From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  “All right, lieutenant,” Jonathan said, his heart beating wildly, “pass the word to get up on the road.” And he climbed up the bank of the causeway and stood in the middle of the road, Lee beside him. With rustlings and hushings the troops were climbing up onto the road behind him now and forming four files. He kept his eye squinted and his ear cupped, but there was no sign or sound that the British were closing the gate. He heard a plaintive bugle call inside the fort, and saw the Union Jack slide down.

  He held up his right hand now, and then waved it forward and began striding up the road toward the gate, and he could hear his troops coming behind him. He had not advised them to be stealthy. He wanted them to clank and clunk and step heavy, and sound for all the world like a British foraging party returning tiredly up the familiar road to their own fort. That was the key to his whole plan: the Americans had to be mistaken for the returning British party. If they were not, they might expect either or both of two things to happen in this next half mile: either there would be shouts and the clanking of iron gates and drawbridge chains, or there would be muzzleblasts of the fort’s gate cannon and a thousand pieces of grapeshot whistling down the road. Jonathan walked on, thinking of these things, hearing the following tread of his men.

  It became the strangest, longest half-mile he had ever walked. In the cooling evening air, in the deepening dusk, under the full gaze of the British sentries high on their gate stations, he was trudging straight up an open road toward the yawning gate of an enemy castle, or so it seemed, with every intention of walking right in. He swallowed as the ramparts grew taller and taller; he swallowed though his dry mouth gave him nothing to swallow. And it occurred to him now that he was actually doing this that it was far more implausible even than it had seemed when he had started telling Harry Lee about it. It was more like a George thing than a Jonathan thing, as Washington had suggested; it was more like the bizarre hijinks of some reckless frontiersman than the careful plan of a scholarly, gentlemanly Clerk of County, engaged to be married to the very proper Miss Sarah Hite. He could hear Colonel Lee laughing voicelessly between his teeth.

  Now the gate was a mere sixty yards away, fifty, forty.… Jonathan caught a whiff of cooking, an oniony, glutinous smell like fat stew, coming from the fort, and he could see the sentries’ heads and shoulders and tall hats atop the walls, silhouetted against the lilac-gray sky. One of the sentries now raised his right hand. Jonathan felt a chill; he expected that sentry to yell out an alarm. Jonathan raised his own right arm now, and took a deep breath, ready to yell for his men to rush the gate before it could be shut. Twenty yards … fifteen … ten.… And then the sentry simply lowered his hand and called down:

  “Good hunting, Sir?”

  It was incredible! Hilariously incredible! The guard had only been waving a hello to the oncoming troop! He had no suspicion! Jonathan called back up, sounding as English as he could:

  “Quoit! Quoit good!” And he heard Colonel Lee’s whispery laugh again.

  And then the great oaken planks of the drawbridge were resounding under his heels, and then the thick, dark gates were beside him and the George Rex escutcheon was above his head, then behind him, and he was inside the fort, in the compound, and there were British soldiers walking around in lamplight not thirty feet from him, going to and from their evening meal.

  “Now, boys,” Jonathan said to the special squad just behind him, and they darted out, six of them to either side, sprinted up the wooden steps to the sentries’ posts and, before they could cry out, clubbed them unconscious. Jonathan now drew his saber and signaled frantically to right and left, and suddenly his men were rushing forward around him on both sides, fixing bayonets. Colonel Lee led a company onto the artillery parapets. A British officer in short red jacket and powdered wig had been coming toward Jonathan as if to greet him, and stopped, bewildered. As he opened his mouth to cry out, Jonathan grabbed him by the front of his jacket, held his sword point under his chin, and said, “Sir, you’re my prisoner or you’re a dead man. Which?”

  The Englishman nodded. “Yes,” was all he could say. His eyes were wild as he watched the hundreds of blue-coated strangers streaming into the torchlit compound. Unarmed British soldiers, some in work coveralls, were stopping stockstill and putting their hands up, or turning to run, some beginning to yell for help. A few pistol shots flared near a stone house in the center of the compound, and several muskets discharged on the firing platforms around the walls. On the parade ground now, the Americans with fixed bayonets were pressing knots of terrified unarmed Redcoats backward into corners and against walls. A confused babble of voices was rising. Jonathan jerked the officer toward the mess hall. “I want you to step to the door there,” he said, “and advise them all to stay where they are and offer no resistance. Understand?” He jabbed the officer’s neck slightly with the sword blade. When they stepped into the door of the mess hall, they found about fifty soldiers, some milling around, others still seated, in the steamy, dim room.

