding pikes at the base of the mainmast before smacking harmlessly into the beach of the peninsula. A sailor on the sloop twisted and fell, scrabbling at his throat, and Captain Farnham saw blood where a splinter from a shattered pike-shaft had speared into the man’s gullet. “Get him below,” he ordered.

The surgeon’s assistant tried to withdraw the splinter, but the man convulsed before he could slide it free. Blood spilled across the dark lower deck, the man’s eyes widened to stare vacantly at the deck above, then he made a choking, gurgling noise and more blood welled from his throat and mouth. He convulsed again, then went still. He was dead, the first man killed on board the sloop. The surgeon himself was wounded, his thigh pierced by a sharp blade of wood driven from the hull by one of the earlier shots. Six men were in the sick bay, all of them similarly injured by splinters. The surgeon and his assistant were pulling the wood fragments free and bandaging the wounds, and all the while waiting for the dreaded hammer blow of the next shot to smash into the hull. The ship’s carpenter was hammering wedges and caulking into the damaged bows, and the ship’s pumps were clattering constantly as men tried to stop the water rising in the bilge.

“I do believe,” Captain Farnham said after another eighteen-pounder shot had screamed just above his deck, “that they’ve lifted their aim. They’re trying to dismast us now.”

“Better that than hulling us, sir,” his first lieutenant observed.

“Indeed,” Farnham said with evident relief, “oh indeed.” He aimed his glass out of the harbor and saw, to his further relief, that the rebel warships showed no sign of readying themselves for another attack.

“Signal from the Albany, sir!” a midshipman called. “Prepare to move ship, sir!”

“That’s hardly a surprise, is it?” Farnham said.

Colonel Revere’s battery on Cross Island had started its day in confusion, but now it had succeeded in one ambition. The three British sloops that barred the harbor entrance were being driven away eastwards.

And the door to Majabigwaduce had been opened.

General McLean stood on Dyce’s Head and stared towards the enemy battery on Cross Island. He could see nothing of the rebel guns because their smoke shrouded the clearing the rebels had made on the island’s summit, but he recognized the damage that had been done to his defenses. Yet he could never have spared enough men to garrison Cross Island properly. Its fall had been inevitable. “The wretched Yankees have done well,” he said grudgingly.

“A slow rate of fire,” Captain Michael Fielding observed.

Yet if the rebel gunners were slightly slower than Fielding’s men of the Royal Artillery, they had still unblocked the harbor. Captain Mowat had sent a young lieutenant ashore who discovered McLean on the high bluff. “The captain regrets, sir, that he must move the sloops away from the enemy guns.”

“Yes, he must,” McLean agreed, “indeed he must.”

“He proposes to make a new line at the harbor’s center, sir.”

“Give Captain Mowat my best wishes,” McLean said, “and thank him for informing me.” The three sloops and their attendant transport ships were already moving slowly eastwards. Captain Mowat had marked their new anchorage with buoys made from empty barrels and McLean could see that their new position was not nearly as formidable as their old. The ships would now make a line well to the east of the harbor entrance, no longer a cork in a tight bottleneck, but halfway inside the bottle, and their retreat would surely invite an attack by the enemy fleet. That was a pity, McLean thought, but he understood that Mowat had no choice but to retreat now that the rebels possessed Cross Island.

The brigadier had gone to the bluff to see whether Fielding’s twelve-pounders could be deployed to shoot down at the new rebel battery on Cross Island. The small six-pounders on the bluff were already firing at the rebel position, but they were puny cannons and, besides, the new enemy battery lay in the island’s center and was shooting down a corridor of cleared trees, and that corridor pointed northwards. The guns themselves were hidden from Dyce’s Head, lying to the northwest of the enemy battery, and Midshipman Fenistone’s three guns were spitting their small balls into Cross Island’s trees in optimistic hope of hitting whatever was hidden by the smoke and the foliage. “I’m not sure we gain much by using twelve-pounders, sir,” Fielding said, “except to cause more damage to those trees.”

McLean nodded, then walked a few paces westwards to gaze at the enemy shipping. He was astonished that the Americans had made no move to attack him. He had expected the rebel warships to be at the harbor entrance, adding their fire to the new battery, and that rebel infantry would already be assaulting him, but the anchored fleet lay peacefully under the sun. He could see clothes hung out to dry on lines slung between the transport ships’ masts. “My worry,” he said to Fielding, “is that if we put twelves here we won’t have time to withdraw them when the enemy attacks.”

“Without horse teams,” Fielding agreed, “we won’t.”

