The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War - xaviantvision

Chapter SevenThe first shots crashed into the trees, exploding twigs, pine needles, and leaves. Birds screeched and flapped into the dawn. The rebels were using chainand bar shot that whirled and slashed through branches to punch gouts of earth and shards of stone where they struck the bluff's face. "Dear God alive,"Captain Archibald Campbell said. He was the highlander who commanded the picquets on the bluff and he stared aghast at the scores of longboats thatwere now emerging from the fog and pulling towards his position. In their center, clumsily rowed by men wielding extra-long sweeps, a schooner crepttowards the beach, her deck crowded with men. Two enemy warships had anchored close to the shore and those ships, still just dark shapes in thesmoke and fog, were now shooting into the bluff. The Hunter had nine four-pounders bearing on the redcoats, while the Sky Rocket had eight of the smallcannon in her broadside, but though the guns were small their scything missiles struck home with mind-numbing brutality. Campbell seemed frozen. Hehad eighty men under command, most of them scattered along the face of the bluff where the steep slope gave way to the gentler rise. "Tell the men to liedown, sir?" a sergeant suggested."Yes," Campbell said, scarcely aware that he was speaking. The ships' guns were firing more raggedly now as the faster gun crews outpaced theslower. Each gunshot was a percussive blow to the ears, and each illuminated the bluff with a sudden flash of light that was smothered almost instantly bypowder smoke. Campbell was shaking. His belly was sour, his mouth dry, and his right leg quivering uncontrollably. There were hundreds of rebelscoming! The fog-smothered sea was shadowed dark by the bluff, but he could make out the glimmer of oar blades beneath the gunsmoke and see thegray light reflecting from bayonets. Twigs, shattered bark, leaves, pinecones, and needles showered on the picquet as the shots tore through the bluff'strees. A chain shot shattered a rotted and fallen trunk. The highlanders closest to Campbell looked nervously towards their officer."Send word to General McLean, sir?" the sergeant suggested stoically."Go," Campbell blurted out the command, "yes, go, go!"The sergeant turned and a bar shot struck his neck. It severed his powdered pigtail, cut head from bod, and, in the gray gloom and darkness of thedawn, the spray of blood was extraordinarily bright, like ruby drops given extra brilliance by the fog-diffused sunlight that filtered through the eastern trees.A jet of blood spurted upwards and appeared to lift the head, which turned so that the sergeant seemed to be staring reproachfully at Campbell who gavea small cry of horror, then involuntarily bent double and vomited. The head, soaked in blood, thumped to earth and rolled a few feet down the slope.Another chain shot slashed overhead, scattering twigs. Birds shrieked. A redcoat fired his musket down into the cannon-smoke and fog. "Hold your fire!"Campbell shouted too shrilly. "Hold your fire! Wait till they're on the beach!" He spat. His mouth was sour and his right hand was twitching. There wasblood on his jacket and vomit on his shoes. The sergeant's headless body was shuddering, but at last went still."Why in God's name hold our fire?" Lieutenant John Moore, posted on the Scottish left, wondered aloud. He led twenty-two Hamiltons positioned atDyce's Head where the slope was the steepest. His picquet lay directly between the approaching boats and the small British battery at the bluff's top andMoore was determined to protect that battery. He watched the enemy approaching and also watched himself with a critical inward eye. An enemy chainshot slammed into a tree not five paces away and slivers of bark spattered Moore like the devil's hail, and he knew he was supposed to be frightened, yetin all truth he did not notice that fear. He sensed apprehension, yes, for no man wants to die or be wounded, but instead of a debilitating fear Moore wasfeeling a rising exhilaration. Let the bastards come, he thought, and then he realized that his self-examination was consuming him so that he was standingin silent absorption while his men looked to him for reassurance. Forcing himself to walk slowly along the break of the bluff, he drew his sword and flickedthe slender blade at the thick undergrowth. "Nice of the enemy to trim the trees for us," he said. "It improves the view, don't you think?""Buggers want to trim more than the trees," Private Neill muttered."I don't know if you've noticed something, sir," Sergeant McClure said quietly."Tell me, Sergeant. Brighten my morning."McClure pointed at the approaching boats that were clarifying as they emerged from the smoke-thickened fog. "Yon bastards are in uniform, sir. Ireckon they're sending their best against us. While the scoundrels up yonder, he pointed at the more northerly longboats, "are in any old clothes. Bunch ofvagabonds, they look like."Moore peered westwards, then looked at the northern boats. "You're right, Sergeant," he said. In the nearer boats he could see the white crossbeltsagainst the dark green coats of the marines and he assumed that the uniforms belonged to a regiment of General Washington's Continental Army."They're sending their best troops right here," he said loudly, "and you can't blame them.""You can't?""They're up against the most formidable regiment in the British Army," Moore said cheerfully."Oh, aye, all twenty-two of us," McClure said."If they knew what they faced," Moore said, "they'd turn right around and row away.""Permission to let them know, sir?" McClure asked, appalled at his young officer's bravado."Let's kill them instead, Sergeant," Moore said, though his words were lost as a chain shot drove noisily through the branches overhead to shower thepicquet with pinecones and needles."Don't fire yet!" Captain Archibald Campbell shouted from the bluff's center. "Wait till they're on the beach!""Bloody fool," Moore said. And so, with drawn sword, and under the bombardment of the rebel broadsides, he walked the bluff and watched the enemydraw nearer. Battle, he thought, had come to him at last and in all his eighteen years John Moore had never felt so alive.Wadsworth winced as the oars threw up droplets of water that splashed on his face. It might be July, but the air was cold and the water even colder. Hewas shivering in his Continental Army jacket and he prayed that none of the marines would mistake that shivering for fear. Captain Welch, beside him,looked entirely unconcerned, as if the boat was merely carrying him on some mundane errand. Israel Trask, the boy fifer, was grinning in the longboat'sbows, where he kept twisting around to stare at the bluff where no enemy showed. The bluff climbed two hundred feet from the beach, much of that slopealmost perpendicular, but in the fog it looked much higher. Trees thrashed under the impact of bar and chain shot, and birds circled over the high ground,but Wadsworth could see no redcoats and no puffs of smoke betraying musket-fire. Fog sifted through the high branches. The leading boats were wellwithin musket range now, but still no enemy fired."You stay on the beach, boy," Welch told Israel Trask."Can't I'" the boy began."You stay on the beach," Welch said again, then gave a sly glance at Wadsworth, "with the general.""Is that an order?" Wadsworth asked, amused."Your job is to send the boats back for more men, and send those men where they're needed," Welch said, seemingly unabashed at telling Wadsworthwhat he should do. "Our job is to kill whatever bastards we find at the top of the slope.""If there are any there at all," Wadsworth said. The boat was almost at the beach where small waves broke feebly, and still the enemy offered noresistance."Maybe they're sleeping," Welch said, "maybe."Then, as the bows of the boat grounded on the shingle, the bluff's face exploded with noise and smoke. Wadsworth saw a stab of flame high above,heard the musket-balls whip past, saw splashes of water where they struck the sea, and then the marines were shouting as they leaped ashore. Otherboats scraped onto the narrow beach, which rapidly filled with green-coated men looking for a way up the bluff. A marine staggered backwards, his whitecrossbelt suddenly red. He fell to his knees in the small surf and coughed violently, each cough bringing more dark blood.