Prelude to Glory, Vol. 2

by Ron Carter

  He paused and drew a deep breath. “We are to be on the docks south of Catherine Street by five o’clock, where we will be transported across the East River to Brooklyn on Long Island. That means we have to march completely across this island. We are to have our camp set up before nightfall. We have no time to lose. Officers, take charge of your companies. Get to it.”

  With the officers shouting orders and pointing directions, the various companies followed the wagons to the designated places where the regimental tents and equipment were stacked and bundled. Mary Flint took her orders, slapped the reins on the rumps of the big, prancing horses, and turned them towards the stacked iron kettles and cooking tripods, with Company Nine following.

  Strong hands pulled the pins and dropped the tailgate, and half a dozen men climbed in, tossed the tie-down ropes to the ground, and waited. Others, two men at a time, seized the heavy black kettles and nine-foot three-legged iron tripods and began setting them inside the wagon bed to be moved forward and stacked by those inside. Billy and Eli worked shoulder to shoulder, Eli using only his right arm while keeping his left in the sling. The wagon bed steadily filled, and the last tripods were laid over the top of the kettles to lock them in place, and the tailgate was closed and the lock pins set. The tie-down ropes were laced back and forth through rings on the sides of the wagon and tied off, and the load was in place, secured.

  Sergeant Turlock raised a hand to signal Mary, and she gigged the horses forward, then turned and lined the wagon towards Reade Street and pulled the horses to a stop, waiting to take her place in the column when the other wagons were ready. Company Nine walked to the riverbank once more to look with wide eyes and sober faces at the forty-five British ships, bright in the blaze of the afternoon sun. Their cannon ports remained closed.

  Billy and Eli turned back. They passed Mary Flint’s wagon and exchanged glances with her as they walked to the place where the infirmary had been dismantled. Men had rigged thirty-seven blanket-and-pole litters for the disabled, who were now in the heat of the sun. Twenty-two others sat cross-legged in the dirt, heads bowed, waiting. Each had insisted he could walk. Two were nearly out of their heads with fever.

  “They’re leaving!”

  The shout brought every eye in the Boston regiment towards the harbor, and once more they stood rooted as they watched the line of British ships swing south, each in the white wake of the one before it as they threaded their way back through the Narrows.

  Thompson’s voice snapped the men back around. “Assemble into regimental formation. We leave in ten minutes. The regiment will lead and the wagons will follow.”

  Immediately the wagons began to roll towards Reade Street to form a line in the same order as they had arrived, while men went among the walking sick and helped them to their feet. One soldier would loop the arm of a faltering man over his shoulder for support while another took his musket, and they would move him to his place in his company. Billy and Eli dropped to their haunches beside the two who sat bowed, so fevered they were scarcely aware of what was happening around them. Billy lifted one to his feet and laid an arm over Eli’s shoulders, and Eli caught the man about the waist with his right arm and turned him towards the column, nearly lifting him off the ground. Billy picked up the other man and carried him like a child, following Eli. They slowed to let a wagon pass and heard a woman’s voice talk the horses to a stop, and they both looked up.

  Mary Flint looked down at them from the high driver’s seat. “Those two will never make it. Help me get them up here on the seat. There’s room.”

  Eli leaned his man against the front wagon wheel, and the man’s knees buckled and he sagged. Eli sat him on the ground, then quickly climbed to the driver’s box. Billy lifted his man high, and Eli caught him under one arm, Mary under the other. They sat him on the driver’s seat while Billy lifted the second one, and they settled him onto the seat.

  Mary pressed her hand against each forehead for a moment, then shook her head. “Fevered. Badly.” She lifted a large canteen from the floor of the driver’s box and looked for a cloth to soak, and there was none. She poured her hand full of cool water and gently bathed the face of each man, then spoke to Eli. “Help me give them a drink.”

  Eli cradled the head of each man in turn while Mary tipped the canteen to their lips, and each swallowed while she wiped at water that had spilled. Eli lifted a leg over the side of the wagon box to climb down, and Mary brought concerned eyes to meet his. “I don’t know if I can drive this team and hold them both on the seat.”

