The Fort (39 page)

She nodded.

“Take the gift,” Moore said, “please.”

“Why?”

“Because the general is a decent man, Miss Fletcher. Because he offers it as a token of friendship. Because he wants you to know that you can depend on his protection whatever your opinion. Because I don’t want to carry the basket back to the fort.” Beth smiled at that last reason and Moore stood, waiting. He could have added that the gift had been given because McLean was as vulnerable as any other man to a fair-haired girl with an enchanting smile, but instead he just shrugged. “Because,” he finished.

“Because?”

“Please accept it,” Moore said.

Beth nodded again, then wiped her eyes with a corner of the apron. “Thank the general from me.”

“I will.”

She stood and crossed to the door where she turned. “Goodbye, Lieutenant,” she said, then picked up the basket and was gone inside.

“Goodbye, Miss Fletcher,” Moore said to the closed door.

He walked slowly back to the fort and felt defeated.

The three ships dipped to the wind, they swooped on the long waves, the seas broke white at their cutwaters, their sails were taut and the wind was brisk at their sterns. Away to port was Cape Anne where the breakers fretted at the rocks. “We must stay inshore,” Captain Abraham Burroughs told Colonel Henry Jackson.

“Why?”

“Because the bastards are out there somewhere,” the captain said, nodding to starboard where the fog bank had retreated southeastwards to lie like a long dun cloud over the endless ocean. “We run into a British frigate, Colonel, and you can say goodbye to your regiment. If I see a frigate out there I run for port.” He waved a hand at the other two ships. “We ain’t men-of-war, we’re three transports.”

But the three transport ships carried Henry Jackson’s regiment, as fine a regiment as any in the world, and it was on its way to Majabigwaduce.

And in the distant fog, out to sea, in a place where there were no marks, a fishing boat from Cape Cod watched other ships loom from the whiteness. The fishermen feared the big vessels would capture them, or at least steal their catch, but not one of the British ships bothered with the small gaff-rigged fishing boat. One by one the great ships slid past, the bright paint on their figureheads and the gilding on their sterns dulled by the fog. They all flew blue ensigns.

The vast
Raisonable
led, followed by five frigates; the
Virginia
, the
Blonde
, the
Grayhound
, the
Galatea,
and the
Camille
. The last of the relief fleet, the diminutive
Otter
, had lost touch and was somewhere to the south and east, but her absence scarcely diminished the raw power of Sir George Collier’s warships. The fishermen watched in silence as the blunt-bowed battleship and her five frigates ghosted past. They could smell the stench of the fleet and the stink of hundreds of men crammed into the cannon-freighted hulls. One hundred and ninety-six cannon, some of them ship-slaughtering thirty-two-pounders, were on their way to Majabigwaduce.

“Sons of goddamned bastard bitches,” the fishing boat’s captain spat when the
Camille
’s gilded stern gallery had been swallowed by the fog.

And the ocean was empty again.

The rebels had been in Penobscot Bay for nineteen days, and in possession of the high ground for sixteen of those days. There had been more than twenty councils of war, some just for the naval captains, some for the senior army officers, and a few for both. Votes had been taken, motions had been passed, and still the enemy was neither captivated nor killed.

The resurrection and return of the commodore had dampened Lovell’s spirits. Of late he and Saltonstall had only communicated by letter, but Lovell thought it incumbent on him to visit the
Warren
and congratulate Saltonstall on his survival, though the commodore, whose long face was blotched red with mosquito bites, did not appear grateful for the general’s concern. “It is a providence of God that you were spared capture or worse,” Lovell said awkwardly.

Saltonstall grunted.

Lovell nervously broached the subject of entering the harbor. “Captain Hacker was hopeful’” he began.

“I am aware of Hacker’s sentiments,” Saltonstall interrupted.

“He thought the maneuver feasible,” Lovell said.

“He may think what he damn well likes,” Saltonstall said hotly, “but I’m not taking my ships into that damned hole.”

“And unless the ships are taken,” Lovell forged on anyway, “I do not think the fort can be attacked with any hope of success.”

“You may depend upon one thing, General,” Saltonstall said, “which is that my ships cannot be risked in the harbor while the fort remains in enemy hands.”

