The Fort

by Bernard Cornwell

  “The channel south of Cross Island.”

  Carnes’s marines rowed Wadsworth and the captain south into the channel behind Cross Island. That island was one of a necklace of rocks and islets which bounded a cove to the south of Majabigwaduce Harbor. A narrow isthmus separated the cove from the harbor itself and Wadsworth went ashore on its strip of stony beach where he unfolded the crude map James Fletcher had drawn for him. He pointed across the placid waters of Majabigwaduce’s inner harbor towards the thickly wooded eastern shore. “A man called Haney farms land over there,” he told Carnes, “and General Lovell wants a battery there.”

  A battery on Haney’s land would hammer the British ships from the east. Wadsworth climbed one of the steep, overgrown hillocks that studded the isthmus and, once at the summit, used Captain Carnes’s powerful telescope to gaze at the enemy. At first he examined the four British ships. The closest vessel was the transport Saint Helena, which dwarfed the smaller sloops, yet those three smaller ships were far more heavily armed. Their east-facing gunports were closed, but Wadsworth reckoned there were no guns hidden behind those blank wooden squares. The rebels had seen British sailors taking cannon ashore, and the verdict had been that Captain Mowat had offered his ships’ portside broadsides to the fort’s defense. If Wadsworth needed any confirmation of that suspicion he gained it from seeing that the sloops were very slightly keeled over to starboard. He gave the telescope to Carnes and asked him to examine the ships. “You’re right, sir,” the marine said, “they are listing.”

  “Guns on one side only?”

  “That would explain the list.”

  So any guns on Haney’s land would have no opposition, at least until Mowat managed to shift some cannon from his west-facing broadsides. Place guns on Haney’s land and the rebels would be just a thousand yards from the sloops, a range at which the eighteen-pounders would be lethal. “But how do we get men and guns there?” Wadsworth wondered aloud.

  “Same way we came, sir,” Carnes said. “We carry the boats across this strip of land and relaunch them.”

  Wadsworth felt a dull anger at the sheer waste of effort. It would take a hundred men two days to make a battery on Haney’s land, and what then? Even if the British ships were sunk or taken, would it make it any easier to capture the fort? True, the American ships could sail safe into the harbor and their guns could fire up at the fort, but what damage could their broadsides do to a wall so high above them?

  Wadsworth trained the telescope on Fort George. At first he misaimed the tubes and was amazed that the fort looked so small, then he took his eye from the glass and saw that a new fort was being constructed and it was that second work he was seeing. The new fort, much smaller than Fort George, lay on the ridge to the east of the larger work. He trained the telescope again and saw blue-coated naval officers while the men digging the soil were not in any kind of uniform. “Sailors,” he said aloud.

  “Sailors?”

  “They’re making a new redoubt. Why?”

  “They’re making a refuge,” Carnes said.

  “A refuge?”

  “If their ships are defeated the crews will go ashore. That’s where they’ll go.”

  “Why not go to the main fort?”

  “Because McLean wants an outwork,” Carnes said. “Look at the fort, sir.”

  Wadsworth edged the telescope westwards. Trees and houses skidded past the lens, then he steadied the glass to examine Fort George. “Bless me,” he said.

  He was gazing at the fort’s eastern wall which was hidden to anyone on the high ground to the west. And that eastern curtain wall was unfinished. It was still low. Wadworth could see no cannon there, only a shallow ridge of earth that he supposed was fronted by a ditch, but the important thing, the thing that made his hopes rise and his heart beat faster, was that the wall was still low enough to be easily scaled. He lowered the glass’s aim, examining the village with its cornfields, thickets, barns, and orchards. If he could reach that low ground then he reckoned he could conceal his men from both the ships and the fort. They could assemble out of sight, then attack that low wall. The impudent flag above the fort might yet be pulled down.

  “McLean knows he’s vulnerable from the east,” Carnes said, “and that new redoubt protects him. He’ll put cannon there.”

  “Or he will when it’s finished,” Wadsworth said, and it was clear the new redoubt was far from completion. We should attack from the east, he thought, because that was where the British were weak.