  Eli looked down at Billy, and Billy handed up Eli’s rifle, the two muskets of the disabled soldiers, and their knapsacks. “You stay. I’ve got to go with Sergeant Turlock—I’m his corporal. I’ll tell him.”

  Eli sat on the load in the wagon bed behind the men and steadied them on the driver’s seat, while Mary unwound the reins and slapped them on the hindquarters of the two horses, and the wagon lurched into motion and took its place in the column. Three minutes later Colonel Thompson took his position at the head of the regiment, turned his horse, shouted orders, and set a cadence. The regiment moved forward like a great serpent winding through the narrow turns of Reade Street towards Broadway, with the wagons rumbling heavy on the cobblestones behind.

  While the regiment was yet five hundred yards from Broadway, carts and wagons began appearing in the streets, first a few, then many. Some were horse-drawn, some pushed or pulled by hand, but in all of them were clothing and food, hastily packed and loaded by wide-eyed, white-faced citizens who worked with mouths compressed, looking neither right nor left as they crowded bumping into the moving stream of humanity seeking the nearest street that would take them north, away from New York City.

  Israel Thompson slowed the column to avoid colliding with carts and horses and wagons that would not yield, and suddenly understood and exclaimed, “They’re running! Evacuating to avoid the battle!”

  He ordered a halt and waited for the panic and the rush of people to stop, but it became worse. He ordered Company One ahead into the intersection, faced them south shoulder to shoulder against the oncoming mob, and ordered them to prime and load. He drew his sword, faced Company One, and bellowed, “If one of them moves north before the regiment has cleared the intersection, level your muskets and shoot to kill!”

  The men primed the pans on their muskets, measured powder into the muzzles, rammed it home, jammed the ball down with the ramrod, raised their muskets to the ready, and faced the oncoming crowd. A dozen men bulled their way forward through the crowd and faced the line of soldiers, and ten of them walked straight towards them, defying the muskets. Every man in Company One pulled back the big hammer with the flint locked in place, raised the musket to his shoulder, and took dead aim, point-blank, on the advancing men. Gasps ran through the crowd, and instantly a dozen hands reached to grab those who were still doggedly advancing and pulled them back, held them cursing and kicking and fighting.

  The regiment marched on through the intersection, watching the shouting crowd in disbelief. The wagons followed. Eli settled the stock of his rifle on his thigh, barrel pointed high, finger on the trigger, thumb hooked around the hammer, and his eyes did not stop moving. Mary held the horses at a steady pace, and the expression on her face did not change. With the last wagon past the cross street, Thompson halted the regiment, and Company One came trotting at double time back to their position at the front.

  Thompson shouted orders. “Companies One and Two, move on ahead at double time and clear out the intersection at Broadway. When we’re through it, move on to the next ones and keep them cleared until we reach the docks. Companies Nine and Ten, fall in behind the wagons and see to it nothing happens to them. Keep your muskets primed and loaded, and if anyone interferes, shoot to kill.”

  The regiment worked its way steadily westward through the Broadway intersection, with wagons and horses and shouting civilians backed up six blocks, while Companies One and Two formed a shoulder-to-shoulder line of cock
ed muskets to hold them until the regiment had passed through, then sprinted on to the next jammed intersection to clear it. The surging crowds and wagons and carts thinned as they came closer to the docks, and then Company One walked out onto the heavy black timbers where the tall ships were anchored and tied. Within minutes the Boston regiment was there, and Thompson again ordered a halt. The wagons rolled to a stop and waited while the incoming Atlantic tides lapped splashing against the great water-soaked pilings.

  Thompson lifted his watch from the inside pocket of his tunic. It was about five minutes before five o’clock. He glanced anxiously up and down the waterfront, looking for a blue or a green officer’s tunic of the New York militia, and there was none. The stamp of a horse on the heavy timbers and a familiar voice from behind brought him around.