“I do miss my horses,” McLean said gently. He took off his cocked hat and stared ruefully at the inner leather band, which was coming apart. His white hair lifted in a sudden waft of wind. “Well,” he said, “I dare say we can afford to lose a trio of six-pounders, but I won’t abide the loss of any twelves.” McLean turned and gazed at the smoke enveloping Cross Island, then carefully replaced his hat. “Leave the twelves at the fort,” he decided, “and thank you, Captain.” He turned as footsteps sounded loud among the trees. Lieutenant Caffrae, a Hamilton, was running towards the general. “More bad news, I suspect,” McLean said.

Caffrae, a lithe and energetic young man, was panting as he stopped in front of McLean. “The rebels have landed men north of the neck, sir.”

“Have they indeed! Are they advancing?”

Caffrae shook his head. “We saw about sixty men in boats, sir. They landed out of sight, sir, but they’re in the trees beyond the marsh.”

“Just sixty men?”

“That’s all we saw, sir.”

“Major Dunlop is apprised?”

“He sent me to tell you, sir.”

“The devil moves in a mysterious way,” McLean said. “Is he trying to make us stare northwards while he attacks here? Or is that the advanced guard of his real attack?” He smiled at the breathless Caffrae, whom he considered one of his best young officers. “We’ll have to wait and see, but the onslaught must come soon. Well, I’m going back to the fort and you, Caffrae, are going to tell Major Dunlop that I’ll reinforce his picquet on the neck.”

On board the sloops the sailors readied to drop anchors for their new position. The guns on Cross Island still pounded the Nautilus where men bled and died. North of the isthmus the rebels began making an earthwork where cannon could command the redcoats’ escape route from Majabigwaduce. It was Tuesday, July 27th, and the ring around Fort George was closing tight.

* * *

“I believe I can say with great confidence,” Lovell addressed the Council of War in the commodore’s cabin aboard the Warren, “that we have achieved splendid things! Noble things!” The general was at his most avuncular, smiling at the men crowded about the table and along the cabin’s sides. “Now we must go on to achieve our larger designs. We must captivate, kill, and destroy the tyrant!”

For a while the Council indulged itself in pleasurable contemplation of the capture of Cross Island, a victory that surely presaged a greater triumph on the northern side of the harbor. Compliments were offered to the marines in the person of Captain Welch who said nothing, but just stood behind Saltonstall’s chair and looked grim. The commodore, also silent, appeared bored. Once or twice he deigned to incline his head when Lovell directed a question at him, but for the most part he appeared to be aloof from the matters under discussion. Nor did he seem in the least abashed by the petition sent to him by thirty-two officers from the rebel warships which had respectfully requested that the commodore should destroy or capture the three British sloops without any more delay. The letter had been couched in the politest terms, but no amount of courtesy could hide that the petition was a bitter criticism of Saltonstall’s leadership. Nearly all of the men who had signed that letter were in the cabin, but Saltonstall pointedly ignored them.

“I assume, gentlemen, we are agreed that we must make our assault soon?” Lovell asked.

Voices murmured their assent. “Tonight, go tonight,” George Little, first lieutenant of the Hazard, suggested forcibly.

“Wait too long,” Colonel Jonathan Mitchell, commander of the Cumberland County militia, said, “and they’ll have their damned fort finished. The sooner we attack, the sooner we go home.”

“Wait too long,” George Little warned, “and you’ll see British reinforcements coming upriver.” He pointed out of the cabin’s wide stern windows. The ebbing tide had turned the Warren on her anchor cable and the windows now looked towards the southwest. The sun was setting there, glossing the waters of Penobscot Bay into slithering patterns of red and gold.

“Let us not anticipate such things,” Lovell said.

Wadsworth thought such things were worth anticipating, especially if they lent haste to the job at hand. “I would suggest, sir,” he said warmly, “that we make our assault tonight.”

“Tonight!” Lovell stared at his deputy.

“We have a full moon,” Wadsworth said, “and with some small luck the enemy will be inattentive. Yes, sir, tonight.” A growl of approval sounded around the cabin.

“And how many men could you commit to such an attack?” A sharp voice asked and Wadsworth saw that it was Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who had posed the question.

Wadsworth felt the question was impertinent. It was not Revere’s business to know how many infantry could be landed, but Solomon Lovell seemed unworried by the brusque demand. “We can land eight hundred men,” the general said and Revere nodded as though satisfied with the answer.

“And how many men can the artillery train take ashore?” Wadsworth demanded.

Revere flinched, as though the question offended him. “Eighty men, exclusive of officers,” he said resentfully.

“And I trust,” Wadsworth rather surprised himself by the defiance in his voice, “that this time the ammunition will match the guns?”

Revere looked as if he had been slapped. He stared at Wadsworth, his mouth opened and closed, then he drew himself up as if about to launch a vicious response, but Colonel Mitchell intervened. “More to the matter at hand,” Mitchell said, “how many men can the enemy muster?”

