The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Wait for me,” Todd ordered the longboat’s crew, then he followed Lieutenant Fenwick down the frigate’s deck, past the big guns that still bore their chalked inscriptions, and so to the commodore’s cabin. Water dripped from Todd’s coat and hat, and his boots squelched on the checkered canvas carpet.

  “Major Todd,” Saltonstall greeted Todd’s arrival. The commodore was seated at his table with a glass of wine. Four spermaceti candles in fine silver sticks lit a book he was reading.

  “General Lovell sends his compliments, sir,” Todd began with the politic lie, “and asks why the attack did not take place?”

  Saltonstall evidently thought the question brusque, because he jerked his head back defiantly. “I sent a message,” he said, looking just past Todd’s shoulder at the paneled door.

  “I regret to say none arrived, sir.”

  Saltonstall marked his place in the book with a strip of silk, then turned his attention back to the cabin door. “Strange ships were sighted,” he said. “You could hardly expect me to engage the enemy with strange ships at my rearward.”

  “Ships, sir?” Todd asked and hoped that they were the reinforcements from Boston. He wanted to see a regiment of trained soldiers with their flags flying and drums beating, a regiment that could assault the fort and wipe it from the face of Massachusetts.

  “Enemy ships,” Saltonstall said bleakly.

  There was a short silence. Rain pattered on the deck above and a boxed chronometer made an almost indiscernible ticking. “Enemy ships?” Todd repeated feebly.

  “Three frigates in their van,” Saltonstall went on relentlessly, “and a ship of the line with two more frigates coming behind.” He turned back to his book, removing the silk marker.

  “You’re sure?” Todd asked.

  Saltonstall spared him a pitying glance. “Captain Brown of the Diligent is capable of recognizing enemy colors, Major.”

  “So what . . . ?” Todd began, then thought that there was no use in asking the commodore what should happen now.

  “We retreat, of course,” Saltonstall divined the unasked question. “We have no choice, Major. The enemy has anchored for the night, but in the morning? In the morning we must go upriver to find a defensible place.”

  “Yes, sir.” Todd hesitated. “You’ll forgive me, sir, I must report back to General Lovell.”

  “Yes, you must. Goodnight,” Saltonstall said, turning a page.

  Todd was rowed back to the beach. He stumbled up the slippery path in the darkness, falling twice so that when he appeared in Lovell’s makeshift tent he was muddied as well as wet. His face told Lovell the news, news that Todd related anyway. Rain beat on the canvas and hissed in the fire outside as the major told of the newly arrived British fleet that was anchored to the south. “It seems they’ve come in force, sir,” Todd said, “and the commodore believes we must retreat.”

  “Retreat,” Lovell said bleakly.

  “In the morning,” Todd said, “if there’s wind enough, the enemy will come here, sir.”

  “A fleet?”

  “Five frigates and a ship-of-the-line, sir.”

  “Dear God.”

  “He seems to have abandoned us, sir.”

  Lovell looked as if he had been slapped, but suddenly he straightened. “Every man, every gun, every musket, every tent, every scrap of supply, everything! On the ships tonight! Call General Wadsworth and Colonel Revere. Tell them we will leave the enemy nothing. Order the guns evacuated from Cross Island. You hear me? We will leave the enemy nothing! Nothing!”

  There was an army to be saved.

  It rained. The night was windless and so the rain fell hard and straight, turning the rough track which zigzagged up the northern end of the bluff into a chute of mud. There was no moonlight, but Colonel Revere had the idea to light fires at the track’s edge, and by their light the supplies were carried down to the beach where more fires revealed the longboats nuzzling the shingle.

  The guns had to be manhandled down the track. Fifty men were needed for each eighteen-pounder. Teams hauled on drag-ropes to stop the huge guns running away, while other men wrenched at the huge carriage wheels to guide the weapons down to the beach where lighters waited to take the artillery back to the Samuel. Lights glimmered wet from the ships. The rain seethed. Tents, musket cartridges, barrels of flour, boxes of candles, picks, spades, weapons, everything was carried down to the beach where sailors loaded their boats and rowed out to the transports.