  General John Morin Scott reined in his horse facing Thompson. “Colonel, the ferry is waiting for the wagons, and we have boats ready for the troops. It’ll take two crossings. You can be finished before dark.”

  Thompson called out orders, and the officers moved their companies to the waiting boats and barges and they clambered aboard. The wagons rolled to the ferry and stopped, waiting directions. The ferry crew gave hand signals, and two military wagons rolled aboard and stopped at the gate at the far end of the ferry, and the crew scrambled to set blocks to hold the wheels. Mary Flint held her team until the signal came and she gigged her horses forward, the stamp of the shod horses and the sound of the iron-rimmed wheels hollow on the heavy timbers. She lined her wagon behind one of those already locked in place and held the team until they had her wheels blocked, then turned to watch the other heavy wagon move in beside hers and watch the men jam the wheel blocks and drop the pins to lock them into place.

  Loaded, the ferry and the boats with troops did not hesitate. In lengthening afternoon shadows they pushed off the docks into the East River, and the two wagons and the remainder of the regiment behind watched as the slow current caught them. They drifted south for a moment before the crews corrected and they swung back into line with the Long Island docks.

  On the ferry, the horses and mules stuttered their feet and braced against the roll of the deck, and they threw their heads and rolled their eyes in fear until the white rims showed. Mary talked to the big draft horses and held the reins firm, and slowly they settled. She wrapped the leathers around the brake pole, turned to the man huddled next to her, and pressed the back of her hand against his forehead.

  “Cooler,” she said.

  Eli answered, “Getting weaker. Needs to be in a bed.”

  Mary eased the man’s head against her shoulder and again spoke to Eli. “Your arm all right?”

  Eli nodded and said nothing.

  For a time they remained still, quiet, watching the dark water roil white as the big square-nosed ferry plowed on. The sun setting behind them cast long shadows eastward before them.

  “How did you hurt it?”

  “It was nothing. A cut.”

  “An accident?”

  Eli reflected for a moment. “In a way.”

  There was a question in her eyes as she glanced at him, then again fell silent.

  The ferry pilot squared with the dock and the nose crunched into the sloped ramp, while practiced hands caught the thrown hawsers and dropped the loops over pilings. In golden twilight the ferry crew lowered the front gate onto the ramp. They pulled the wheel blocks from the wagons, and the driver of the first military wagon gigged his mules into motion. They leaned back and walked stiff-legged down the slanted gate onto the ramp, then lunged into their harnesses to pull the wagon up the ramp onto the dock. The second military wagon followed, then Mary, and finally the last larger, heavy wagon. The mules and horses snorted and threw their heads, glad to leave the undulating deck of the ferry behind, glad to feel solid land beneath their hooves.

  The soldiers jumped splashing over the sides of the beached boats and barges and slogged ashore, while the boat crews reversed their oars and poles and drove their craft back into the river, headed back to the New York docks for the remainder of the regiment. The ferry crew raised the front gate, locked it into place, and worked the huge, cumbersome vessel back into the suck of the current, following the boats and barges.

  The drivers and escorts on the four wagons just landed, and the troops dripping river water from wading ashore, all turned to watch the ferry and the cluster of small craft working its way back to the New York side. The mismatched boats and barges and the single ferry seemed dwarfed into insignificance in the brilliance of the great yellow ball of the sun touching the cliffs of the New Jersey shore. Strong, brilliant colors reached high into the heavens, casting the Hudson River valley into bronze and gold and red, and a strange feeling stole through the regiment as the soldiers stood still, faces glowing golden in the sunset, caught up for a moment in the unfathomable power of nature and of nature’s God, and the sure knowledge that all of mankind combined could do absolutely nothing to change either.

  Eli turned his head back to look down at the two men on the driver’s seat next to Mary, and suddenly he thrust his hand forward and pressed his fingers against the throat of the man next to her. Mary turned her face from the sunset and looked at Eli, questioning. She recoiled at the flat look in his eyes, and her hand darted to the forehead of the man leaning against her shoulder, and it was cold.