  Wadsworth aimed the telescope towards Dyce’s Head, but the British ships obstructed his view and he could see nothing of the ambush, if indeed it had been sprung. No powder smoke showed in the sky above the abandoned battery. Wadsworth edged the telescope right again to stare across the low eastern tail of Majabigwaduce’s peninsula. He was looking at the land north of the peninsula. He stared for a long time, then gave the glass back to Carnes. “Look there,” he pointed. “There’s a meadow at the waterside. You can just see a house above it. It’s the only house I can see there.”

  Carnes trained the glass. “I can see it.”

  “The house belongs to a man called Westcot. General Lovell wants a battery up there too, but will its guns reach the British ships?”

  “Eighteen-pounder shot will,” Carnes said, “but it’s too far for anything smaller. Must be a mile and a half, so you’ll need your eighteens.”

  “General Lovell insists the ships must be defeated,” Wadsworth explained, “and the only way we can do that is by sinking them with gunfire.”

  “Or by taking our ships in,” Carnes said.

  “Will that happen?”

  Carnes smiled. “The commodore is so high above me, sir, that I never hear a word he says. But if you weaken the British ships? I think in the end he’ll go in.” He swung the glass to examine the sloops. “That shoreward sloop? She hasn’t stopped pumping her bilges from the day we arrived. She’ll sink fast enough.”

  “Then we’ll build the batteries,” Wadsworth said, “and hope we can riddle them with round shot.”

  “And General Lovell’s right about one thing, sir,” Carnes said. “You do need to get rid of the ships.”

  “The ships will surrender if we capture the fort,” Wadsworth said.

  “No doubt they will,” Carnes said, “but if a British relief fleet arrives, sir, then we want all our ships inside the harbor.”

  Because then the tables would be turned and it would be the British who would have to fight their way through cannon-fire to attack the harbor, but only if the harbor belonged to the rebels, and the only way that the Americans could capture the harbor was by storming the fort.

  It was all so simple, Wadsworth thought, so very simple, and yet Lovell and the commodore were making it so complicated.

  Wadsworth and Carnes were rowed back to the beach beneath Majabigwaduce’s bluff. As the longboat threaded the anchored warships Wadsworth stared south towards the sea-reach, south to where the reinforcements, either British or American, would arrive.

  And the river was empty.

  “I do believe,” McLean was staring south through a telescope, “that is my friend, Brigadier Wadsworth.” He was gazing at two men, one in a green coat, who were on the harbor’s southern shore. “I doubt they’re taking the air. You think they’re contemplating new batteries?”

  “It would be sensible of them, sir,” Lieutenant Moore answered.

  “I’m sure Mowat’s seen them, but I’ll let him know.” McLean lowered the glass and turned westwards. “If the rascals dare to build a battery on the harbor shore we’ll lead them a merry dance. And what steps are those rogues doing?” He pointed down towards the abandoned Half Moon Battery where a score of rebels appeared to be digging a ditch. It was difficult to see, because Jacob Dyce’s house, barn, and cornfield were partly in the way.

  “May I, sir?” Moore asked, holding a hand for the telescope.

  “Of course. Your eyes are younger than mine.”

  Moo
re stared at the men. “They’re not working particularly hard, sir,” he said, after watching for a while. Six men were digging, the others were lounging amidst the wreckage of the battery.

  “So what are they doing?”

  “Making the battery defensible, sir?”

  “And if they wanted to do that,” McLean asked, “why not send a hundred men? Two hundred! Three! Throw up a wall fast. Why send so few men?”

  Moore did not reply because he did not know the answer. McLean took the glass back and used the lieutenant’s shoulder as a rest. He took a swift look at the lackadaisical work-party, then raised the telescope to stare at the trees on Dyce’s Head. “Ah,” he said after a while.

  “Ah, sir?”

  “There are a score of men on the high ground. They’re not usually there. They’re watching and waiting.” He collapsed the telescope’s tubes. “I do believe, Lieutenant, that our enemy has prepared a trap for us.”

  Moore smiled. “Really, sir?”