William Todd who had also bridled at Revere’s intervention was about to give his usual high estimate, but Peleg Wadsworth silenced him with a gesture. “I’ve talked long and hard with young Fletcher,” Wadsworth said, “and his information is not guesswork, it is not an estimate, but derives directly from the enemy paymaster.” He paused, looking about the table. “I am persuaded that the enemy regiments can muster no more than seven hundred infantry.”

Someone gave a low whistle of surprise. Others looked dubious. “You have confidence in that number?” Major Todd asked skeptically.

“Complete confidence,” Wadsworth said firmly.

“They possess artillerymen too,” Lovell warned.

“And they have Royal Marines,” a ship’s captain spoke from the edge of the cabin.

“We have better marines,” Captain Welch insisted.

Commodore Saltonstall stirred himself, his gaze moving disinterestedly about the table as though he was faintly surprised to discover himself in such company. “We shall loan two hundred and twenty-seven marines to the militia,” he said.

“This is splendid,” Lovell said, trying to rouse the fervor of the Council, “truly splendid!” He leaned back in his chair, planted his fists wide apart on the table, and beamed at the company. “So, gentlemen, we have a motion! And the motion is that we attack this night with all our land forces. Permit me to put a proposition to the Council’s vote, and may I suggest we attempt a resolution by acclamation? So, gentlemen, the motion is, do you think the force we possess sufficient to attack the enemy?”

No one responded. They were all too astonished. Even Saltonstall, who had appeared entirely disengaged from the discussion in his cabin, now gazed wide-eyed at Lovell. For a moment Wadsworth was tempted to think the general was venturing a clumsy joke, but it was apparent from Lovell’s expression that he was serious. He really expected every officer present to vote on the motion as though this was a meeting of the General Assembly. The silence stretched, broken only by the footsteps of the watch-keepers on the deck above.

“In favor, aye,” Wadsworth managed to say, and his words broke the surprise in the cabin so that a chorus of voices approved the motion.

“And is anyone opposed?” Lovell asked. “None? Good! The ayes have it.” He looked at his secretary, John Marston. “Record in the minutes that the motion proposing that we possess sufficient force to make the assault was passed unanimously by acclamation.” He beamed at the assembled officers, then looked inquiringly at Saltonstall. “Commodore? You will support our assault with a naval action?”

Saltonstall looked at Lovell with an expressionless face which nevertheless managed to suggest that the commodore thought the general was a witless fool. “On the one hand,” Saltonstall finally broke the embarrassing silence, “you wish my marines to take part in your assault, and on the other you wish me to attack the enemy shipping without my marines?”

“I, well’” Lovell began awkwardly.

“Well?” Saltonstall interrupted harshly. “Do you want the marines or not?”

“I would appreciate their assistance,” Lovell said weakly.

“Then we shall engage the enemy with gunfire,” Saltonstall announced loftily. There was a murmur of protest from the officers who had signed the letter condemning the commodore, but the murmur died under Saltonstall’s scornful gaze.

All that was left now was to decide where and when to attack, and no one demurred from Wadsworth’s proposal to assail the bluff again, but this time to attack by moonlight. “We shall attack at midnight,” Wadsworth said, “and assault the bluff directly.” To Wadsworth’s exasperation Lovell insisted on offering both the time and place as motions for the Council’s vote, but no one voted against either, though Colonel Mitchell diffidently observed that midnight left little time to make the necessary preparations.

“No time like the present,” Wadsworth said.

“You expect me to attack their shipping by night?” Saltonstall reentered the discussion. “You want my ships grounded in the dark?”

“You can attack in the dawn, perhaps?” Lovell suggested and was rewarded with a curt nod.

The council ended and men went back to their ships as the bright moon climbed among the stars. The rebels had voted unanimously to make their attack, to bring the enemy to battle, and, with God’s good help, to make a great victory.

The fog came slowly on the morning of Wednesday, July 28th, 1779. At first it was a mist that thickened imperceptibly to shroud the cloud-haunted moon with a glowing ring. The tide rippled along the anchored ships. Midnight had come and gone, and there was still no attack. The Hunter and Sky Rocket, the two privateers that would cannonade the heights of the bluff as the rebels landed, had to be rowed upriver before anchoring close to shore and both ships arrived late. Some transport ships had too many lighters or longboats, and others too few, and the confusion had to be disentangled. Time passed and Peleg Wadsworth fretted. This was the attack that must succeed, the attack to capture the bluff and surge on to assault the fort. This was why the fleet had come to Penobscot Bay, yet one o’clock came and passed, then two o’clock, then three o’clock, and still the troops were not ready. A militia captain suggested the attack should be abandoned because the creeping fog would dampen the powder in the musket pans, a notion Wadsworth rejected with an anger that surprised him. “If you can’t shoot them, Captain,” he snapped, “then beat them to death with your musket butts.” The captain looked at him with an aggrieved face. “That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?” Wadsworth asked. “To kill the enemy?”

