The Fort (40 page)

“Deck ahoy!” a lookout called from the foremast. “Swimmer!”

“Do we have a man overboard?” Mowat demanded of the officer of the watch.

“No, sir.”

Mowat went forrard to see that a man was indeed swimming towards the
Albany
from the direction of the harbor mouth. He looked exhausted. He swam a few strokes, then trod water before feebly trying to swim again, and Mowat shouted at the bosun to heave the man a line. It took a moment for the man to find the line, then he was hauled to the sloop’s side and dragged up on deck. He was a seaman with a long pigtail hanging down his bare back and pictures of whales and anchors tattooed onto his chest and forearms. He stood dripping and then, exhausted and shivering, sat on one of the nine-pounder trucks. “What’s your name, sailor?” Mowat asked.

“Freeman, sir, Malachi Freeman.”

“Fetch him a blanket,” Mowat ordered, “and some tea. Put a tot of rum in the tea. Where are you from, Freeman?”

“Nantucket, sir.”

“A fine place,” Mowat said. “So what brought you here?”

“I was pressed, sir. Pressed in Boston.”

“Onto what vessel?”

“The
Warren
, sir.”

Freeman was a young man, scarce twenty years old Mowat judged, and he had swum from the
Warren
in the night’s dark. He had reached the beach beneath Dyce’s Head where he had shivered and waited for the guard boats to retreat in the dawn. Then he had swum for the sloops.

“What are you, Freeman?” Mowat asked. He saw how Freeman’s hands were stained black from continually climbing tarred rigging. “A topman?”

“Aye aye, sir, four years now.”

“His Majesty always appreciates a good topman,” Mowat said, “and are you willing to serve His Majesty?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“We’ll swear you in.” Mowat said, then waited as a blanket was draped about the deserter’s shoulders and a can of hot rum-laced tea thrust into his hands. “Drink that first.”

“They’re coming for you, sir,” Freeman said, his teeth chattering.

“Coming for me?”

“The commodore is, sir. He’s coming today, sir. They told us last night. And he’s making bulwarks on the
Warren
’s bow, sir.”

“Bulwarks?”

“They’re strengtherning the bows, sir, and putting three layers of logs across the fo’c’sle, sir, to protect the marines.”

Mowat looked at the shivering man. He played with the idea that the rebels had sent Freeman with deliberately misleading information, but that made little sense. If Saltonstall wished to mislead Mowat he would surely pretend he was withdrawing, not attacking. So the rebels were coming at last? Mowat gazed westwards to where he could just see the anchored warships beyond Dyce’s Head. “How many ships will come?” he asked.

“Don’t know, sir.”

“I don’t suppose you do,” Mowat said. He walked to the main shrouds and propped a glass on one of the ratlines. Sure enough he could see men working on the bows of the
Warren
. They appeared to be roving new lines to the bowsprit, while others were hauling logs up from a longboat. So, at long last, they were coming? “It won’t be till the afternoon flood,” he said to his first lieutenant.

“That gives us most of the day to get ready, sir.”

“Aye, it does.” Mowt collapsed the glass and looked up at the sky. “The glass?” he asked.

“Still falling, sir.”

“So there’s dirty weather coming as well, then,” Mowat said. The sky was pellucid now, but he reckoned there would be clouds, fog, and rain before nightfall by when, he knew, he would either be dead or captured. He was under no illusions. His small flotilla could do grievous damage to the American ships, but he could not defeat them. Once the
Warren
turned her broadside onto the sloops she could pound them with guns that were twice as heavy as the British cannon, and defeat was inevitable. The
Warren
would be hurt, but the
Albany
would die. That was unavoidable, so the most Mowat could hope for was to hurt the
Warren
badly, then get his men safe on land where they could help McLean defend the fort. “All marines are to be brought back aboard,” he told his first lieutenant, “and all guns double-shotted. Sand the decks. Tell the surgeon to sharpen his damn knives. We’ll go down snarling, but by God, they’ll know they’ve been fighting against the Royal Navy.”

Then he sent a message to McLean.

The rebels are coming.

Peleg Wadsworth asked for volunteers. The militia, in truth, had been disappointing and, except for the first day ashore when they had climbed the bluff to throw back the strong enemy picquet, they had not fought with spirit. But that did not mean there were no brave men among them, and Wadsworth only wanted the brave. He walked around the woods and talked to groups of men, he spoke to the picquets manning the earthworks that edged the woods, and he told all of them what he planned. “We’re going along the harbor shore,” he said, “and once we’re behind the enemy, between him and his ships, we shall make an assault. We won’t be alone. The commodore will enter the harbor and fight the enemy, and his ships will bombard the fort while we attack. I need men willing to make that attack, men willing to climb the hill with me and storm the enemy ramparts. I need brave men.”

