transports were not armed, but their size alone made them a formidable obstacle to any ship that might attempt to pass the smaller sloops.
McLean handed Fletcher an oilcloth-wrapped parcel of tobacco and one of the Spanish silver dollars that were common currency, as payment for the use of his boat. “Come, Mister Moore,” he called sharply as the paymaster offered Bethany an arm to help her over the uneven beach. “We have work to do!”
James Fletcher also had work to do. It was still high summer, but the log pile had to be made for the winter and, that evening, he split wood outside their house. He worked deep into the twilight, slashing the ax down hard to splinter logs into usable firewood.
“You’re thinking, James.” Bethany had come from the house and was watching him. She wore an apron over her gray dress.
“Is that bad?”
“You always work too hard when you’re thinking,” she said. She sat on a bench fronting the house. “Mother’s sleeping.”
“Good,” James said. He left the ax embedded in a stump and sat beside his sister on the bench that overlooked the harbor. The sky was purple and black, the water glinted with little ripples of fading silver about the anchored boats; glimmers of lamplight reflected on the small waves. A bugle sounded from the ridge where two tented encampments housed the redcoats. A picquet of six men guarded the guns and ammunition that had been parked on the beach above the tideline. “That young officer liked you, Beth,” James said. Bethany just smiled, but said nothing. “They’re nice enough fellows,” James said.
“I like the general,” Bethany said.
“A decent man, he seems,” James said.
“I wonder what happened to his arm?”
“Soldiers, Beth. Soldiers get wounded.”
“And killed.”
“Yes.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while as the darkness closed slow on the river and on the harbor and on the bluff. “So will you sign the oath?” Bethany asked after a while.
“Not sure I have much choice,” James said bleakly.
“But will you?”
James picked a shred of tobacco from between his teeth. “Father would have wanted me to sign.”
“I’m not sure Father thought about it much,” Bethany said. “We never had government here, neither royal nor rebel.”
“He loved the king.” James said. “He hated the French and loved the king.” He sighed. “We have to make a living, Beth. If I don’t take the oath then they’ll take the
“But?” Bethany asked. her brother shrugged and made no answer. Beth slapped at a mosquito. “‘Choose you this day whom you will serve,’” she quoted, “‘whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the flood, or . . .’” She left the Bible verse unfinished.
“There’s too much bitterness,” James said.
“You thought it would pass us by?”
“I hoped it would. What does anyone want with Bagaduce anyway?”
Bethany smiled. “The Dutch were here, the French made a fort here, it seems the whole world wants us.”
“But it’s our home, Beth. We made this place, it’s ours.” James paused. He was not sure he could articulate what was in his mind. “You know Colonel Buck left?”
Buck was the local commander of the Massachusetts Militia and he had fled north up the Penobscot River when the British arrived. “I heard,” Bethany said.
“And John Lymburner and his friends are saying what a coward Buck is, and that’s just nonsense! It’s all just bitterness, Beth.”
“So you’ll ignore it?” she asked. “Just sign the oath and pretend it isn’t happening?”
James stared down at his hands. “What do you think I should do?”
“You know what I think,” Bethany said firmly.
“Just ’cos your fellow was a damned rebel,” James said, smiling. He gazed at the shivering reflections cast from the lanterns on board the three sloops. “What I want, Beth, is for them all to leave us alone.”
“They won’t do that now,” she said.
James nodded. “They won’t, so I’ll write a letter, Beth,” he said, “and you can take it over the river to John Brewer. He’ll know how to get it to Boston.”
Bethany was silent for a while, then frowned. “And the oath? Will you sign it?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we have to,” he said. “I don’t know, Beth, I honestly don’t know.”
James wrote the letter on a blank page torn from the back of the family Bible. He wrote simply, saying what he had seen in Majabigwaduce and its harbor. He told how many guns were mounted on the sloops and where the British were making earthworks, how many soldiers he believed had come to the village and how many guns had been shipped to the beach. He used the other side of the paper to make a rough map of the peninsula on which he drew the position of the fort and the place where the three sloops of war were anchored. He marked the battery on Cross Island, then turned the page over and signed the letter with his name, biting his lower lip as he formed the clumsy letters.
“Maybe you shouldn’t put your name to it,” Bethany said.
James sealed the folded paper with candle-wax. “The soldiers probably won’t trouble you, Beth, which is why you should carry the letter, but if they do, and if they find the letter, then I don’t want you blamed. Say you didn’t know what was in it and let me be punished.”
“So you’re a rebel now?”
James hesitated, then nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I am.”
“Good,” Bethany said.
The sound of a flute came from a house higher up the hill. The lights still shimmered on the harbor water and dark night came to Majabigwaduce.
Excerpts of a letter from the Selectmen of Newburyport, Massachusetts, to the General Court of Massachusetts, July 12th, 1779:
Order addressed to the Massachusetts Board of War, July 3rd, 1779:
Chapter Three