  Peleg Wadsworth blundered through the dark wet trees to make sure everything was gone. He carried a lantern, but its light was feeble. He slipped once and fell heavily into a deserted trench at the edge of the woods. He picked up the lantern, which, miraculously, had stayed alight, and gazed east into the darkness which surrounded Fort George. A few tiny rain-diffused splinters of light showed from the houses below the fort, but McLean’s defenses were invisible until a cannon fired and its sudden flame lit the whole ridge before fading. The cannon-ball plowed through trees. The British fired a few guns every night, not in hope of killing rebels, but rather to disturb their sleep.

  “General? General?” It was James Fletcher’s voice.

  “I’m here, James.”

  “General Lovell wants to know if the guns are taken off Cross Island, sir.”

  “I told Colonel Revere to do that,” Wadsworth said. Why had Lovell not asked Revere directly? He walked along the trench and saw that it was empty. “Help me out, James,” he said, holding up a hand.

  They went back through the trees. General Lovell’s table was being carried away, and men were pulling down the shelter under which Wadsworth had slept so many nights. Two militiamen were piling the shelter’s brush and branches onto the campfire, which blazed bright in a billow of smoke. All the campfires were being fed fuel so the British would not guess the rebels were leaving.

  The rain eased towards dawn. Somehow, despite the darkness and the weather, the rebels had managed to rescue everything from the heights, though there was a sudden alarm when McCobb realized the Lincoln County militia’s twelve-pounder gun was still at Dyce’s Head. Men were sent to retrieve it as Wadsworth went carefully down the rain-slicked track. “We’ve left them nothing,” Major Todd greeted him on the beach. Wadsworth nodded wearily. It had been a considerable achievement, he knew, but he could not help wonder at the enthusiasm men had shown to rescue the expedition’s weapons and supplies, an enthusiasm that had not been evident when they had been asked to fight. “Did you see the pay chest?” Todd asked anxiously.

  “Wasn’t it in the general’s tent?”

  “It must be with the tent, I suppose,” Todd said.

  The rain stopped altogether and a gray, watery dawn lit the eastern sky. “Time to go,” Wadsworth said. But where? He looked southwards, but the seaward reach of Penobscot Bay was shrouded by a mist that hid the enemy ships. A lighter waited to take away the missing twelve-pounder, but the only other boat on the beach was there to carry Todd and Wadsworth to the Sally. “Time to go,” Wadsworth said again. He stepped into the boat and left Majabigwaduce to the British.

  No guns fired in the dawn. The night’s rain had stopped, the clouds had cleared, the sky was limpid, the air was still and no fog obscured Majabigwaduce’s ridge. Yet no guns fired from the rebel batteries and there was not even the smaller sound of rebel picquets clearing night-dampened powder from their muskets. Brigadier McLean stared at the heights through his glass. Every few moments he swung the glass southwards, but mist still veiled the lower river and it was impossible to tell what ships lay there. The garrison had seen the strange ships appear in the twilight, but no one was certain whether they were British or American. McLean looked back to the woods. “They’re very quiet,” he said.

  “Buggered off, maybe,” Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, commanding officer of the 74th, suggested.

  “If those ships are ours?”

  “Then our enemies will have their tails between their legs,” Campbell said, “and they’ll
be scampering for the hills.”

  “My goodness, and maybe you’re right.” McLean lowered the glass. “Lieutenant Moore?”

  “Sir?”

  “My compliments to Captain Caffrae, and ask him to be so good as to take his company for a look at the enemy lines.”

  “Yes, sir, and, sir?”

  “And yes, you may accompany him, Lieutenant,” McLean said.

  The fifty men filed through the abatis and went west along the ridge, keeping close to the northern side where the trees were dark from the previous day’s rain. To their left were the stumps of the felled pines, many scarred by cannon shot that had fallen short. About halfway between the fort and the rebel trenches Caffrae led the company into the trees. They went cautiously now, still going westwards, but slowly, always alert for rebel picquets among the leaves. Moore wished he wore a green coat like the enemy marines. He stopped once, his heart pounding because of a sudden noise to his right, but it was only a squirrel scrabbling up a trunk. “I think they’ve gone,” Caffrae said softly.

  “Or perhaps they’re being clever,” Moore suggested.