Four hundred and forty-four men volunteered. They assembled among the trees at the top of Dyce’s Head where Lieutenant Downs and fifty marines waited, and where Wadsworth divided the militia volunteers into four companies. The Indian braves formed their own small company. It was early afternoon. The day had dawned so bright, but now the sky clouded and a late fog drifted up the sea-reach.

“The fog will help hide us,” Wadsworth remarked.

“So God is an American,” Lieutenant Downs said, making Wadsworth smile, then the marine lieutenant looked past Wadsworth. “General Lovell coming, sir,” he said softly.

Wadsworth turned to see Solomon Lovell and Major Todd approaching. Was this bad news? Had Commodore Saltonstall changed his mind? “Sir,” he greeted the general cautiously.

Lovell looked pale and drawn. “I have decided,” he said slowly, “that I should go with you.”

Wadsworth hesitated. He had thought to lead this attack and that Lovell would make a separate advance with the remaining men along the ridge’s spine, but something in Lovell’s face told him to accept the older man’s decision. Lovell wanted to be in this assault because he needed to prove to himself he had done all that he could. Or perhaps, Wadsworth thought less generously, Lovell had an eye to posterity and knew that fame would attend the man who led the successful assault on Fort George. “Of course, sir,” he said.

Lovell looked heartbroken. “I just ordered the big guns off the heights,” he said, gesturing north towards the woods where Revere’s cannon had been emplaced.

“You ordered’” Wadsworth began in puzzlement.

“There’s no ammunition,” Lovell interrupted him bleakly.

Wadsworth was about to point out that more ammunition could be supplied, if not from Boston then perhaps from the
Warren
’s magazine, then he understood why Lovell had given the apparently defeatist order to remove the guns. It was because the general at last understood that this was the rebels’ final chance. If this attack failed then nothing else would work, at least not till American reinforcements arrived, and until that day, there would be no more need of heavy guns. “Colonel McCobb and Colonel Mitchell will lead the attack along the ridge,” Lovell went on. Neither Lovell nor Wadsworth expected much from the second attack, which would be made by the men who had not volunteered, yet their visible presence on the ridge must keep some British defenders on the western side of their fort, and that was why the second attack was planned.

“We’re honored you’re here, sir,” Wadsworth said generously.

“I won’t interfere with your deployments,” Lovell promised.

Wadsworth smiled. “We’re all at God’s mercy now, sir.”

And if God was merciful the rebels would go down the long hill in full sight of the fort and under the fire of its cannons. They would pass the smoking remnants of the burned houses and barns, then make their way through cornfields and orchards, and through the small yards where vegetables grew. Once sheltered by the village they would make for a group of houses that lay between the fort and the British ships, and there Wadsworth would wait until the commodore’s attack diverted the fort’s defenders and filled the harbor with noise, smoke, and flame.

With the marines and Indians added to his force Wadsworth now led five hundred men. The best men. Was it enough? McLean had at least seven hundred in the fort, but the troops led by Colonel McCobb and Colonel Mitchell would keep some of those defenders facing west, and once the British ships were taken or sunk the rest of the American marines would come ashore. The numbers would be about equal, Wadsworth thought, then decided that he could not win this battle by an exercise of mental arithmetic. He could plan his moves as far as the harbor’s edge, but after that the devil would roll his dice and it would be smoke and flame, screams and steel, the chaos of anger and terror, and what use was mathematics then? If Wadsworth’s grandchildren were to learn of this day and of this victory they must learn of courage and of men doing a great deed. And if the deed was not great it would not be memorable. So at some point he must let go of calculation and throw himself on anger and resolve. There was no easy way. Both Lovell and Saltonstall had shirked the fight because they sought a sure solution, and no such easy answer existed. The expedition would only succeed when it rose above prudence and challenged men to perform great deeds. So yes, he thought, five hundred men was enough, because that was all he had to do this thing, and this thing had to be done in the name of American liberty. “James?” he spoke to Fletcher. “Let’s go.”

