Part 19 (1/2)

Fielding nodded and made some calculations in his head. The gun was cold, which meant the shot would lose some power, so he elevated the barrel just a trifle, then used the trail spike to aim the gun at a knot of men standing close to the rebels' bright flags. Satisfied that his aim and elevation were good, he stepped back and nodded to Sergeant Lawrence. ”Carry on, Sergeant,” he said.

Lawrence primed the gun, ordered the crew to cover their ears and step aside, then touched flame to the portfire. The gun roared, smoke smothered the bastion, and the round shot flew.

It flew above the abatis and over the shattered stumps, and it began to lose height as the ground rose to meet it. To Peleg Wadsworth, standing to Lovell's left, the ball appeared as a lead-gray streak in the sky. It was a flicker of gray, a pencil stroke against the sudden white-gray of powder smoke that obscured the fort, and then the streak vanished and the ball struck. It hit a militiaman in the chest, shattering ribs, blood, and flesh in an explosion of butchery, and plunged on, flicking blood behind its pa.s.sage, to rip a man in the groin, more blood and meat in the air, and then the ball struck the ground, bounced, and decapitated one of Revere's gunners before vanis.h.i.+ng noisily into the woods behind.

Solomon Lovell was standing just two paces away from the first man struck by the round shot. A splinter of rib hit the general on the shoulder and a stringy splat of b.l.o.o.d.y flesh spattered wetly across his face, and just then HMS North North, which lay closest to the fort, fired its broadside at the marines who were on the right of Lovell's lines, and the thunder of the sloop's gunfire filled the Majabigwaduce sky as Captain Fielding's second gun fired. That second ball hit a tree stump just in front of Colonel McCobb's men and struck with such violence that the stump was half-uprooted as it shattered into sc.r.a.ps that drove into McCobb's front rank. A man screamed in pain.

Sergeant Lawrence's crew, drilled and practiced, had swabbed and reloaded the first gun, which they now levered back to the low embrasure so Lawrence could fire it a second time. The ball struck the ground just paces from Lovell and bounced harmlessly overhead, though not before it drove a shower of soil at the general's staff.

The man whose groin had been pulped by the first shot was still alive, but his belly was eviscerated and his guts coiled on the ground and he breathed in short, desperate spasms. Lovell, transfixed, watched appalled as a pulse of blood, obscenely thick, spilled out of the man's gutted trunk. The wounded man was making a pathetic noise and Lieutenant-Colonel Revere, whose uniform had been spattered by blood, was white-faced, staring wide-eyed, unmoving. Wadsworth noted the pine needles sticking to the loops of intestine on the ground. The man somehow brought up his head and looked beseechingly at Wadsworth, and Wadsworth involuntarily moved towards him, wondering what in G.o.d's name he could do or say when, with another surge of blood from his ruined guts, the man's head fell back.

”Oh dear G.o.d,” Lovell said to no one.

”G.o.d rest his soul,” the Reverend Jonathan Murray said, his voice unusually strained.

Wadsworth looked into the dead man's face. No movement there except for a fly crawling on an unshaven cheek. Behind Wadsworth a man vomited. He turned to stare at the fort where the cannon smoke lingered. ”We should advance, sir,” he said to Lovell, and was surprised that he had spoken at all, let alone sounded so detached. Lovell seemed not to have heard him. ”We should advance, sir!” Wadsworth said in a louder voice.

Solomon Lovell was gazing at the fort where another billow of smoke jetted from an unfinished bastion. The ball flew to the general's left, cras.h.i.+ng into a tree behind the militia. ”Colonel Revere?” Lovell asked, still looking at the fort.

”General?” Revere acknowledged.

”Can your artillery reduce the fort?”

”It can,” Revere said, though without any of his usual confidence. ”It can,” he said again, unable to take his eyes from the b.l.o.o.d.y mess on the ground.

”Then we shall give your guns that chance,” Lovell said. ”The men will shelter in the trees.”

”But now's the moment to advance and'” Wadsworth began a protest.

”I can't attack into those guns!” Lovell interrupted shrilly. He blinked, surprised by his own tone of voice. ”I can't,” he began again, then seemed to forget what he wanted to say. ”We shall reduce their walls with artillery,” he said decisively, then frowned as another British gun hammered a ball up the ridge. ”The enemy might counterattack,” he went on with a note of panic, ”so we must be ready to repel them. Into the trees!” He turned and waved his sword at the thick woods. ”Take the men into the trees!” he shouted at the militia officers. ”Dig defenses! Here, at the tree line. I want earthworks.” He paused, watching his men retreat, then led his staff into the cover of the high wood.

Brigadier-General McLean watched in astonishment as his enemy vanished. Was it a trick? One moment there had been hundreds of men forming into ranks, then suddenly they had all retreated into the trees. He watched and waited, but as time pa.s.sed he realized that the rebels really had gone into the woods and were showing no sign of renewing their attack. He let out a long breath, took his hand from the flag's halliard, and pushed the open penknife back into his pocket. ”Colonel Campbell!” he called, ”stand down three companies! Form them into work parties to heighten the ramparts!”

”Yes, sir!” Campbell called back.

Fort George would live a few hours yet.

From Brigadier-General Lovell's despatch to Jeremiah Powell, President of the Council Board of the State of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, dated July 28th, 1779: This morning I have made my landing good on the S.W. Head of the Peninsula which is one hundred feet high and almost perpendicular very thickly covered with Brush and trees, the men ascended the Precipice with alacrity and after a very smart conflict we put them to rout, they left in the Woods a number killed and wounded and we took a few Prisoners our loss is about thirty kill'd and wounded, we are with in 100 Rod of the Enemey's main fort on a Commanding peice of Ground, and hope soon to have the Satisfaction of informing you of the Capturing the whole Army, you will please to excuse my not being more particular, as you may Judge my situation.Am Sir your most Obedient Humble Servant From Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell's Journal. Wednesday July 28th, 1779: When I returned to the Sh.o.r.e it struck me with admiration to see what a Precipice we had ascended, not being able to take so scrutinous a view of it in time of Battle, it is at least where we landed three hundred feet high, and almost perpendicular and the men were obliged to pull themselves up by the twigs and trees. I don't think such a landing has been made since Wolfe.