  “Attention, attention!” the officer cried, and it was fortunate that he had a loud, clear voice. The noise subsided, and he yelled, “Be calm! Be calm! I’m afraid we’re overrun! We’re prisoners! Please don’t risk yourselves!”

  “Very good,” Jonathan said. Then he held the officer in the doorway and summoned one of his own lieutenants to place a squad on guard around the building. Fifty prisoners at once, he thought, very pleased with himself. His troops, well controlled by their lieutenants, were rounding up the little groups of prisoners and herding them into the center of the parade ground. With those in the mess hall and these, it looked as if they had nearly a hundred captive already. It was thrilling how well it was working! Up on the ramparts all around now, silhouetted against the twilight sky, figures were moving fast, and he could hear deep shouts and steel clashing, now and then a cry of pain. It sounded as if Lee’s company were nearly all the way around the high walls now.

  “Come,” Jonathan said to his captive officer, “let’s go to the powder magazine, shall we? COME, HIGGINS! BRING YOUR BOMBER BOYS!” A captain ran up, followed by a squad of heavy-footed soldiers clanking with metal. The British officer led toward a low, stone structure with one massive door and pointed to it. “Is it locked?” Jonathan asked. The officer nodded. “Do you have a key?”

  “No, sir. I’m dragoons.”

  “Break it in, boys,” Jonathan said. And the squad set to work with the prybars and stone hammers they had lugged all over the countryside for this eventuality.

  Chank, chank, went the tools, and Jonathan kept his head swiveling, watching every corner to see that his plan was going flawlessly. It seemed to be. He looked at the Redcoat officer. “What d’ye make of our little surprise?”

  “Rahtheh duddie play,” he replied.

  “Oh! Is it! He says it’s duddie play, Higgins.”

  Higgins laughed. Chank, chunk, screech, went the tools. If the plan continued to succeed, the powder magazine would be open and ready. If something went wrong, Jonathan intended to blow it up as he left. And Lee’s men up on the parapets carried hammers and steel spikes to plug the cannon vents in case the fort could not be held. But so far it looked as if the fort would be held. Jonathan was just making this happy appraisal when he heard a heavy fusillade of gunfire in the deepest corner of the fort. Musketballs whistled and ricocheted through the compound; two whanged off the stone wall of the magazine, just missing the wreckers. The balls kept coming. They were kicking up gravel from the parade ground and thudding into the flesh of British prisoners and American guards alike. “Down, DOWN!” Jonathan cried to his men, and peered around the corner of the magazine, toward the source of the gunfire.

  It was a large stone house, officers’ quarters, he guessed. Apparently a large body of the enemy had dashed inside at the first alarm and now were firing from the windows, peppering the whole compound. Their shooting was haphazard, but there was so much of it, and so much was ricocheting, that it was hitting a lot of men. Many were fall
ing, sagging to their knees, staggering.

  Jonathan’s first instinct was to get a company together to storm the house. One houseful of Redcoats should not be able to stop a clever coup like this. Jonathan left the magazine and sprinted to the center of the parade ground. He was about to call officers to get an attack company formed up when an ensign, Lee’s aide, came running across the grounds calling for Major Clark. “Here!” he answered.

  The ensign ran to him. “Colonel Lee’s orders, sir. We’re to withdraw!” He flinched as a musketball sang past.

  No! Jonathan thought. No, we’re almost done! We can silence that house in five—But the ensign went on:

  “He said I should remind you of the general’s cautions, sir. And assure you that he’s destroying the cannon as he goes.” Jonathan, clenching his teeth in frustration, looked around. Under the sounds of the shooting he could indeed hear the tink, tink, tink of hammers on spikes.