James Fletcher, at Wadsworth’s side, grinned, His only uniform was a white crossbelt from which hung a cartridge pouch, but most of the militia were similarly dressed. Only the marines and some militia officers wore recognizable uniforms. James’s heart was throbbing palpably. He was nervous. His job was to show the attackers where paths climbed the bluff, but right now that bluff was just a moon-shadowed cliff in the mist. No light showed there. Longboats bumped and jostled alongside the transport ships, waiting to take the soldiers ashore, while on deck men sharpened knives and bayonets and obsessively checked that the flints in their musket locks were firmly embedded in the dogheads. Wadsworth and Fletcher were on board the sloop Centurion from which they would embark with Welch’s marines. Those marines in their dark green jackets waited patiently in the Centurion’s waist and among them was a boy whom Wadsworth remembered from Townsend. The boy grinned at the general who tried desperately to remember the lad’s name. “It’s Israel, isn’t it?” Wadsworth said, the name suddenly coming to him

“Marine Fifer Trask now, sir,” the boy said in his unbroken voice.

“You joined the marines!” Wadsworth said, smiling. The lad had been provided with a uniform, the dark green coat cut down to his diminutive size, while at his waist hung a sword-bayonet. He lacked the marine’s distinctive leather collar and instead had a black scarf wound tight round his scrawny neck.

“We kidnapped the little bastard, General,” a marine spoke from the dark.

“Then make sure you look after him,” Wadsworth said, “and play well, Israel Trask.”

A rowboat banged against the Centurion’s side and a harried militia lieutenant scrambled over the gunwale with a message from Colonel McCobb. “Sorry, sir, it’ll be a while yet, the Colonel says he’s sorry, sir.”

“God damn it!” Wadsworth could not help exclaiming.

“There still aren’t enough boats, sir,” the lieutenant explained.

“Use what boats you have,” Wadsworth said, “and send them back for the rest of the men. Send me word when you’re ready!”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant, abashed, backed away to his boat.

“They call them minutemen?” Captain Welch appeared beside Wadsworth and asked with a hint of amusement.

Wadsworth was taken aback that the dour marine captain had even spoken. Welch was such a grim presence, so baleful, that his customary silence was welcome, yet he had sounded friendly enough in the darkness. “Your men have food?” Wadsworth asked. It was an unnecessary question, but the tall marine made him nervous.

“They have their morsel,” Welch said, still sounding amused. General Lovell had sent a message that every man must take “a morsel ashore to alleviate hunger,” and Wadsworth had dutifully passed the order on, though he suspected hunger would be the least of their problems. “Have you ever been to England, General?” Welch suddenly asked.

“No, no. Never.”

“Pretty place, some of it.”

“You visited it?”

Welch nodded. “Didn’t plan on it. Our ship was captured and I was taken there as a prisoner.”

“You were exchanged?”

Welch grinned, his teeth very white in the dark. “Hell, no. I strolled out of the prison and walked all the damn way to Bristol. I signed as a deckhand on a merchantman sailing for New York. Got home.”

“And no one suspected you?”

“Not a soul. I begged and stole food. Met a widow who fed me.” He smiled at the memory. “Glad I seen the place, but I won’t ever go back.”

“I’d like to see Oxford one day,” Wadsworth said wistfully, “and maybe London.”

“We’ll build London and Oxford here,” Welch said.

Wadsworth wondered if the usually laconic Welch was talkative because he was nervous, and then, with a start, he realized that the marine was talking because Welch had divined Wadsworth’s own nervousness. The general stared at the dark bluff, which, in the thickening mist, was being limned by a dull lightening of the eastern sky, just a hint of gray in the black. “Dawn’s coming,” Wadsworth said.

And then, suddenly, there were no more delays. Colonel McCobb and the Lincoln County militia were ready, and so the men clambered down into the boats and Wadsworth took his place in a longboat’s stern. The marines were gray-faced in the wan light, but to Wadsworth they looked reassuringly resolute, determined, and frightening. Their bayonets were fixed. The Centurion’s sailors gave a low cheer as the boats pulled away from the transport.

A louder cheer sounded from the Sky Rocket, and then Wadsworth plainly heard Captain William Burke shout at his crew, “For God and for America! Fire!”

The Sky Rocket split the dawn with its eight-gun broadside. Flame leaped and curled, smoke spread on the water and the first missiles crashed ashore.

The rebels were coming.

Excerpt from a letter sent by the Massachusetts Council to Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell, July 23rd, 1779:It is the Expression of the Council . . . that you will push your Operations with all possible Vigor and dispatch and accomplish the business of the Expedition before any reinforcement can get to the enemy at Penobscot. It is also reported here and believed by many that, a Forty Gun ship and the Delaware Frigate sailed from Sandy Hook on Sixteenth Current and Stood to the Eastward; their destination was not known.

