The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War - xaviantvision

would earnestly try to be helpful, but never be a rule breaker. Lovell was declaring his belief that Brigadier McLean's men outnumbered his own. "Oh, Irealize you disagree, Wadsworth," Lovell said, "but you young men can be headstrong. In truth we face a malevolent and a mighty foe, and to overcomehim we must harness all our oxen together!""We must attack, sir," Wadsworth said forcefully.Lovell laughed, though without much humor. "One minute you tell me to prepare ourselves for defeat, and the next moment you wish me to attack!""The one will happen without the other, sir."Lovell frowned as he worked out what Wadsworth meant, then shook his head dismissively. "We shall conquer!" he said, then described his grand ideathat the commodore's ships should sail majestically into the harbor, their cannons blazing, while all along the ridge the rebel army advanced on a fortbeing hammered by naval gunfire. "Just imagine it," he said enthusiastically, "all our warships bombarding the fort! My goodness, but we'll just strollacross those ramparts!""I'd rather we attacked in tomorrow's dawn," Wadsworth said, "in the fog. We can close on the enemy in the fog, sir, and take them by surprise.""The commodore can't shift in the fog," Lovell said dismissively. "Quite impossible!"Wadsworth looked eastwards. The fog seemed to have thickened so that the topmasts of only one ship were visible, and it had to be a ship becausethere were three topmasts, each crossed by a topgallant yard. Three crosses. Wadsworth did not think it mattered whether the commodore attacked ornot, or rather he thought it should not matter because Lovell had the men to assault the fort whether the commodore attacked or not. It was like chess,Wadsworth thought, and had a sudden image of his wife smiling as she took his castle with her bishop. The fort was the king, and all Lovell had to do wasmove one piece to acheive checkmate, but the general and Saltonstall insisted on a more complex plan. They wanted bishops and knights zigzagging allover the board, and Wadsworth knew he could never persuade either man to take the simple route. So, he thought, make their complicated moves work,and make them work soon before the British brought new pieces to the board. "Has the commodore agreed to enter the harbor?" he asked Lovell."Not exactly agreed," Lovell said uncomfortably, "not yet.""But you believe he will, sir?""I'm sure he will," Lovell said, "in time he will."Time was precisely what the rebels lacked, or so Wadsworth believed. "If we control the harbor entrance'" he began and was again interrupted byLovell."It's that wretched battery on the harbor foreshore," the general said, and Wadsworth knew he was referring to the semicircular earthwork the Britishhad dug to cover the harbor entrance. That battery was now the closest enemy post."So if the battery was captured, sir," Wadsworth suggested, "then the commodore would take advantage?""I would hope he would," Lovell said."So why don't I prepare a plan to capture it?" Wadsworth asked.Lovell stared at Wadsworth as though the younger man had just wrought a miracle. "Would you do that?" the general asked, immensely pleased. "Yes,do that! Then we can advance together. Soldier and sailor, marine and militia, together! How soon can you have such a plan? By noon, perhaps?""I'm sure I can, sir.""Then I shall propose your plan at this afternoon's council," Lovell said, "and urge every man present to vote for it. My goodness, if we capture thatbattery then the commodore . . ." Lovell checked whatever he might have said because there was an abrupt crackle of musketry. It rose in intensity andwas answered by a cannon shot. "What the devil are those rogues doing now?" Lovell asked plaintively and hurried away eastwards to find out.Wadsworth followed.As gunfire splintered the morning."You can't give the enemy any rest," Brigadier McLean had said. The Scotsman had been astonished that the rebels had not assaulted the fort, and evenmore surprised when it became clear that General Lovell was digging defenses on the high ground. McLean now knew his opponent's name, learnedfrom an American deserter who had crept across the ridgetop at night and called aloud to the sentries from the abatis. McLean had questioned the man,who, trying to be helpful, expressed his belief that Lovell had brought two thousand troops to the peninsula. "It may be even more, sir," the man said."Or fewer," McLean retorted."Yes, sir," the miserable wretch had said, "but it looked like plenty enough at Townsend, sir," which was no help at all. The deserter was a man in hisforties who claimed he had been pressed into the militia ranks and had no wish to fight. "I just want to go home, sir," he said plaintively."As