The Fort (37 page)

The sailors were having a hard time because the soil was thin. The commodore, feeling restless and bored by the dull work, left Lieutenant Fenwick to supervise the diggers while he walked up a trail towards a farm. It was a miserable farm too, little more than a lichen-covered log cabin with a field-stone chimney, a ramshackle barn, some cornfields, and a stony pasture with two thin cows, all of it hacked out of the forest. The log pile was bigger than the house and the dungheap even bigger. Smoke seeped from the chimney, suggesting someone was home, but Saltonstall had no wish to engage in a conversation with some dirt-poor peasant and so he avoided the house, walking instead around the margin of the cow pasture and climbing towards the summit of the hill east of the house, from where, he thought, he might get a fine view of the new enemy fort.

He knew Solomon Lovell was blaming him for not attacking the British ships and Saltonstall despised Lovell for that blame. The man was a Massachusetts farmer, not a soldier, and he had no conception whatever of naval matters. To Solomon Lovell it all seemed so easy. The American ships should sail boldly through the harbor entrance and use their broadsides to shatter the enemy ships, but Saltonstall knew what would happen if he attempted that maneuver. The wind and tide would carry the
Warren
slowly, and her bows would be exposed to all Mowat’s guns, and the cannon from the fort would pour their heavy shot down into her hull and the scuppers would be dripping blood by the time he hauled into the wind to bring his own broadside to bear. Then, true enough, he might batter one of the sloops into submission, and the larger rebel ships would be there to help, but even if all the British ships were taken the fort would still be hammering shot down the slope. And probably heated shot. McLean was no fool and by now he must surely have built a furnace to heat shot red, and such shot, lodged in a frigate’s timbers, could start a fire to reach the magazine and then the
Warren
would explode, scattering her precious timbers all across the harbor.

So Saltonstall was not minded to attack, not unless the fort was being distracted by a land assault at the same time and General Lovell showed no appetite for such a storm. And no wonder, the commodore thought, because in his opinion Lovell’s militia was little more than a rabble. Perhaps, if real soldiers arrived, the assault would be possible, but until such a miracle happened Saltonstall would keep his precious fleet well outside the range of enemy cannons. By now the commodore had reached the hill’s low summit where he took the telescope from his tail-pocket. He wanted to count the guns in Fort George and look for the telltale shimmer of heat coming from a shot-furnace.

He steadied the glass against a spruce. It took a moment to bring the lenses into focus, then he saw redcoats leaving the fort and straggling down the track into the village. He lifted the tubes to bring the fort into view. The glass was powerful, giving Saltonstall a close-up glimpse of a cannon firing. He saw the carriage jump and slam back, saw the eruption of smoke and watched the gunners close on the weapon to ready it for the next shot. He waited for the sound to reach him.

And heard musket-fire instead.

*    *    *

Captain Caffrae’s men had not left the fort together, but instead had gone down to the village in small groups so that no rebel watching from the western heights would be forewarned that the company was deploying.

Caffrae assembled them by the Perkins house where the newborn Temperance was crying. He inspected weapons, told his two drummers and three fifers to keep their instruments quiet, then led the company westwards. They kept to the paths that were hidden from the heights and so reached Aaron Banks’s house where a large barn offered concealment. “Take a picquet into the corn,” Caffrae ordered Lieutenant Moore, “and I want no heroics, Mister Moore!”

“We’re just there to watch,” John Moore said.

“To watch,” Caffrae confirmed, “and to pray if you like, but not with your eyes closed.”

Moore took six men. They went past the barn and through a small turnip patch beside the house. Aaron Banks’s two pretty daughters, Olive and Esther, stared wide-eyed from a window and Moore, seeing them, put a finger to his lips. Olive grinned and Esther nodded.

The picquet went into the concealing corn. “No smoking,” Moore told his men because he did not want the telltale wisps of pipe smoke to reveal their presence. The men crouched and slid forward, trying their best not to disturb the tall stalks. Once at the field’s western edge they lay still. Their job was to watch for any rebel movement that might threaten Caffrae’s concealed men, though for now the rebels showed no sign of energy. Moore could clearly see sixteen militiamen at the Half Moon Battery. What enthusiasm they had shown for trenching had dissipated and they now sat in a group inside the old earthwork. A couple were fast asleep.

