Part 13 (1/2)

”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 a.s.sault boats had turned away from the sh.o.r.e. 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 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 Warren. Twenty-one men crowded about the table, twelve of them captains of the wars.h.i.+ps 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 Pen.o.bscot 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Navy brigantine Active Active, asked.

”If the s.h.i.+ps were to a.s.sault the enemy vessels,” Lovell suggested diffidently, ”and we were to land the men, I think G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+pping?” 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 s.h.i.+ps into that d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.ned hole,” he said, ”and I get tangled with their d.a.m.ned s.h.i.+ps and all you have is a mess of wreckage, maybe ablaze, and all the while the d.a.m.ned 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Militia?”

”G.o.d will watch over you,” the Reverend Murray a.s.sured the commodore.

”G.o.d, sir, is not manning my guns!” Saltonstall snarled at the clergyman. ”I wish to G.o.d He were, but instead I have a crew of pressed men! Half the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 a.s.sault 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 wars.h.i.+ps 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 G.o.d 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 wars.h.i.+ps were anch.o.r.ed in the bay. ”No fog this morning, Captain.”

”None, sir.”

”G.o.d 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 a.s.sortment 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 sc.r.a.ped together from the depots in Halifax to form makes.h.i.+ft batteries, but then, McLean thought, everything about this expedition was makes.h.i.+ft. He did not have enough men, enough s.h.i.+ps, 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 a.s.sault 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 sh.o.r.e 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.