Excerpt from an Order by the State of Massachusetts Bay Council, July 27th, 1779:Ordered that the Board of War be and they are hereby directed to furnish the two Indians of the Penobscott Tribe, now in the Town of Boston with Two Hats one of them laced two Blankets and two Shirts.

Excerpt from Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell’s daily orders, Majabigwaduce, July 27th, 1779:All Officers and Soldiers in the Army are strictly enjoin’d not to give or sell any rum to the Indians, except those who have the immediate command of them, under pain of the greatest displeasure. . . . The Officers are desired to pay particular Attention that the men do not waste their Ammunition and that they keep their Arms in good Order.

Chapter Seven

The first shots crashed into the trees, exploding twigs, pine needles, and leaves. Birds screeched and flapped into the dawn. The rebels were using chain and bar shot that whirled and slashed through branches to punch gouts of earth and shards of stone where they struck the bluff’s face. “Dear God alive,” Captain Archibald Campbell said. He was the highlander who commanded the picquets on the bluff and he stared aghast at the scores of longboats that were now emerging from the fog and pulling towards his position. In their center, clumsily rowed by men wielding extra-long sweeps, a schooner crept towards the beach, her deck crowded with men. Two enemy warships had anchored close to the shore and those ships, still just dark shapes in the smoke and fog, were now shooting into the bluff. The Hunter had nine four-pounders bearing on the redcoats, while the Sky Rocket had eight of the small cannon in her broadside, but though the guns were small their scything missiles struck home with mind-numbing brutality. Campbell seemed frozen. He had eighty men under command, most of them scattered along the face of the bluff where the steep slope gave way to the gentler rise. “Tell the men to lie down, sir?” a sergeant suggested.

“Yes,” Campbell said, scarcely aware that he was speaking. The ships’ guns were firing more raggedly now as the faster gun crews outpaced the slower. Each gunshot was a percussive blow to the ears, and each illuminated the bluff with a sudden flash of light that was smothered almost instantly by powder smoke. Campbell was shaking. His belly was sour, his mouth dry, and his right leg quivering uncontrollably. There were hundreds of rebels coming! The fog-smothered sea was shadowed dark by the bluff, but he could make out the glimmer of oar blades beneath the gunsmoke and see the gray light reflecting from bayonets. Twigs, shattered bark, leaves, pinecones, and needles showered on the picquet as the shots tore through the bluff’s trees. A chain shot shattered a rotted and fallen trunk. The highlanders closest to Campbell looked nervously towards their officer.

“Send word to General McLean, sir?” the sergeant suggested stoically.

“Go,” Campbell blurted out the command, “yes, go, go!”

The sergeant turned and a bar shot struck his neck. It severed his powdered pigtail, cut head from bod, and, in the gray gloom and darkness of the dawn, the spray of blood was extraordinarily bright, like ruby drops given extra brilliance by the fog-diffused sunlight that filtered through the eastern trees. A jet of blood spurted upwards and appeared to lift the head, which turned so that the sergeant seemed to be staring reproachfully at Campbell who gave a small cry of horror, then involuntarily bent double and vomited. The head, soaked in blood, thumped to earth and rolled a few feet down the slope. Another chain shot slashed overhead, scattering twigs. Birds shrieked. A redcoat fired his musket down into the cannon-smoke and fog. “Hold your fire!” Campbell shouted too shrilly. “Hold your fire! Wait till they’re on the beach!” He spat. His mouth was sour and his right hand was twitching. There was blood on his jacket and vomit on his shoes. The sergeant’s headless body was shuddering, but at last went still.

“Why in God’s name hold our fire?” Lieutenant John Moore, posted on the Scottish left, wondered aloud. He led twenty-two Hamiltons positioned at Dyce’s Head where the slope was the steepest. His picquet lay directly between the approaching boats and the small British battery at the bluff’s top and Moore was determined to protect that battery. He watched the enemy approaching and also watched himself with a critical inward eye. An enemy chain shot slammed into a tree not five paces away and slivers of bark spattered Moore like the devil’s hail, and he knew he was supposed to be frightened, yet in all truth he did not notice that fear. He sensed apprehension, yes, for no man wants to die or be wounded, but instead of a debilitating fear Moore was feeling a rising exhilaration. Let the bastards come, he thought, and then he realized that his self-examination was consuming him so that he was standing in silent absorption while his men looked to him for reassurance. Forcing himself to walk slowly along the break of the bluff, he drew his sword and flicked the slender blade at the thick undergrowth. “Nice of the enemy to trim the trees for us,” he said. “It improves the view, don’t you think?”

“Buggers want to trim more than the trees,” Private Neill muttered.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed something, sir,” Sergeant McClure said quietly.

“Tell me, Sergeant. Brighten my morning.”