To Moore’s left was Jacob Dyce’s house, while to his right, a hundred paces higher up the slope, was the Dutchman’s cornfield. In front of him the long hill climbed to the distant bluff. There were men at the very top, evidently waiting to watch whatever drama occurred at the battery. The rebel guns were hidden among the trees beyond the skyline, but their noise pounded the afternoon and their smoke whitened the sky.

After a while Jacob Dyce came out of his house. He was a squat, middle-aged man with a prophet’s beard. He carried a hoe that he now used to weed some beans. He worked slowly, gradually getting nearer and nearer to his neighbor’s cornfield. “De rascals are in my corn,” he suddenly spoke without looking up from his work. He stooped to tug at a weed. “Lots of rascals hiding there. You hear me?” He still did not look towards Moore and his men.

“I hear you,” Moore said quietly, “how many?”

“Lots,” the Dutchman said. He chopped the hoe’s blade savagely. “Lots! They are
de duivelsgebroed
!” He glanced briefly towards where Moore was hiding. “
De duivelsgebroed
!” he said again, then ambled back to his house.

Moore sent Corporal MacRae, a reliable man, to tell Caffrae that the devil’s brood were indeed hiding uphill. Moore peered at the Dutchman’s cornfield and thought he saw the stalks moving, but he could not be sure. Caffrae himself came to join Moore and peered up at the maize. “The bastards want to take us in the flank,” he said.

“If we advance,” Moore said.

“Oh, we must advance,” Caffrae said wolfishly, “why else did we come here?”

“There could be three hundred men hidden there,” Moore warned.

“Probably no more than a hundred who need a good thrashing.”

That was Brigadier McLean’s tactic. Whenever the rebels attempted a maneuver they had to be slapped so hard that their morale fell even lower. McLean knew he was mostly opposed by militiamen and he had drummed that fact into his officers. “You’re professionals, you’re soldiers,” he said repeatedly, “and they’re not. Make them scared of you! Think of them as fencibles.” The fencibles were the civilian soldiers in Britain, enthusiastic amateurs who, in McLean’s view, merely played at soldiering. “They may have their marines,” Moore warned now.

“Then we thrash them too,” Caffrae said confidently, “or rather you will.”

“I will?”

“I’ll bring the company forward and you command it. Advance on the battery, but watch your right. If they’re there, they’re going to charge you, so wheel when you’re ready, give them a volley and countercharge.”

Moore’s heart gave a leap. He knew McLean must have suggested that Caffrae allow him to command the company, and he knew too that this was his chance for redemption. Do this right and he would be forgiven for his sins on the day the rebels landed.

“We’ll do it noisily,” Caffrae said, “with drums and squeals. Let ’em know we’re the cocks on this dunghill.”

So what could go wrong? Moore supposed that it would be a disaster if the enemy did number a couple of hundred men, but what McLean would be watching for was evidence that Moore demonstrated good sense. His job was to smack the enemy, not win the war. “Drums and squeals,” he said.

“And bayonets,” Caffrae said with a smile. “And enjoy yourself, Lieutenant. I’ll fetch the hounds, and you can flush the covert.”

It was time to dance.

The muskets were close, so close that Saltonstall involuntarily jumped in shock. He almost dropped the telescope.

At the foot of the hill, between him and the harbor, were redcoats. They were running in loose order. They had evidently fired a volley because the smoke lingered behind them. They had not stopped to reload, but now followed that volley with a bayonet charge, and Saltonstall understood that these men had to be the Royal Marines he had seen vanishing up the Majabigwaduce River. He had thought they must be foraging to the north, but instead they had landed on the river’s bank then worked their way southwards through the woods and now they drove off the men who had been making the battery on Haney’s land. They were cheering. Sunlight glinted off their long bayonets. Saltonstall had a glimpse of his men running southwards, then the closest British marines saw the commodore at the hill’s top and a half dozen of them turned towards him. A musket banged and the ball skittered through the leaves.

Saltonstall ran. He went east down the hill, leaping the steeper sections, blundering through brush, pelting as fast as he could. A white-scutted deer ran ahead of him, alarmed by the shouts and shots. Saltonstall stumbled through a stream, cut southwards and kept running until he found a thick patch of undergrowth. There was a stitch in his left side, he was panting, and he crouched among the dark leaves and tried to calm himself.

