The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War - xaviantvision

Chapter ElevenWednesday, August 11th, started with a thick fog and still airs. Small waves slapped wearily on the harbor shore where a lone gull cried. PelegWadsworth, standing on Dyce's Head, could see neither the enemy fort nor their ships. Fog blanketed the world. No cannon fired because the whitenessconcealed targets from rebel and king's men alike.Colonel Samuel McCobb had brought two hundred men from his Lincoln County militia to the meadow just beneath Dyce's Head. These were the samemen who had fled from the Half Moon Battery and now they waited for General Lovell, who had decided to send them back to the battery. "If you fall off ahorse," Lovell had asked Peleg Wadsworth the previous night, "what do you do?""Climb back into the saddle?""My sentiments, my sentiments," Lovell had declared. The general, who had been in despair just a couple of days before, had apparently climbed backinto his own saddle of confidence. "You dust yourself down," Lovell had said, "and scramble back up! Our fellows need to be shown they can beat theenemy."James Fletcher was waiting with Peleg Wadsworth. Fletcher would guide McCobb's men down to Jacob Dyce's cornfield which lay a hundred or sopaces up the slope from the deserted battery. There the militia would hide. It was a trap devised by Lovell, who was certain that McLean would not be ableto resist the lure. Wadsworth had urged Lovell to assault the fort directly, but the general had insisted that McCobb's men required heartening. "They needa victory, Wadsworth," Lovell had declared."Indeed they do, sir.""As things are," Lovell had admitted with bleak honesty, "we're not ready to assault the fort, but if the militia's confidence is restored, if their patrioticfervor is aroused, then I believe there is nothing they cannot achieve."Peleg Wadsworth hoped that was true. A letter had arrived from Boston warning that a fleet of British warships had left New York harbor and it waspresumed, no one could say for certain, that the fleet's destination was Penobscot Bay. Time was short. It was possible that the enemy fleet was sailingelsewhere, to Halifax or maybe down the coast towards the Carolinas, but Wadsworth worried that any day now he would see topsails appear above theseaward islands in the Penobscot River. Some men were already urging abandonment of the siege, but Lovell was unwilling to contemplate failure,instead he wanted his militia to win a small victory that would lead to the greater triumph.And so this ambush had been devised. McCobb was to take his men down to the concealment of the cornfield from where he would send a small patrolto occupy the deserted battery. Those men would carry picks and spades so that they appeared to be making a new rampart to face the British, adefiance that Lovell was certain would provoke a response from Fort George. McLean would send men to drive the small patrol away and the ambushwould be sprung. As the British attacked the men heightening the earthwork, so McCobb's men would erupt from the cornfield and assault the enemy'sflank. "You'll give them a volley," Lovell had encouraged McCobb the night before, "then drive them away at the point of bayonets. Balls and bayonets!That'll do the job."General Lovell now appeared in the dawn fog. "Good morning, Colonel!" the general cried cheerfully."Good morning, sir," McCobb answered."Good morning, good morning, good morning!" Lovell called to the assembled men who mostly ignored him. One or two returned the greeting, thoughnone with any enthusiasm. "Your men are in good heart?" the general asked McCobb."Ready and raring for the day, sir," McCobb answered, though in truth his men looked ragged, sullen, and dispirited. Days of camping in the woods hadleft them dirty and the rain had rotted their shoe leathers, though their weapons were clean enough. McCobb had inspected the weapons, tugging at flints,drawing bayonets from sheaths or running a finger inside a barrel to make certain no powder residue clung to the metal. "They'll do us proud, sir,"McCobb said."Let us hope the enemy plays his part!" Lovell declared. He looked upwards. "Is the fog thinning?""A little," Wadsworth said."Then you should go, Colonel," Lovell said, "but let me say a word or two to the men first?"Lovell wanted to inspire them. He knew spirits were dangerously low, he heard daily reports of men deserting the lines or else hiding in the woods toevade their duties, and so he stood before McCobb's men and told them they were Americans, that their children and children's children would want tohear of their prowess, that they should return home with laurels on their brows. Some men nodded as he spoke, but most listened with expressionlessfaces as Lovell moved to his carefully prepared climax. "Let after ages say," he declared with an orator's flourish, "that there they did stand like meninspired, there did they fight, and fighting some few fell, the rest victorious, firm, inflexible!"He stopped abruptly, as if expecting a cheer, but the men just gazed blankly at him and Lovell, discomfited, gestured that McCobb should take themdown the hill. Wadsworth watched them pass. One man had tied his boot-soles to the uppers with twine. Another man limped. A few were bare-footed,some were gray-headed and others looked absurdly young. He wished Lovell had thought to ask Saltonstall for a company of marines, but the generaland the commodore were barely on speaking terms now. They communicated by stiff letters, the commodore insisting that the ships could not beattacked while the fort existed, and the general certain that the fort was impregnable so long as the British ships still floated."I think that went very well," Lovell said to Wadsworth, "don't you?""Your speech, sir? It was rousing.""Just a reminder of their duty and our destiny," Lovell said. He watched the last of the militia disappear into the fog. "When the day clears," he went on,"you might look to those new batteries?""Yes, sir," Wadsworth said unenthusiastically. Lovell wanted him to establish new gun batteries that could bombard the British ships. Those newbatteries, Lovell now insisted, were the key to the army's success, but the idea made little sense to Wadsworth. Building more batteries would take gunsfrom their primary job of cannonading the fort and, besides, the gunners had already warned Lovell that they were running short of ammunition. The twelvepoundershot was almost entirely expended, and the eighteen-pounders had fewer than two hundred rounds between them. Colonel Revere was beingblamed for that shortage of powder and shot, but in all fairness everyone had expected the British to be defeated within a week of the fleet's arrival, andnow the army had been encamped before Fort George for almost three weeks. There was even a lack of musket cartridges because the spareammunition had not been properly protected from the rain. General McLean, Wadsworth thought bitterly, would never have allowed his cartridges todeteriorate. He had been unsettled by his meeting with the Scotsman. It was strange to feel such a liking for an enemy and McLean's air of easyconfidence had gnawed at Wadsworth's hopes.Lovell had heard the lack of enthusiasm in Wadsworth's voice. "We must rid ourselves of those ships," he said energetically. The topmasts of the fourBritish ships were visible above the fog now, and Wadsworth instinctively glanced southwards to where he feared to see enemy reinforcements arriving,but the Penobscot's long sea-reach was entirely shrouded by the fog. "If we can establish those new batteries," Lovell went on, still sounding as though headdressed an election meeting rather than confiding in his deputy, "then we can so damage the enemy that the commodore will feel it safe to enter theharbor."Wadsworth suddenly wanted to commit murder. The responsibility for capturing the fort was not Saltonstall's, but Lovell's, and Lovell was doing anythingexcept fulfill that obligation.The violent sensation was so strange to Peleg Wadsworth that, for a moment, he said nothing. "Sir," he finally said, mastering the urge to be bitter, "theships are incapable'""The ships are the key!" Lovell contradicted Wadsworth before the objection was even articulated. "How can I throw my men forward if the ships exist