McClure pointed at the approaching boats that were clarifying as they emerged from the smoke-thickened fog. “Yon bastards are in uniform, sir. I reckon they’re sending their best against us. While the scoundrels up yonder, he pointed at the more northerly longboats, “are in any old clothes. Bunch of vagabonds, they look like.”

Moore peered westwards, then looked at the northern boats. “You’re right, Sergeant,” he said. In the nearer boats he could see the white crossbelts against the dark green coats of the marines and he assumed that the uniforms belonged to a regiment of General Washington’s Continental Army. “They’re sending their best troops right here,” he said loudly, “and you can’t blame them.”

“You can’t?”

“They’re up against the most formidable regiment in the British Army,” Moore said cheerfully.

“Oh, aye, all twenty-two of us,” McClure said.

“If they knew what they faced,” Moore said, “they’d turn right around and row away.”

“Permission to let them know, sir?” McClure asked, appalled at his young officer’s bravado.

“Let’s kill them instead, Sergeant,” Moore said, though his words were lost as a chain shot drove noisily through the branches overhead to shower the picquet with pinecones and needles.

“Don’t fire yet!” Captain Archibald Campbell shouted from the bluff’s center. “Wait till they’re on the beach!”

“Bloody fool,” Moore said. And so, with drawn sword, and under the bombardment of the rebel broadsides, he walked the bluff and watched the enemy draw nearer. Battle, he thought, had come to him at last and in all his eighteen years John Moore had never felt so alive.

Wadsworth winced as the oars threw up droplets of water that splashed on his face. It might be July, but the air was cold and the water even colder. He was shivering in his Continental Army jacket and he prayed that none of the marines would mistake that shivering for fear. Captain Welch, beside him, looked entirely unconcerned, as if the boat was merely carrying him on some mundane errand. Israel Trask, the boy fifer, was grinning in the longboat’s bows, where he kept twisting around to stare at the bluff where no enemy showed. The bluff climbed two hundred feet from the beach, much of that slope almost perpendicular, but in the fog it looked much higher. Trees thrashed under the impact of bar and chain shot, and birds circled over the high ground, but Wadsworth could see no redcoats and no puffs of smoke betraying musket-fire. Fog sifted through the high branches. The leading boats were well within musket range now, but still no enemy fired.

“You stay on the beach, boy,” Welch told Israel Trask.

“Can’t I’” the boy began.

“You stay on the beach,” Welch said again, then gave a sly glance at Wadsworth, “with the general.”

“Is that an order?” Wadsworth asked, amused.

“Your job is to send the boats back for more men, and send those men where they’re needed,” Welch said, seemingly unabashed at telling Wadsworth what he should do. “Our job is to kill whatever bastards we find at the top of the slope.”

“If there are any there at all,” Wadsworth said. The boat was almost at the beach where small waves broke feebly, and still the enemy offered no resistance.

“Maybe they’re sleeping,” Welch said, “maybe.”

Then, as the bows of the boat grounded on the shingle, the bluff’s face exploded with noise and smoke. Wadsworth saw a stab of flame high above, heard the musket-balls whip past, saw splashes of water where they struck the sea, and then the marines were shouting as they leaped ashore. Other boats scraped onto the narrow beach, which rapidly filled with green-coated men looking for a way up the bluff. A marine staggered backwards, his white crossbelt suddenly red. He fell to his knees in the small surf and coughed violently, each cough bringing more dark blood.

James Fletcher, his musket unslung, had run to a vast granite boulder that half-blocked the beach. “There’s a path here!” he shouted.

“You heard him!” Welch bellowed. “So follow me! Come on, you rogues!”

“Start playing, boy,” Wadsworth told Israel Trask, “give us a good tune!”

Marines were scrambling up the slope, which was steep enough to demand that they slung their muskets and used both hands to haul themselves up by gripping on saplings or rocks. A musket-ball struck a stone and ricocheted high above Wadsworth’s head. A marine staggered backwards, his face a mask of red. A musket-ball had slashed though his cheekbone and the cheek’s flesh now dangled over his leather collar. Wadsworth could see the man’s teeth through the ragged wound, but the marine recovered and kept climbing, making an incoherent noise as a chain shot sighed overhead to explode a larch into splinters. Wadsworth heard a clear, high voice shouting at men to aim low and, with a start, he realized he must be hearing an enemy officer. He drew his pistol and aimed it up the steep bluff, but he could see no target, only gray-white drifts of smoke revealing that the enemy was about halfway up the slope. He shouted at the longboat crews to get back to the transports where more men waited, then he walked northwards along the beach, his boots scrunching the low ridge of dried seaweed and small flotsam that marked the high-tide line. He found a dozen militiamen crouching under a shelf of rock and urged them up the slope. They stared at him as if dazed, then one of them abruptly nodded and ran out of his shelter and the others followed.