  “What are those fellows watching? They can’t be there to watch a ditch being dug!” McLean frowned as he gazed westwards. A rebel cannon-ball flew overhead. The sound of the guns was now so normal that he scarcely noticed it, though he took careful note of the effect of the rebel gunfire, most of which was wasted and it amused McLean that Captain Fielding was so offended by that. As an artilleryman the English captain expected better of the enemy gunners, though McLean was delighted that the rebel cannoneers were being so wasteful. If they had spent an extra minute laying each gun they could have demolished most of Fort George’s western wall by now, but they seemed content to fire blind. So what were those men doing on Dyce’s Head? They were plainly staring towards the fort, but to see what? And why were there so few men at the Half Moon Battery? “They’re there to draw us out,” McLean decided.

  “The ditch-diggers?”

  “They want us to attack them,” McLean said, “and why would they want that?”

  “Because they have more men there?”

  McLean nodded. He reckoned half of warfare was reading the enemy’s mind, a skill that was now ingrained in the Scotsman. He had fought in Flanders and in Portugal, he had spent a lifetime watching his enemies and learning to translate their every small movement, and to translate what he saw in the knowledge that very often those movements were calculated to deceive. At first, when the rebels had arrived, McLean had been puzzled by these enemies. They had so nearly captured the fort, then they had decided on a siege instead of a storm, and he had worried about what cleverness that tactic concealed, but now he was almost certain that there was no cleverness at all. His enemy was simply cautious, and the best way to keep him cautious was to hurt him. “We’re being invited to dance to a rebel tune, Lieutenant.”

  “And we decline the honor, sir?”

  “Oh good Lord, no, no! Not at all!” McLean said, enjoying himself. “Somewhere down there is a much larger body of the enemy. I think we must take the floor with them!”

  “If we do, sir, then might’”

  “You want to dance?” McLean interrupted Moore. “Of course, Lieutenant.” It was time to let Moore off the leash, the general decided. The young man still blamed himself, and rightly, for his brave stupidity on the day when the rebels had captured the high ground, but it was time Moore was offered redemption for that mistake. “You’ll go with Captain Caffrae,” McLean said, “and you shall dance.”

  Commodore Saltonstall declared he would be responsible for constructing the battery on Haney’s land if General Lovell was prepared to send a pair of eighteen-pounder cannons to the new work. Saltonstall did not communicate directly with Lovell, but sent Hoysteed Hacker, captain of the Continental sloop Providence, with the offer. He carried Lovell’s consent back to the commodore, and so that afternoon eight longboats left the anchored warships and rowed south of Cross Island to land on the narrow isthmus. The boats were manned by over a hundred sailors equipped with spades and picks which they carried, with the boats, across the narrow neck of land. They relaunched the boats and rowed across to the eastern side of Majabigwaduce Harbor. They were led by Commodore Saltonstall, who wanted to site the battery himself.

  He discovered the perfect place for a battery, a low headland that pointed like a finger directly at the British ships and with space enough for two guns to pound the enemy sloops. “Dig here,” he ordered. He would raise a rampart round the headland. Eventually, he knew, Mowat would haul guns across the sloops’ decks to return the fire, so the rampart needed to be high and stout enough to protect the gunners.

  Mowat was evidently busy because Saltonstall could see boats rowing constantly between the sloops and the shore. A new and smaller fort was being built east of Fort George and Saltonstall suspected it was there to add firepower to the harbor defenses. “We bring our ships in here,” he told his first lieutenant, “and they’ll pour shot down on us.”

  “They will, sir,” Lieutenant Fenwick said loyally.

  Saltonstall pointed to the new earthwork that the British were making. “They’re putting more guns up there. They can’t wait to have our ships under their cannons. It’s a death trap.”

  “Unless Lovell captures the fort, sir.”

  “Captures the fort!” Saltonstall said scathingly. “He couldn’t capture a dribble of piss with a chamberpot. The man’s a damned farmer.”

  “What are they doing?” Fenwick pointed to the British sloops from which four longboats, each crammed with red-coated Royal Marines, were rowing northeast towards the Majabigwaduce River.

  “They’re not coming this way,” Saltonstall said.

  “I presume we’ll post marines here, sir?” Fenwick asked.