do we all," McLean had said and put the man to work in the hospital's cookhouse.The rebel guns had opened fire the day after the high ground was lost. The rate of fire was not high, and many of the balls were wasted, but the fort wasa big target and a near one, and so the big eighteen-pounder balls thrashed into the newly made rampart, scattering dirt and timber. The new storehousewas hit repeatedly until its gabled roof was virtually demolished, but so far no shot had managed to hit any of McLean's own cannon. Six were nowmounted on the western wall and Captain Fielding was keeping up a steady fire at the distant tree line. The rebels, rather than mount their cannon at theedge of the woods, had emplaced them deep inside the trees, then cut down corridors to give the cannons avenues of fire. "You might not hit much,"McLean had told Fielding, "but you'll keep them worried and you'll hide us in smoke."It was not enough to just worry the enemy, McLean knew they had to be kept off-balance and so he had ordered Lieutenant Caffrae to assemble forty ofthe liveliest men into a skirmishing company. Caffrae was a sensible and intelligent young man who liked his new orders. He added a pair of drummerboys to his unit and four fife players, and the company used the fog, or else the trees to the peninsula's north, to get close to the enemy lines. Once therethe small band played "Yankee-Doodle," a tune that for some reason annoyed the rebels. The skirmishers would shout orders to imaginary men and shootat the rebel trenches, and whenever a large party of the enemy came to challenge Caffrae's company he would withdraw under cover, only to reappearsomewhere else to taunt and to shoot again. Caffrae, temporarily promoted to captain, danced in front of Lovell's men. He provoked, he challenged. Hewould sometimes go at night to disturb the rebel sleep. Lovell's men were to be given neither rest nor comfort, but be constantly harassed and alarmed."Let me go, sir," Lieutenant Moore pleaded with McLean."You will, John, you will," McLean promised. Caffrae was out in the ground between the lines and his men had just fired a volley to wake the morning.The skirmishers' fifes were trilling their mocking tune, which always provoked a wild response of ill-aimed musketry from the trees where the rebelssheltered. McLean stared westwards in an attempt to discover Caffrae's position among the wisps of fog that slowly cleared from the heights, and insteadsaw the rebels' gun corridors choke with sudden smoke as the enemy guns began their daily fire. The first shots fell short, plowing into the ridge to throwup plumes of soil and wood chips.The rebel gunfire was a nuisance, but McLean was grateful that it was no more than that. If the Scotsman had been commanding the besiegers hewould have ordered his gunners to concentrate the balls at one point of the defenses and, when that place had been thoroughly destroyed, to move theiraim slightly left or right and so demolish the fort systematically. Instead the enemy gunners fired at whatever they pleased, or else they just aimed generallyat the fort, and McLean was finding it a simple enough task to repair whatever damage the balls did to the western curtain wall and its flanking bastions.Yet, if the gunfire was not proving as destructive as he had feared, it was still eroding his men's confidence. Sentries had to stand with their headsexposed above the rampart if they were to watch the enemy and, on the very first day of the rebel bombardment, one such sentry had been hit by acannon-ball that had shattered his head into a mess of blood, bone, and brains. The ball had then struck the remnants of the storehouse gable and cometo rest, still plastered with bloody hair, against a water butt. Other men had been injured, mostly by stones or splinters jarred from the rampart by a cannonball.The rebels were using an howitzer too, a weapon McLean feared more than their largest cannon, but the gunners were inexpert and the howitzerdropped its exploding shot randomly across the ridgetop."I have a job for you now, Lieutenant," McLean said to Moore."Of course, sir.""Come with me," McLean said and walked towards the fort's gate, stabbing his blackthorn stick into the soil with each step. He knew that the day'sonset of rebel cannon-fire would make his men nervous and he wanted to allay their fears. "Captain Fielding!""Sir?" the English artilleryman called back."Bide your fire a short while!""I will, sir."McLean went outside the fort, then led Moore west and north until they were standing some twenty paces in front of Fort George's ditch and in full viewof the rebel lines. "Our task is just to stand here, Lieutenant," McLean explained.Moore was amused. "It is, sir?""To show the men they have nothing to fear.""Ah, and if we're killed, sir?"