  “Clever?

  “Luring us into an ambush?”

  “We’ll find out, won’t we?” Caffrae said. He peered ahead. These woods had been his playground where he came to alarm the rebels, but he had rarely advanced this far down the ridge. He listened, but heard nothing untoward. “Staying here won’t put gravy on the beefsteak, will it?” he said. “Let’s move on.”

  They threaded the wet trees, still going at a snail’s pace. Caffrae now edged back to the left so he could see the cleared ground and he realized he had advanced well beyond the rebels’ foremost trenches, and those trenches were empty. If this was an ambush then it would surely have been sprung by now. “They’ve gone,” he said, trying to convince himself.

  They went faster now, advancing ten or fifteen paces at a time, then came to a clearing that had plainly been a rebel encampment. Felled logs surrounded the wet ashes of three campfires, rough shelters of branches and sod stood at the clearing’s edges, and a latrine pit stank in the woods behind. Men peered into the shelters, but found nothing, then followed Caffrae along a track which led towards the river. Moore saw a piece of paper caught in the undergrowth and fished it out with his sword. The paper was wet and disintegrating, but he could still see that someone had written a girl’s name in pencil. Adelaide Rebecah. The name was written again and again in a round and childish hand. Adelaide Rebecah.

  “Anything interesting?” Caffrae asked.

  “Just mis-spelt love.” Moore said and threw the paper away.

  At the side of the path between two of the encampments was a row of graves, each marked with a wooden cross and heaped with stones to stop animals clawing up the corpses. Names were written in charcoal on the crosses. Isaac Fulsome, Nehemiah Eldredge, Thomas Snow, John Reardon. There were seventeen names and seventeen crosses. Someone had written the words “for Liberty” after Thomas Snow’s name, except they had run out of space and the “y” was awkwardly cramped into a corner of the crosspiece.

  “Sir!” Sergeant Logie called. “Sir!” Caffrae ran to the sergeant. “Listen, sir,” Logie said.

  For a moment all Caffrae could hear was the water dripping from the leaves and the small susurration of feeble waves on the bluff’s beach, but then he heard voices. So the rebels were not gone? The voices appeared to come from the foot of the bluff and Caffrae led his men that way to discover a road hacked into the steep face. The road was rutted by wheels because this was how the guns had been hauled to the heights and then hauled down again, and one gun was still on shore. Caffrae, reaching the bluff’s edge, saw a boat on the shingle and saw men struggling with a cannon at the road’s end. “We’ll have that gun, lads,” he said, “so come on!”

  A dozen rebels were manhandling the twelve-pounder onto the beach, but the ruts in the road were waterlogged and the gun was heavy, and the men were tired. Then they heard the noises above them and saw the redcoats bright among the trees. “Lift the barrel!” the rebel officer ordered. They gathered round the gun and lifted the heavy barrel out of its carriage and staggered with their burden across the shingle. The redcoats were whooping and running. The rebels almost swamped the lighter as they dumped the barrel on its stern, but the boat stayed afloat and they clambered aboard and the sailors pulled on the oars as the first Scotsmen arrived on the beach. One rebel stumbled as he tried to shove the boat offshore. He lost his footing and fell full-length into the water just as the oars bit and carried the craft away. His companions stretched arms towards him as he waded and thrashed his way towards the receding boat, but it pulled further away and a Scottish voice ordered the man back to the beach. He was a prisoner, but the cannon barrel was saved. The lighter was rowed still further offshore as the remainder of Caffrae’s men streamed onto the shingle where one of them, a corporal, raised his musket. “No!” Caffrae called sharply. “Let them be!” That was not mercy but caution because some of the transport ships carried small cannon and the beach was well inside their range. To fire a musket was to invite the reply of a grape-loaded cannon. The musket dropped.

  Moore stopped by the abandoned gun carriage. Ahead of him was Penobscot Bay and the rebel fleet. There was no wind so the fleet was still anchored. The sun was well above the horizon now and the day was crystal clear. The dawn mist had vanished so that Moore could now see the second fleet, a smaller fleet, which lay far to the south, and at the heart of that smaller fleet was a big ship, a ship with two decks of guns, a ship far bigger than anything the rebels possessed, and Moore knew from the size of the ship that the Royal Navy had arrived.