Forty of the volunteers were manning drag-ropes attached to two of the four-pounder cannons that, so far, had scarcely been used. They were too small to be effective at anything except close range, but on this day they might be battle-winners. Lieutenant Marett, one of Revere’s officers, commanded the two pieces, which had an ample supply of round shot, though Captain Carnes, before returning to the
General Putnam
, had insisted that the two small guns were also equipped with grape. He had made the missiles himself, collecting stones from the beach that the
General Putnam
’s sailors had sewn into rough bags of sail canvas. The bags could be rammed on top of a round shot so that when the guns were fired the stones would spread like lethal duckshot. Lieutenant Marett had nervously protested that the stones would ruin the guns’ barrels, but had fallen silent under Carnes’s baleful stare. “Damn the barrels,” Carnes had said, “it’s the ruin they’ll do to British guts that matters.”

The first tendrils of fog curled over the slope as the men went down to the shore. They went in open order, hurrying across the meadows and through the scattered trees. A round shot fired from Fort George gouged a scar across grassland. A second gun fired, then a third, but all the balls ricocheted harmlessly from the ground. That was a good omen, Wadsworth thought, and was surprised that he sought omens. He had prayed in the dawn. He liked to think that faith and prayer were sufficient to themselves, and that he was now in God’s hands, but he found himself watching every phenomena for any sign that this attack would succeed. The British sloops, though their guns would bear on the harbor shore, did not fire and that was surely the hand of provi-dence. The smoke from the burning houses was blown towards Fort George and, though Wadsworth’s rational mind told him that was merely because the wind persisted from the southwest, he wanted to believe it was a sign that God desired to blind and choke the enemy. He saw six of the Indians crouching beside the cornfield where he had ordered the men to gather. They formed a circle, their dark heads close together, and he wondered what God they prayed to. He remembered a man named Eliphalet Jenkins who had founded a mission to the Wampanoag tribe and whose body, gutted empty by knives and blanched pale by the sea, had been washed ashore at Fairhaven. Why was he remembering that old tale? And then he thought of the story James Fletcher had told him about a man and boy, both English, who many years before had been gelded then burned alive by the Indians of Majabigwaduce. Was that another omen?

The two guns arrived safely. Each was attached to a caisson that held their ammunition and on the nearer of those wagons was painted a slogan, “Liberty or Death.” That was easily said, Wadsworth thought, but death seemed more imminent now. Imminent and immanent. The words batted in his head. Why did the enemy sloops not fire? Were they asleep? A shell from the fort landed in the smoldering remnants of Jacob Dyce’s house and exploded harmlessly with a dull, impotent boom and an eruption of ash and smoldering timbers. Imminent, immanent, and impotent. For some reason Wadsworth thought of a text that had been the foundation of a sermon that the Reverend Jonathan Murray had preached on the first Sunday after the expedition had landed, “where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” The worm, Murray said, was the evil of British tyranny and the fire the righteous anger of men who fought for liberty. But why did we burn these houses, Wadsworth wondered, and how many men of Majabigwaduce had been enraged by that arson and, even now, manned the ramparts of the fort? “The worm will shrivel,” Murray had promised, “it will shrivel and hiss as it burns!” Yet the scripture, Wadsworth thought, did not promise that punishment, only that the worm dieth not. Was that an omen?

“Do we go on, sir?” Fletcher asked.

“Yes, yes.”

“You look as if you’re dreaming, sir,” Fletcher said, grinning.

“I was wondering how many civilians will be helping the garrison.”

“Oh, some will,” Fletcher said dismissively. “Old Jacob for one, but he can’t shoot straight. Doctor Calef, of course.”

“I knew Calef in Boston,” Wadsworth said.

“He’s not a bad fellow. A bit pompous. But he’ll be doctoring, not soldiering.”

“On we go,” Wadsworth said, and it seemed unreal now. The ships still did not fire and the bombardment from the fort fell silent because the Americans were on the low ground and protected from the guns on the fort’s southern wall by a shoulder of land that ran parallel to the ridge. They were concealed too by houses, cornfields, and trees. Lilies blossomed in yards. A woman hurriedly took in some drying washing because the sky was still darkening and promised rain. The marines, in a double file, advanced on the left ready to turn and oppose any sally by the fort’s garrison, but McLean sent none. A chained dog barked at the passing soldiers until a woman called for it to be silent. Wadsworth looked up to his left, but all he could see of the fort was the slow-stirring flag at the top of its pole. He crossed the newly made track which led from the beach to the fort’s gate. If I were McLean, Wadsworth thought, I would send men down to fight, but the Scotsman did no such thing, nor did Mowat fire from his sloops, though he must be seeing the rebels file through the settlement. “He’s not going to waste shot on us,” Lieutenant Downs suggested when Wadsworth expressed surprise that the British ships had been silent.