From the letter of Colonel John Brewer to David Perham, written in 1779 and published in the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier Bangor Daily Whig and Courier, August 13th, 1846: The General [McLean] he received me very politely, and said ... ”I was in no situation to defend myself, I only meant to give them one or two guns, so as not to be called a coward, and then have struck my colors, which I stood for some time to do, as I did not want to throw away the lives of my men for nothing.”

Chapter Eight

Marine Captain Thomas Carnes and thirty men had been on the right flank of the marines who had fought their way up the bluff. Carnes's route lay up the steepest part of the bluff's slope and his men did not reach the summit until after Welch was shot and after the sudden counterattack by a company of redcoats who, their volley fired, had retreated as suddenly as they had arrived. Captain Davis had taken over command of Dyce's Head and his immediate problem was the wounded marines. ”They need a doctor,” he told Carnes.

”The nearest surgeon is probably still on the beach,” Carnes said.

”d.a.m.n it, d.a.m.n it,” Davis looked harried. ”Can your men carry them down? And we need cartridges.”

So Carnes took his thirty men back to the beach. They escorted two prisoners and, because they carried eight of their own wounded and did not want to cause those casualties even more pain, they descended the bluff very slowly and carefully. The injured men were laid on the s.h.i.+ngle, joining the other men who waited for the surgeons. Carnes then led his two captives to where another six prisoners were under militia guard beside the big granite boulder. ”What happens to us, sir?” one of the prisoners asked, but the man's Scottish accent was so strange that Carnes had to make him repeat the question twice before he understood.

”You'll be looked after,” he said, ”and probably a lot better than I was,” he added bitterly. Carnes had been taken captive two years earlier and had spent a hungry six months in New York before being exchanged.

The narrow strip of beach was busy. Doctor Downer, distinguished by his blood-soaked ap.r.o.n and an ancient straw hat, was using a probe to track a musket-ball buried in a militiaman's b.u.t.tock. The injured man was held down by the doctor's two a.s.sistants, while the Reverend Murray knelt beside a dying man, holding his hand and reciting the twenty-third psalm. Sailors were landing boxes of musket ammunition, while those wounded who did not require immediate treatment were waiting patiently. A number of militiamen, too many to Carnes's eyes, seemed to have no purpose at all on the beach, but were sitting around idle. Some had even lit driftwood fires, a few of which were much too close to the newly arrived boxes of musket cartridges that were stacked above the high-tide line. That ammunition belonged to the militia, and Carnes suspected the minutemen would not be generous if he requested replacement cartridges. ”Sergeant Sykes?”

”Sir?”

”How many thieves in our party?”

”Every last man, sir. They're marines.”

”Two or three of those boxes would be mighty useful.”

”So they would, sir.”

”Carry on, Sergeant.”

”What's happening on the heights, Captain?” Doctor Eliphalet Downer called from a few paces away. ”I've found the ball,” he said to his a.s.sistants as he selected a pair of blood-caked tongs, ”so hold him tight. Stay still, man, you're not dying. You've just got a British ball up your American bottom. Did the redcoats counterattack?”

”They haven't yet, Doctor,” Carnes said.

”But they might?”

”That's what the general believes.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a gasp from the wounded man, then the dull boom of a British cannon firing from the distant fort. When Carnes had left the heights to bring the wounded down to the beach all the American forces had been back among the trees, but the British gunners were still sustaining a desultory fire, presumably to keep the Americans at bay. ”So what happens now?” Eliphalet Downer asked, then grunted as he forced the tongs into the narrow wound. ”Mop that blood.”

”General Lovell has called for artillery,” Carnes said, ”so I guess we batter the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds before we a.s.sault them.”

”I've got the ball,” Downer said, feeling the jaws of his tongs sc.r.a.pe and close around the musket-ball.

”He's fainted, sir,” an a.s.sistant said.

”Sensible fellow. Here is comes.” The ball's extraction provoked a spurt of blood which the a.s.sistant staunched with a linen pad as Downer moved to the next patient. ”Bone saw and knife,” Downer ordered after a glance at the man's shattered leg. ”Good morning, Colonel!” This last was to Lieutenant-Colonel Revere who had just appeared on the crowded beach with three of his artillerymen. ”I hear you're moving guns to the heights?” Downer asked cheerfully as he knelt beside the injured man.

Revere looked startled at the question, perhaps because he thought it was none of Downer's business, but he nodded. ”The general wants batteries established, Doctor, yes.”

”I hope that means no more work for us today,” Downer said, ”not if your guns keep the wretches well away.”

”They will, Doctor, never you fret,” Revere said, then walked towards his white-painted barge, which waited a few paces down the s.h.i.+ngle. ”Wait here,” he called back to his men, ”I'll be back after breakfast.”

Carnes was not certain he had heard the last words correctly. ”Sir?” He had to repeat the word to get Revere's attention. ”Sir? If you need help taking the guns up the slope, my marines are good and ready.”

Revere paused at the barge to give Carnes a suspicious look. ”We don't need help,” he said brusquely, ”we've got men enough.” He had not met Cames and had no idea that this was the marine officer who had been an artilleryman in General Was.h.i.+ngton's army. He stepped over the barge's gunwale. ”Back to the Samuel Samuel,” he ordered the crew.