  “We’ll need to.” The new battery was isolated and, if the British had a mind to it, easily attacked. Yet the guns did not have to be here for long. Whenever the rebel fire had become too warm the British ships had moved their position and Saltonstall was convinced that a battery here on Haney’s land and another to the north would drive Mowat away from his present position. The Scotsman would either take his sloops north into the narrow channel of the Majabigwaduce River or else seek refuge in the southernmost reaches of the harbor, but in either place he would be unable to support the fort with his broadsides and, once the sloops had been driven away, Saltonstall could contemplate bringing his ships into the harbor and using their guns to bombard the fort on the ridge. But only if Lovell attacked at the same time. He watched the Royal Marines rowing steadily up the Majabigwaduce River. “Foraging, maybe?” he guessed. The boats vanished behind a distant point of land.

  The sailors were having a hard time because the soil was thin. The commodore, feeling restless and bored by the dull work, left Lieutenant Fenwick to supervise the diggers while he walked up a trail towards a farm. It was a miserable farm too, little more than a lichen-covered log cabin with a field-stone chimney, a ramshackle barn, some cornfields, and a stony pasture with two thin cows, all of it hacked out of the forest. The log pile was bigger than the house and the dungheap even bigger. Smoke seeped from the chimney, suggesting someone was home, but Saltonstall had no wish to engage in a conversation with some dirt-poor peasant and so he avoided the house, walking instead around the margin of the cow pasture and climbing towards the summit of the hill east of the house, from where, he thought, he might get a fine view of the new enemy fort.

  He knew Solomon Lovell was blaming him for not attacking the British ships and Saltonstall despised Lovell for that blame. The man was a Massachusetts farmer, not a soldier, and he had no conception whatever of naval matters. To Solomon Lovell it all seemed so easy. The American ships should sail boldly through the harbor entrance and use their broadsides to shatter the enemy ships, but Saltonstall knew what would happen if he attempted that maneuver. The wind and tide would carry the Warren slowly, and her bows would be exposed to all Mowat’s guns, and the cannon from the fort would pour their heavy shot down into her hull and the scuppers would be dripping blood by the time he hauled into the wind to
bring his own broadside to bear. Then, true enough, he might batter one of the sloops into submission, and the larger rebel ships would be there to help, but even if all the British ships were taken the fort would still be hammering shot down the slope. And probably heated shot. McLean was no fool and by now he must surely have built a furnace to heat shot red, and such shot, lodged in a frigate’s timbers, could start a fire to reach the magazine and then the Warren would explode, scattering her precious timbers all across the harbor.

  So Saltonstall was not minded to attack, not unless the fort was being distracted by a land assault at the same time and General Lovell showed no appetite for such a storm. And no wonder, the commodore thought, because in his opinion Lovell’s militia was little more than a rabble. Perhaps, if real soldiers arrived, the assault would be possible, but until such a miracle happened Saltonstall would keep his precious fleet well outside the range of enemy cannons. By now the commodore had reached the hill’s low summit where he took the telescope from his tail-pocket. He wanted to count the guns in Fort George and look for the telltale shimmer of heat coming from a shot-furnace.

  He steadied the glass against a spruce. It took a moment to bring the lenses into focus, then he saw redcoats leaving the fort and straggling down the track into the village. He lifted the tubes to bring the fort into view. The glass was powerful, giving Saltonstall a close-up glimpse of a cannon firing. He saw the carriage jump and slam back, saw the eruption of smoke and watched the gunners close on the weapon to ready it for the next shot. He waited for the sound to reach him.

  And heard musket-fire instead.

  * * *

  Captain Caffrae’s men had not left the fort together, but instead had gone down to the village in small groups so that no rebel watching from the western heights would be forewarned that the company was deploying.

  Caffrae assembled them by the Perkins house where the newborn Temperance was crying. He inspected weapons, told his two drummers and three fifers to keep their instruments quiet, then led the company westwards. They kept to the paths that were hidden from the heights and so reached Aaron Banks’s house where a large barn offered concealment. “Take a picquet into the corn,” Caffrae ordered Lieutenant Moore, “and I want no heroics, Mister Moore!”