More boats scraped their bows ashore and more men piled over the gunwales. The whole length of the bluff’s narrow beach was now filled with men who ran into the trees and began to climb. The musket-balls buzzed, splashed, or struck stone, and still the cannons of Hunter and Sky Rocket crashed and boomed and dizzied the air with their vicious missiles. The noise of cannons and muskets was deafening the foggy shore, but Israel Trask played a descant to the gun’s percussion. He was trilling the jaunty “Rogue’s March” and standing exposed on the beach where, as he played, he gazed wide-eyed up the bluff. Wadsworth took hold of the boy’s collar, causing a sudden hiccup in the music, and dragged him to the seaward side of the vast boulder. “Stay there, Israel,” Wadsworth ordered, reckoning the boy would be safe in the granite’s shelter.

A body, facedown, was floating just by the rock. The man wore a deerskin jacket and a hole in the jacket’s back showed where the killing ball had left his body. The corpse surged in on the small waves, then was sucked out. In and out it moved, relentlessly. The dead man was Benjamin Goldthwait, who had elected to abandon his father’s loyalties and fight for the rebels.

A militia captain had scrambled to the boulder’s top and was shouting at his men to get on up the bluff. The enemy must have seen him because musket-balls crackled on the stone. “Get up the bluff yourself” Wadsworth shouted at the captain, and just then a ball struck the militia officer in the belly and his shout turned into a groan as he bent double and the blood seethed down his trousers. He fell slowly backwards, blood suddenly arcing above him. He slid down the boulder’s side and thumped into the surf just beside Ben Goldthwait’s corpse. Israel Trask’s eyes widened. “Don’t mind the bodies, boy,” Wadsworth said, “just keep playing.”

James Fletcher, ordered to stay close to Wadsworth, waded into the small waves to pull the wounded officer out of the water, but the moment he took hold of the man’s shoulders a pulse of blood spurted into James’s face and the injured captain writhed in agony.

“You!” Wadsworth was pointing at some sailors about to row their boat back to the transports. “Take that wounded man back with you! There’s a surgeon on the Hunter! Take him there.”

“I think he’s dead,” James said, shuddering at the blood which had splashed on his face and spread in the small waves.

“With me, Fletcher,” Wadsworth said, “come on!” He followed the path by the boulder. To his left the militia were struggling through the thick undergrowth that choked the bluff, but Wadsworth sensed the marines to his right were far higher up the slope. The path slanted southwards along the bluff’s face. It was not much of a path, more a vague track interrupted by roots, scrub, and fallen trees and Wadsworth had to use his hands to haul himself over the most difficult parts. The track zigzagged back north and at the turn a wounded marine was tying a strip of cloth round his bloodied thigh while just beyond him another marine lay as if asleep, his mouth open, but with no sign of a wound. Wadsworth felt a pang as he looked at the young man’s face; so good-looking, so wasteful. “He’s dead, sir,” the injured marine said.

A musket-ball thumped into a tree beside Wadsworth, opening a scar of fresh wood. He pulled himself up the hill. He could hear the musketry close ahead, and he could hear Welch roaring orders above that splintering noise. The marines were still advancing, but the slope had eased now, which freed their hands to use their muskets. A scream sounded from the trees and was abruptly cut off. “Don’t let the bastards stand!” Welch shouted. “They’re running! Keep the bastards running!”

“Come on, Fletcher!” Wadsworth called. He felt a sudden exaltation. The scent of victory was redolent in the rotten egg stench of powder smoke. He saw a redcoat among the trees to his left and pointed his pistol and pulled the trigger, and though he doubted his aim at that distance, he felt a fierce delight in shooting at his country’s enemies. James Fletcher fired his musket uphill, the recoil almost throwing him back off the track. “Keep going!” Wadsworth shouted. More militia were landing, and they too sensed that they were winning this fight and scrambled upwards with a new enthusiasm. Muskets were firing all along the bluff now, American as well as British, and the shots were filling the trees with balls and smoke, but Wadsworth sensed that the heavier fire came from the Americans. Men were shouting at each other, encouraging each other and whooping with delight as they saw the redcoats retreating ever higher. “Keep them running!” Wadsworth bellowed. My God, he thought, but they were winning!

A militiaman brought the American flag ashore and the sight of it inspired Wadsworth. “Come on!” he shouted at a group of Lincoln County men, and he pushed uphill. A musket-ball slashed close enough to his cheek for the wind of its passage to jar his head sideways, but Wadsworth felt indestructible. To his right he could see a rough line of marines, their bayonets glinting as they climbed the shallower upper slope of the bluff while to his left the woods were thick with militiamen in their deerskin coats. He heard the distant war cries of the Indians on the American left, then the militia took up the sound to fill the trees with the eerie, high-pitched shout. The rebel fire was much denser than the enemy’s musketry. The two warships had ceased firing, their broadsides more a danger to their own side than to the enemy, but the sound of American musket-fire was incessant. The top of the bluff was being riddled by musketry and every moment took the attackers higher.