The two men stared at each other. The guns were at work again, though the rebel rate of fire was much slower now because of the shortage of ammunition. There was powder smoke at Cross Island, and on the heights of Majabigwaduce and across the inlet north of the peninsula. Even more smoke rose from the low ground close to the Half Moon Battery. Lovell, angered that Banks’s house and barn had provided cover for the Scottish troops that had driven his men away so ignominiously, had ordered that the buildings should be burned as a punishment. “And the Dutchman’s house too,” he had insisted, and so forty men had gone downhill at first light and set fire to the houses and barns. They had not lingered on the low ground, fearing a counterattack by McLean’s men, but had just set the fires and retreated again.

“I shall present the circumstances to my officers,” Lovell now said stiffly, “and we shall discuss the feasibility of an attack on the fort. You may depend upon it that I shall convey their decision to you promptly.”

Saltonstall nodded. “My compliments, General.”

That afternoon Lovell went to the
Hazard
, one of the ships belonging to the Massachusetts Navy and from where he summoned his brigade majors, the commanders of the militia, Colonel Revere, and General Wadsworth. The council of war would be held in the comfort of the brig’s stern cabin where gawking soldiers could not linger nearby to overhear the discussions. Captain John Williams, the
Hazard
’s commanding officer, had been invited to attend as a courtesy and Lovell asked him to explain the navy’s reluctance to enter the harbor. “Not everyone’s reluctant,” Williams said, thinking of his own first lieutenant, George Little, who was ready to mutiny if that meant he could sail the diminutive brig into Majabigwaduce’s harbor and take on the British. “But the commodore is being prudent.”

“In what way?” Wadsworth asked.

“You can get a ship in easy enough,” Williams said, “but it would be a devilish business to get her out again.”

“The object,” Wadsworth pointed out quietly, “is to stay in the harbor. To occupy it.”

“Which means you have to destroy those guns in the fort,” Williams said, “and there’s another thing. The fleet is running short of men.”

“We impressed men in Boston!” Lovell complained.

“And they’re deserting, sir,” Williams said. “And the privateer captains? They’re not happy. Every day they spend here is a day they can’t capture prizes at sea. They’re talking of leaving.”

“Why did we bring all these ships?” Wadsworth asked. He had put the question to Williams, who just shrugged. “We brought a fleet of warships and we don’t use them?” Wadsworth asked more heatedly.

“You must put that question to the commodore,” Williams said evenly. There was silence, broken only by the endless clanking of the
Hazard
’s pump. The damage the brig had taken when Lieutenant Little had sailed her so close to Mowat’s sloops was still not properly repaired. The brig would need to be hauled ashore for those timbers to be replaced, caulked, and made tight, but the pump was keeping her afloat easily enough.

“So we must capture the fort,” Peleg Wadsworth said, breaking the gloomy silence, and then overrode the chorus of voices which complained that such a feat was impossible. “We must take men to the rear of the fort,” he explained, “and assault from the south and east. The walls there are unfinished and the eastern rampart, so far as I can see, has no cannon.”

“Your men won’t attack,” Revere said scornfully. For a week now, in every council of war, Lieutenant-Colonel Revere had urged abandonment of the siege, and now he pressed the point. “The men won’t face the enemy! We saw that yesterday. Three quarters of the small-arms cartridges have gone and half the men are hiding in the woods!”

“So you’d run away?” Wadsworth asked.

“No one accuses me of running away!”

“Then, damn it, stay and fight!” Wadsworth’s anger at last exploded and his use of a swear word alone was sufficient to silence the whole cabin. “Goddamn it!” he shouted the words and hammered Captain Williams’s table so hard that a pewter candlestick fell over. Men stared at him in astonishment, and Wadsworth surprised even himself by his sudden vehemence and coarse language. He tried to calm his temper, but it was still running high. “Why are we here?” he demanded. “Not to build batteries or shoot at ships! We’re here to capture their fort!”

“But’” Lovell began.

“We demand marines of the commodore,” Wadsworth overrode his commanding officer, “and we assemble every man, and we attack! We attack!” He looked around the cabin, seeing the scepticism on too many faces. Those who favored abandonment of the expedition, led by Colonel Revere, were fervent in their view, while those still willing to prosecute the siege were at best lukewarm. “The commodore,” Wadsworth went on, “is unwilling to enter the harbor while the guns are there to harass his shipping. So we assure him that we will silence the guns. We will take men to the rear of the enemy’s work and we shall attack! And the commodore will support us.”