  So he gave a long sigh and resigned himself to it. This was no time to be disobeying orders, even if those orders brought him up short. He said:

  “Tell the colonel I’m complying. That I wish to take our prisoners back with us. And that I shall blow the magazine as a parting gesture.”

  COLONEL LEE LED THE VIRGINIANS AND THEIR WOUNDED and their 125 British prisoners a quarter of a mile down the dark road. Then he stepped out to the side to let them file past, and stood looking back at the dark fort.

  Come on, Mister Clark, he thought.

  Come on now. The plan was a brilliant one and it worked as well as it could have and there’s no point in you lingering too long over your handiwork.

  Come on.

  Then a smile spread on his face. He could hear a heavy tread on the road, one trotting man. Soon on the night-dim surface of the dirt road he saw the big figure of the man coming.

  And just as Jonathan pounded to a halt beside Colonel Lee, the inside of the fort turned bright yellow and five quick concussions shook the ground and the night roared. They watched a bright orange, smoky flash balloon over the fort and then, to the gleeful yells of the troops on down the road, watched flaming debris rain down on Paulus Hook. Lee looked at Jonathan in the light of the fireworks and saw a smile of satisfaction on his face. And Jonathan said:

  “There.”

  They walked happily on down the road. Colonel Lee kept putting his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder and chuckling. Jonathan was thinking:

  George didn’t have anyone to stop him, being on his own out there like that.

  “Brilliant,” Colonel Lee was saying. “Brilliant!”

  “Really, I guess we did quite well. Enough to show that I could … that it could be done.”

  A FEW FEET FROM JOHNNY CLARK’S BUNK IN THE GUN ROOM of the Jersey a young officer was sitting with his face in the corner. Here the newer prisoners had picked and clawed at the rotten planking of the hull until they had worried a fist-sized hole through to the outside, and here they would take turns sitting with their faces to the hole breathing the fresh air that came through. They called it The Window. “Don’t make it too big,” the Poet had warned them, “for it’ll have to be plugged somehow when the winter winds come.” But these newcomers had not spent a winter on the Jersey as yet, and so some of them, while sitting at the hole, would keep picking away at the punky oak to enlarge the hole. Some of them even plotted naively about how the hole might be enlarged enough, in time, to permit a man to squeeze through, drop into the water, and swim ashore. Sometimes Johnny would slump in that corner trying to get fresh air to his lungs and he would hear them talking that way. He would not even bother to tell them how hopeless that was. A breath of air was too precious to waste on advice to men who were as vainly hopeful as he himself had once been.

  “What’s that?” said the officer with his face at the hole.

  “What?” asked the next one in line.

  “It sounds like small arms. Way off. From over by New York. Shh!” He had his ear to the hole now. “Aye. Somebody’s shooting up a lot over there, I’ll swear it.”

  “Let me hear.”

  “D’ye suppose Washington’s attacking New York?”

  “Let me hear!”

  “Shhh!”

  “Mister Clark wants at th’ Window.” Johnny had hauled himself out of his bunk and was dragging himself over.

  “Clark’s not in line.”

  “Let ’im, damn your eyes! He’s sick and he’s been a long time here. Let ’im.”

  Johnny gasped his thanks and put his face to the hole. If the Americans were taking New York, maybe they would capture the Jersey soon and free everyone and the sick could get well. That was what he was thinking, and he wanted to see if he could tell whether that was happening or not.

  He couldn’t tell much. He could hear the shooting. It was coming from the west on a slight breeze across the water. It was very far away and hardly audible over the noise of wavelets lapping the hull below. It was very faint, faint as fingertips being drummed on a tabletop. It might be from the vicinity of New York Town but it did not sound anything like a full-scale battle, that was certain. He put his ear to the hole and listened a while. Sometimes the sporadic sounds would fade beneath the sea-sounds, then they would be audible again.

  “What d’you make of it, John Clark?” someone said. He shook his head slowly, then turned his face and looked out into the darkness. Just the jagged, splintery hole with a darkening twilight sky outside and the bright spark of, Johnny thought, Venus, and a low, black silhouette of the far shoreline.

  “Enough, Mister Clark. My turn,” said the nearest man behind him. Johnny nodded. He was sometimes deferred to by the newer prisoners because of his extreme poor health and his older brother’s recent fame, but he did not like to abuse the privilege.