Rachel, one of the smallest transport schooners, had been rowed to the shore. Her bows touched the shingle and still more attackers jumped down onto the beach. They brought the flag of the Massachusetts Militia. “Get on up!” Israel Trask paused in his playing to shout at them. “You’ll miss the fighting! Get on up!” The men obeyed him, streaming up the path to reinforce the attackers. Wadsworth realized he was close to the summit now and he reckoned he might rally the attackers there and keep them moving along Majabigwaduce’s ridge as far as the fort itself. He knew the fort was unfinished, he knew it was short of guns, and with such fine men and with such impetus why should the job not be done before the sun evaporated the fog? “Onwards,” he shouted, “on! On! On!” He heard a cannon fire, its sound much deeper and more percussive than any musket, and for an instant he feared the British had artillery on the bluff’s crest, then he saw the smoke jetting southwards and realized that the small enemy cannon on Dyce’s Head must still be firing at Cross Island. No danger from those guns, then, and he shouted at the marines that the cannon-fire was not aimed at them. “Keep going!” he bellowed, and scrambled upwards amidst a tangle of marines and militia. A man in a homespun tunic was leaning against a fallen tree, panting for breath. “Are you wounded?” Wadsworth asked, and the man just shook his head. “Then keep going!” Wadsworth said. “Not far now!” A body lay sprawled across Wadsworth’s path and he saw, almost with astonishment, that it was the corpse of a redcoat. The dead soldier wore a dark kilt and his hands were curled into fists and flies were crawling on the butcher’s mess that had been his chest. Then Wadsworth reached the summit. Men were cheering, the British were running, the American flags were being carried uphill and Wadsworth was triumphant.

Because the bluff was taken, the redcoats were defeated, and the way to the fort lay open.

It suddenly dawned on Lieutenant John Moore that the incon-ceivable was happening, that the rebels were winning this fight. The realization was horrible, damning, overwhelming, and his response was to redouble his efforts to beat them back. His men had been firing down the bluff’s steep slope, and at first, as his green-coated enemies struggled on the steepest portion of their climb, Moore had seen his fire throw the assailants backwards. Those attackers had been following a rough and uneven path that zigzagged up the bluff, and Moore’s men could fire down at them, though in the shadowed darkness the attackers were hard to see. “Fire!” Moore shouted, then realized the call was unnecessary. His men were shooting as fast as they could reload, and all along the bluff the redcoats were hammering musket-fire down into the tangled trees. For a few moments Moore had thought they were winning, but there were scores of attackers who, as they reached less precipitous ground, began to shoot back. The bluff crackled with unending musket-fire, smoke filling the branches, heavy balls thumping into trees and flesh.

Captain Archibald Campbell, appalled by the sheer numbers of attackers, shouted at his men to retreat. “You heard that, sir?” Sergeant McClure asked Moore.

“Stay where you are!” Moore snarled at his men.

He tried to make sense of what had happened, but the noise and smoke were chaotic. All he was certain of was that beneath him on the slope were uniformed men and Moore’s duty was to throw them back to the sea, and so he stayed on the bluff’s upper face as the rest of Campbell’s picquet retreated to the summit. “Keep firing!” he told McClure.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” McClure said, and fired his musket down into a group of attackers. The response was a crash of musketry from below, flames leaping upward in smoke, and Private McPhail, just seventeen, gave a mewing sound and dropped his musket. A sliver of rib, astonishingly white in the dawn, was protruding through his red coat and his deerskin trousers were turning red as he fell to his knees and mewed again. “We can’t stay here, sir,” McClure shouted over the musket din to Moore.

“Step back!” Moore conceded. “Slow now! Keep firing!” He stooped beside McPhail, whose teeth were chattering, then the boy gave a convulsive shudder and went still and Moore realized McPhail had died.

“Watch right, sir,” McClure warned, and Moore had a second’s panic as he saw rebels climbing past him through the thick brush. Two squirrels went leaping overhead. “Time to get the hell uphill, sir,” McClure said.

“Go back!” Moore called to his men, “but slowly! Give them fire!” He sheathed his sword, unbuckled McPhail’s belt with its cartridge pouch, then carried the belt, pouch, and musket up the slope. The marines to the north had seen him and their musket-balls slashed around him, but then they veered away to attack Captain Campbell’s rearward men, and that distraction gave Moore time to struggle up the last few feet to the bluff’s top where he shouted at his men to form a line and stand. Some pine needles had dropped down the back of his neck and were trapped by his collar. They irritated him. He could not see Captain Campbell’s men and it seemed that his small picquet was the only British presence left on the bluff, but just then a blue-coated artillery lieutenant came running from the east.