“The commodore’” Lovell began

Wadsworth again interrupted him. “We have never offered the commodore our wholehearted support,” he said emphatically. “We’ve asked him to destroy the ships before we attack and he has asked us to destroy the fort before the attacks. Then why not make a compromise? We both attack. If he knows our land force is making an assault then he will have no choice but to support us!”

“Perhaps the regular troops will arrive,” McCobb put in.

“The
Diligent
has sent no word,” Lovell said. The
Diligent
, the fast Continental Navy brig captured from the British, had been posted at the mouth of the Penobscot River to serve as a guard boat that could give warning of the approach of any shipping, but her captain, Philip Brown, had sent no messages which suggested to Lovell that any reinforcements, for either side, were at least a day away.

“We can’t wait to see if Boston sends us troops,” Wadsworth insisted, “and besides, British reinforcements are just as likely! We were sent here to perform a task, so for God’s sake, let us do it! And do it now before the enemy is strengthened.”

“I doubt we can do it now,” Lovell said, “tomorrow, maybe?”

“Then tomorrow!” Wadsworth said, exasperated. “But let us do it! Let us do what we came here to do, to do what our country expects of us! Let us do it!”

There was silence, broken by Lovell who looked brightly about the cabin. “We certainly have something to discuss,” he said.

“And let us not discuss it,” Wadsworth said harshly, “but make a decision.”

Lovell looked startled at his deputy’s forcefulness. For a moment it seemed as if he would try to wrest back the command of the cabin, but Wadsworth’s face was grim and Lovell acceded to the demand. “Very well,” he said stiffly, “we shall make a decision. Would all those in favor of General Wadsworth’s proposal please so indicate now?” Wadsworth’s hand shot up. Lovell hesitated, then raised his own hand. Other men followed Lovell’s lead, even those who usually supported an end to the siege. All but one.

“And those opposed?” Lovell asked. Lieutenant-Colonel Revere raised his hand.

“I declare the motion carried,” Lovell said, “and we shall beg the commodore to support us in an attack tomorrow.”

The next day would be Friday, August the thirteenth.

Friday the thirteenth dawned fair. The wind was light and there was no fog, which meant the rebel battery on Cross Island opened fire at first light, as did the more distant eighteen-pounder on the northern shore beyond the peninsula. The balls slammed hard into the hulls of the British sloops.

Captain Mowat was resigned to the bombardment. He had moved his ships twice, but there was no other anchorage to which he could retreat now, not unless he moved the sloops far away from the fort. The pumps on all three sloops worked continually, manned by sailors who chanted shanties as they drove the great handles up and down. The
Albany
’s carpenter was patching the hull as well as he was able, but the big eighteen-pounder shots tore up the oak planking with savage force. “I’ll keep her afloat, sir,” the carpenter promised Mowat at dawn. He had plugged three horrible gashes at the sloop’s waterline, but a proper repair would have to wait till the sloop could be beached or docked.

“Luckily they’re still shooting high,” Mowat said.

“Pray God they go on doing that, sir.”

“I hope you are bloody praying!” Mowat said.

“Day and night, sir, night and day.” The carpenter was a Methodist and kept a well-thumbed copy of the Bible in his carpenter’s apron. He frowned as a rebel ball struck the taffrail and showered splinters across the afterdeck. “I’ll mend the topsides when we’ve done the lower strakes, sir.”

“Topsides can wait,” Mowat said. He did not care how ragged his ship looked so long as she floated and could carry her guns. Those guns were silent for now. Mowat reckoned his nine-pounders could do little damage to the battery on Cross Island and none of his guns was powerful enough to reach the new battery to the north, and so he did not waste powder and shot on the rebels. One of Captain Fielding’s twelve-pounders, up at the fort, slammed shots into Cross Island, a fire that merely served to keep the rebels hidden deep among the trees. A crackle of muskets sounded ashore. In the last few days that noise had been constant as McLean’s men infiltrated the trees by the neck or else hunted through the fields and barns of the settlement in search of rebel patrols. They were doing it without orders and McLean, though he approved the sentiments behind such rebel hunting, had commanded that it be stopped. Mowat guessed that the flurry of shots came from Captain Caffrae’s Light Company, which had kept up its harassment of the enemy lines.