His pursuers were silent. Or else they had abandoned the hunt. More muskets sounded, their distinctive crackling an unmistakable noise, but they seemed far away now, a wicked descant to the deeper bass rhythm of the big cannons beyond the harbor.

Saltonstall did not dare move till the light faded. Then, alone except for the cloud of mosquitoes, he worked his cautious way westwards. He went very slowly, ever alert to an enemy, though when he reached the harbor shore he saw that the redcoats were all gone.

And so were his longboats. He could see them. Every one had been captured and taken back to the enemy sloops. The British had not even bothered to slight the new earthworks of the battery Saltonstall’s men had thrown up. They knew they could recapture it whenever they wished and leaving the low wall was an invitation to the rebels to return and be chased away again.

Saltonstall was stranded now. The enemy-filled harbor lay between him and his fleet, and no rescue would be coming. There was no choice but to walk. He recalled the chart in his cabin on board the
Warren
and knew that if he followed the harbor’s shore he must eventually come back to the Penobscot River. Five miles? Maybe six, and the light was almost gone and the mosquitoes were feasting and the commodore was unhappy.

He started walking.

To the north, beyond the neck, Peleg Wadsworth had found a shelf of pastureland in Westcot’s farm. He had not needed to make any earthworks to defend the shelf because it was edged by a sudden steep slope that was defense enough. Fifty militiamen, goaded and commanded by Captain Carnes of the marines, had manhandled one of Colonel Revere’s eighteen-pounder cannon onto a lighter that had been rowed northwards. The gun was landed, then dragged over a mile through the woods until it reached the farm. There had been a few moments of worry when, shortly after Wadsworth and Carnes had discovered the site, four longboats filled with British marines had rowed up the Majabigwaduce River and Wadsworth had feared they would land close by, but instead they had gone to the farther bank of the river where they offered no threat to the big cannon which, at last, was dragged onto the pastureland. The militiamen had carried thirty rounds for the gun which Carnes laid in the fading light. “The barrel’s cold,” he told the gun’s crew, “so she’ll shoot a little low.”

The range looked much too long to Peleg Wadsworth’s untutored eye. In front of him was a strip of shallow water and then the low marshy tail of Majabigwaduce’s peninsula. The cannon was pointed across that tail at the British ships just visible in the harbor beyond. Carnes was aiming at the central sloop, HMS
Albany
, though Wadsworth doubted he could be sure of hitting any of the ships at such a distance.

Peleg Wadsworth walked a long way to the east until he was far enough from the big cannon to be sure that its smoke would not blot his view. He had borrowed Captain Carnes’s good telescope again and now he sat on the damp ground and propped his elbows on his knees to hold the long tubes steady. He saw a large group of empty longboats tethered to the
Albany
and a sailor leaning on the rail above. The sloop quivered every time she fired one of her cannon at the battery on Cross Island which still kept up its harassing fire. The splintering sound of musket-fire sounded far away, but Wadsworth resisted the temptation to swing the glass. If that was Lovell’s ambush it would be hidden from him by the loom of the ridge. He kept watching the enemy sloop.

Carnes took a long time aiming the cannon, but at last he was satisfied. He had brought wooden pegs with him and he pushed three into the turf, one beside each wheel, and the third next to the gun’s trail. “If it’s aimed right,” he told the crew, “those pegs will guide us back. If it’s wrong, we know where to start our corrections.” He warned the crew to step back and cover their ears. He blew on the tip of the linstock to brighten the glowing fuse, then leaned over to touch fire to the powder-filled reed thrust down the touchhole.

The gun leaped back. Its thunder cracked the sky. Smoke jetted out beyond the shelf to spread across the nearer water. A flame curled and vanished inside the smoke. The noise was so sudden and loud that Wadsworth jumped and momentarily lost his focus, then he steadied the glass and found the
Albany
and saw a sailor smoking a pipe at the rail, and then, to his astonishment and joy, he saw the sailor leap back as a bright gouge of newly shattered timber showed in the sloop’s hull just above the waterline. “A direct hit!” he shouted. “Captain! Well done! A direct hit!”