  And the rebels were gone from Majabigwaduce.

  * * *

  Peleg Wadsworth had pleaded with General Lovell to prepare themselves for just this emergency. He had wanted to take men upriver and find a point of land where gun batteries could be prepared and then, if the British did send a fleet, the rebels could withdraw behind their new defenses and pound the pursuing ships with gunfire, but Lovell had refused every such plea.

  Now Lovell wanted exactly what Wadsworth had asked for so often. James Fletcher was summoned to the Sally’s stern-deck and asked what lay upriver. “There’s about six, seven mile of bay, General,” Fletcher told Lovell, “then it’s a narrow river after that. She goes twenty mile before you can go no further.”

  “And the river winds over those twenty miles?” Lovell asked.

  “In places she does,” James said. “There’s some straight channels and there are twists as tight as Satan’s tail.”

  “The banks are hilly?”

  “All the way, sir.”

  “Then our objective,” Lovell said, “is to find a bend in the river that we can fortify.” The rebel fleet could shelter upriver of the bend, and every gun that could be carried ashore would be dug into the high ground to shatter the pursuing British ships. The fleet would thus be saved and the army preserved. Lovell gave Wadsworth a rueful smile. “Don’t chide me, Wadsworth,” he said, “I know you foresaw this might happen.”

  “I hoped it would not, sir.”

  “But all will be well,” Lovell said with sublime confidence. “Some energy and application will preserve us.”

  Little could be done while there was no wind to move the ships. Yet Lovell was pleased with the night’s work. Everything that could be saved from the heights, all except for one gun carriage, had been embarked and that achievement, in a night of rain and chaos, had been remarkable. It boded well for the army’s survival. “We have all our guns,” Lovell said, “all our men and all our supplies!”

  “Almost all our guns,” Major Todd corrected the general.

  “Almost?” Lovell asked indignantly.

  “The cannon were not recovered from Cross Island,” Major Todd said.

  “Not recovered! But I gave distinct orders that they were to be withdrawn!”

  “Colonel Revere claimed he was too busy, sir.”

  Lovell st
ared at the major. “Busy?”

  “Colonel Revere also claimed, sir,” Todd went on, taking some pleasure in describing the failings of his enemy, “that your orders no longer applied to him.”

  Lovell gaped at his brigade major. “He said what?”

  “He averred that the siege had been abandoned, sir, and that therefore he was no longer obliged to accept your orders.”

  “Not obliged to accept my orders?” Lovell asked in disbelief.

  “That is what he claimed, sir,” Todd said icily. “So I fear those guns are lost, sir, unless we have time to retrieve them this morning. I also regret to tell you, sir, that the pay chest is missing.”

  “It’ll turn up,” Lovell said dismissively, still brooding over Lieutenant-Colonel Revere’s brazen insolence. Not obliged to accept orders? Who did Revere think he was?

  “We need the pay chest,” Todd insisted.

  “It will be found, I’m sure,” Lovell said testily. There had been chaos in the dark and it was inevitable that some items would have been carried to the wrong transport ship, but that could all be sorted out once a safe anchorage was discovered and protected. “But first we must haul those guns off Cross Island,” Lovell insisted, “I will leave nothing for the British. You hear me? Nothing!”

  But there was no time to rescue the cannon. The first catspaws of wind had just begun to ruffle the bay and the British fleet was already hauling its anchors and loosing sails. The rebel fleet had to move and one by one the anchors were raised, the sails released and the ships, assisted by the flood tide, retreated northwards. The wind was weak and fickle, scarce enough to stir the fleet, so some smaller ships used their long ash oars to help their progress while others were towed by longboats.

  The cannon on Cross Island were abandoned, but everything else was saved. All the rebel guns and supplies had been carried down the muddy track in the rainy dark, then rowed out to the transport ships, and now those ships edged northwards, northwards to the river narrows, and northwards to safety.

  And behind them, between the transport ships and Sir George Collier’s flotilla, the rebel warships cleared for action and spread slowly across the bay. If the transports were sheep then Saltonstall’s warships were the dogs.