Part 36 (1/2)

A moment later other hoofs were striking fire from the stones, and another horseman, William Dawes, appeared, confirming what Revere had said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: REVEREND JONAS CLARK'S HOUSE Where Samuel Adams, John Hanc.o.c.k, and Dorothy Quincy were staying]

XVI.

THE MORNING DRUMBEAT.

”Ring the bell!”

Samuel Adams said it, and one of Sergeant Munroe's men ran to the green, seized the bell-rope, and set the meetinghouse bell to clanging, sending the alarm far and wide upon the still night air.

In the farmhouses candles were quickly lighted, and the minute-men, who had agreed to obey a summons at a moment's warning, came running with musket, bullet-pouch, and powder-horn, to the rendezvous. They formed in line, but, no redcoats appearing, broke ranks and went into Buckman's tavern.

Silently, without tap of drum, the grenadiers and light infantry under Colonel Francis Smith, at midnight, marched from their quarters to Barton's Point, together with the marines under Major Pitcairn.

”Where are we going?” Lieutenant Edward Gould of the King's Own put the question to Captain Lawrie.

”I suppose General Gage and the Lord, and perhaps Colonel Smith, know, but I don't,” the captain replied, as he stepped into a boat with his company.

It was eleven o'clock when the last boat-load of troops reached Lechmere's Point,--not landing on solid ground, but amid the last year's reeds and marshes. The tide was flowing into the creek and eddies, and the mud beneath the feet of the king's troops was soft and slippery.

”May his satanic majesty take the man who ordered us into this bog,”

said a soldier whose feet suddenly went out from under him and sent him sprawling into the slimy oose.

”By holy Saint Patrick, isn't the water nice and warm!” said one of the marines as he waded into the flowing tide fresh from the sea.

”Gineral Gage intends to teach us how to swim,” said another.

With jokes upon their lips, but inwardly cursing whoever had directed them to march across the marsh, the troops splashed through the water, reached the main road leading to Menotomy, and waited while the commissary distributed their rations. It was past two o'clock before Colonel Smith was ready to move on. Looking at his watch in the moonlight and seeing how late it was, he directed Major Pitcairn to take six companies of the light infantry and hasten on to Lexington.

From the house of Reverend Mr. Clark, Paul Revere, William Dawes, and young Doctor Prescott of Concord, who had been sparking his intended wife in Lexington village, started on their horses up the road towards Concord. From the deep shade of the alders a half dozen men suddenly confronted them.

”Surrender, or I will blow out your brains!” shouts one of the officers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BUCKMAN'S TAVERN]

Revere and Dawes are prisoners; but Doctor Prescott, quick of eye, ear, and motion, is leaping his horse over the stone wall, riding through fields and pastures, along bypaths, his saddle-bags flopping, his horse, young and fresh, bearing him swiftly on over the meadows to the slumbering village, with the news that the redcoats are coming.[57]

[Footnote 57: Longfellow in his poem has Revere riding on to Concord bridge.

”It was two by the village clock, When he came to the bridge in Concord town.”

Revere's account reads:--

”We had got nearly half way; Mr. Dawes and the Doctor stopped to alarm the people of a house. I was about one hundred rods ahead when I saw two men, in nearly the same situation as those officers were near Charlestown. I called for the Doctor and Dawes to come up; in an instant I was surrounded by four.... We tried to get out there; the Doctor jumped his horse over a low stone wall and got to Concord. I observed a wood at a small distance and made for that. When I got there, out rushed six officers on horseback and ordered me to dismount.”]

”Tell us where we can find those arch traitors to his majesty the king, or you are dead men,” the threat of an officer.