  Eli adjusted his fingertips against the man’s throat, waited five more seconds, and then bowed his head for a moment. Gently he lifted the man from the seat and pulled him back onto the load, laying him out full length. He reached to close the half-open eyes, then the mouth, sagged open. Mary gasped, and Eli crossed the man’s hands over his chest. He untied the man’s blanket from his knapsack and spread it over the still body, then used the cord from the knapsack to tie the body onto the load. He looked at Mary and he saw deep pain. “He’s gone on,” he said quietly.

  Mary swallowed and Eli saw her battle, and silent tears crept down her cheeks. He wanted to say more, but he did not know how to talk to her. She turned back in the driver’s seat and bowed her head, and her shoulders shook with her silent sobs. Eli climbed into the driver’s seat and touched the forehead of the remaining man, and it was hot. The man raised his head and his eyes slowly focused, and he swallowed against a parched throat and closed them again. Eli reached for the canteen in the bottom of the driver’s box and poured cool water and washed the man’s face, then forced him to drink.

  Mary wiped her face and spoke. Her voice was firm. “Is he all right?”

  “Fevered, but he’s alive.”

  Eli sat with the sick man on the driver’s seat beside him, cradled inside his arm. The glow of sunset faded to dusk, and he turned once to look at the river. He saw the black shapes on the water, with lanterns making points of light, moving steadily towards them in the gloom, and he saw the white water raised by the bow of the incoming ferry. Mary turned to look, then glanced at the sick man between them.

  Eli spoke quietly. “I’m sorry for your pain. Truly.”

  In the gathering darkness she looked into Eli’s eyes, and she saw tenderness and compassion that grow only from tragedy and pain, and she felt a stir inside and a need to know whence they came.

  Eli continued. “You did all you could. You saved one.”

  The dock crew lighted lanterns and watched as the ferry lined up with the ramp and thumped to a stop and held while it was tied. The front gate opened slamming down, and the last two wagons rattled onto the docks. Thompson and the regimental officers followed, leading their six saddled horses stamping down the slanted gate, then up the dock ramp, prancing, hating the feel of a rocking boat deck. With Thompson were two New York militia officers with saddle mounts.

  Thompson shouted orders in the darkness. “The regiment will assemble for the reading of orders.”

  Eli climbed down from the wagon and found Company Nine in the dark.

  Three minutes later Thompson faced the regiment on the dock, with the sound of the river
lapping at the pilings and the bullfrogs singing and the click and buzz of night insects. “These two officers from the New York militia will lead us to the battlements south of Brooklyn, under the command of General Nathanael Greene. We set up camp tonight, and in the morning we take drill and arms practice and our new work assignment.”

  He paused and drew a document from inside his tunic. “General Scott handed me this, and I am under orders to read it to you.” He unfolded the document, straightened it, and read briefly.

  “ ‘General Washington presents his compliments to Colonel Thompson and the men under his command, and advises that this date he had received advice from fishing boats returning from the Grand Banks that there is a fleet of British ships numbering 130 which will arrive in New York within two days. Fifteen of them are men-of-war with not less than forty-six cannon each. The balance are transports loaded with troops, provisions, arms, or horses. I am, &c., Gen. G. Washington.’ ”

  For five seconds the regiment stood fixed, silent, and then quiet murmuring broke out and died as Thompson folded the letter and continued.

  “That will bring the total known British ships in the New York campaign to one hundred seventy-nine. I need not remind you to watch constantly for spies and plots. Do not be far from your musket or rifle. Now, form into companies and follow these two officers.”

  Quickly Eli sought out Billy and Sergeant Turlock. “A man on Mary Flint’s wagon died. We should get him down.”

  Turlock said, “No time. Can it wait?”

  “It’s not easy for Mary Flint.”

  Turlock’s eyes dropped, and in the dark Eli could sense the pain as Turlock spoke. “We’ve got no place else to put him right now.”