  He was arranging his bones to crawl away from The Window when suddenly he saw a yellow flare on the western horizon, then a glow, and five or six seconds later heard a short rumble like summer thunder.

  “Something … something blew up …” he said, and then started coughing painfully. They helped him away and toward his bunk while the next man in line, and several others, all tried at once to get an eye to The Window, exclaiming, querying, cursing, and shoving each other.

  When Johnny Clark was back in his bunk he was exhausted, and his heavy breathing precipitated more and more coughing, and that tired him more. It was a long time before he could rest, and he almost did not live through that night to learn a few weeks later that the noises across the water had been an American attack on the British fort at Paulus Hook on the Hudson.

  And then for some reason he still did not die, and still did not die, and he was still alive weeks later when a new Yankee captain came aboard prisoner, full of news they had not heard from the outside, among which news was that a Major Jonathan Clark had been commended by His Excellency General Washington and promoted to lieutenant colonel, and awarded a medal of honor by the Congress, for his part in Colonel Light Horse Harry Lee’s daring attack on Paulus Hook.

  This new prisoner, a portly, well-informed, and garrulous fellow, somehow had managed to smuggle a silver flask of brandy aboard, hidden somewhere on his expansive anatomy, and he offered to share it with the other prisoners. It was stretched through tepid water far enough to make a small cup of a sort of grog for each officer in the gun room. Once again Johnny Clark rallied enough to come to the table for a celebration. The captain raised his cup toward Johnny and declared:

  “General Washington is alleged to have said that in this dismal year of ’79, there were only three bright events: the capture of Stony Point by Anthony Wayne, and of Vincennes and Paulus Hook by two Clark boys of Virginia. I say we raise a cup to the Clarks of Virginia, but no loud cheering, gentlemen, because we don’t want those God-damned Redcoats gaolers upstairs coming down to confiscate our delicious grog before we’ve drunk it. So, softly, now, for Vincennes, hip hip.”

  “Hoorah!” they all murmured, smiling.

  “For Paulus Hook, hip hip.”
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br />   “Hoorah!”

  “And for Lieutenant John Clark here, hip hip.”

  “HOORAH!”

  20

  CHARLES TOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA

  May 12, 1780

  LIEUTENANT EDMUND CLARK STOOD WAITING BEHIND AN earthen breastwork in a street near the Battery at Charles Town and listened to the unaccustomed silence. The men of his company lay at rest against the piled dirt, sweating, some dozing. For weeks the bombardment from the British fleet had prevented anyone from really sleeping, and now in the silence of the truce they were almost asleep on their feet.

  Flies buzzed near Edmund’s ears. The street behind the breastwork was littered with broken bricks and pieces of glass glinting in the hot, hazy sunlight. Buildings along the street showed broken pillars and smashed roofs. Most of the windows were gaping dark, their glass smashed out, and above some the bricks were sooty, showing where fires had burned.

  The rumor was that the truce had been called so that General Lincoln could negotiate a surrender, to save the citizens of Charles Town from the bombardment and from further hardship of shortages. Four years ago General Clinton had failed to take Charles Town, but this time he had got ships and artillery in close enough to seal in its defenders and lay a long, deadly siege upon the city. Day by day the bombshells and cannon shot had crashed and exploded in the town. One by one, officers and men Edmund had come to know had been killed, by shrapnel, by flying splinters, by bursting bricks, by concussion. And the troops could do nothing. They had not fired their rifles. The only fire returned to the British had been by the cannon along the Battery, and it had not been very effective.

  Edmund looked toward the headquarters and saw Jonathan coming along the breastwork, his hands behind his back, stopping here and there to speak to some soldiers, answer a question, shake his head. Edmund watched him coming, watched him with a strange, sad affection. Jonathan was almost thirty now; he would be thirty in August: he had been an officer of the Continental Line for nearly five years now, and he looked more like a forty-year-old man. Nine months ago it was that he had been the hero of the Battle of Paulus Hook, and when he had come home on a furlough, he had taken Edmund back to the army with him. Only Billy of all the six sons was still at home now, doing the work of a man to help their father.