The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

wheel and the Hazard hesitated. The grinding noise continued deep below, but then the brig lurched and loosed herself from the rock and settled on her new course. “Hands to the pumps!” Little called. “And gunners! Aim well!” The guns crashed back against their breech ropes and the smoke blossomed, and a British ball struck the belaying pins aft of the forward mast and splintered them, and Little was bellowing at his gunners to reload.

High on the bluff Moore watched the small brig. For a moment he thought its captain intended to ram the Nautilus, but then the brig turned to sail into the smoke left by the guns of the Black Prince, a big privateer. The brig spat its fire and iron. “A brave little ship,” Moore said.

“He gets any closer and he’ll be selling his hull for firewood, sir,” Sergeant McClure said.

Moore watched the Hazard sail down the line. He saw round shot strike her hull, but her rate of fire never diminished. She turned west beneath him and Moore saw her gunners reloading. “A terrier, that one,” he said.

“But we’re not rats, sir, are we?”

“We are not rats, Sergeant,” Moore said, amused. Pearce Fenistone’s small guns just behind the picquet fired, their balls slashing down at the enemy ships and their smoke filling the trees. The sun was low in the west now and made the smoke glow.

“Captain Campbell coming, sir,” McClure muttered in a low warning to Moore.

Moore turned to see the tall, kilted figure of Captain Archibald Campbell approaching from the north. Campbell, a highlander of the 74th, commanded all the picquets on the bluff. “Moore,” he greeted the Lieutenant, “I think the Yankees plan to inconvenience us.”

“It’s why they came, sir,” Moore replied happily.

Campbell blinked at the younger man as if suspecting he was being mocked. He flinched as the nearest cannon recoiled, its noise huge among the trees. The three guns’ breech ropes had been seized to the pine trees and every shot provoked a rain of needles and cones. “Come and look,” Campbell ordered, and Moore followed the lanky highlander back along the bluff’s top to a place where a gap in the trees offered a view of the wider bay.

The enemy’s transport ships were anchored in the bay, which was being whipped into white scudding waves by the brisk wind. The gaggle of ships was well out of range of any cannon McLean might have positioned on the high ground. “See?” Campbell pointed at the fleet, and Moore, shading his eyes against the setting sun, saw longboats nestling against the hulls of the transports.

Moore took a small telescope from a pocket and opened its tubes. It took a moment to train and focus the glass, then he saw men in green coats clambering down into one of the longboats. “I do believe,” he said, still gazing at the sight, “that they plan to call on us.”

“I don’t have a glass,” Campbell said resentfully.

Moore took the hint and offered the glass to the captain who took an age to adjust the lenses. Campbell, like Moore, saw the men filling the small boats. He saw too that they were carrying muskets. “You think they’ll attack us?” he asked, sounding surprised at such a thought.

“I think we’d best assume so,” Moore suggested. It was possible that the men were being redistributed among the transport ships, but why do that now? It seemed far more likely that the Americans planned a landing.

“Bring your fellows here,” Campbell ordered.

The American warships were still shooting at Mowat’s sloops, though their fire was desultory now and none, not even the Hazard, was venturing close to the harbor mouth. Two of the attacking ships had already sailed out of range and dropped their anchors. Moore brought his men to join the rest of Campbell’s picquets just as the longboats left the shelter of the transports’ hulls and pulled towards the shore. The sun was very low now, dazzling the redcoats among the bluff’s trees. “They’re coming!” Captain Campbell sounded astonished.

“Are the men’s muskets loaded, Sergeant?” Moore asked McClure.

“Aye, sir.”

“Leave the muskets uncocked,” Moore ordered. He did not want a shot wasted by a careless man accidentally pulling the trigger.

“Ensign Campbell, John Campbell!” Captain Campbell shouted, “run back to the fort and tell the brigadier the rascals are coming!”

The kilted ensign left and Moore watched the approaching boats, noting that they were having a hard time in the rising wind. The bay’s waves were short and sharp, smacking hard against the big rowboats to smother their oarsmen and passengers with spray.

“McLean had best send reinforcements,” Campbell said nervously.

“We can see those fellows off,” Moore responded, surprised at how confident he felt. There were some eighty redcoats on the bluff and the enemy, he guessed, numbered at least two hundred men, but those two hundred had to clamber up the bluff and the first fifty or sixty feet were so steep that no man could climb and use a musket at the same time. After that the slope flattened somewhat, but it was still precipitous, and the redcoats, positioned at the summit, could fire down at men struggling up the hill. A last flurry of cannon-fire sounded from the south, the thunder echoing briefly, and Moore, without asking for orders from Campbell, leaped a few paces down the upper slope to a place where he could see the attackers more clearly.

“We’ll wait for the brigadier’s reinforcements,” Campbell called reprovingly.

“Of course, sir,” Moore said, hiding his disdain for the tall highlander. Campbell had sent the ensign back to the fort, but that was a journey of almost three quarters of a mile, much of it through tangling undergrowth, and McLean’s reinforcements had to make the same journey back. By the time they arrived the Yankees would long have landed. If the Americans were to be stopped then Campbell’s men must do the job, but Moore sensed his commander’s nervousness. “Bring the men down here, Sergeant,” he called to McClure and, ignoring Archibald Campbell’s plaintive inquiry as to what he thought he was doing, led McClure and the other Hamiltons north along the bluff’s shoulder. They were at the place where the easier upper slope ended, just above the steepest part of the hill, and Moore was positioning his men so that they would be directly above the beach to which the Americans rowed. He was feeling a sudden excitement. He had dreamed of battle for so long and now it was imminent, though it was nothing like his dreams. In those dreams he was on a wide-open field and the enemy was in dense ranks beneath their flags, and cavalry was on the flanks, and bands were playing and Moore had often imagined surviving the enemy volleys until he ordered his own men to fire back, but instead he was scrambling through bushes and watching a flotilla of large longboats pull hard for the shore.

Those boats were close now, not more than a hundred paces from the narrow beach where the short, wind- driven waves broke white. Then a gun sounded. Moore saw a cloud of smoke appear amidships on one of the transport ships and realized it had been a small cannon aboard that ship. The round shot crashed noisily through the bluff’s trees, startling birds into the evening sky, and Moore thought the single shot must presage a bombardment, but no more guns fired. Instead two flags broke from the ship’s yardarm and the longboats suddenly rested their oars. The boats wallowed in the turbulent water, then began to turn around. They were going back.

“God damn them,” Moore said. He watched the boats turn clumsily and realized the Americans had abandoned their plans. “Give them a volley,” he ordered McClure. The range was long, but Moore’s frustration seethed in him. “Fire!” he snapped at the Sergeant.

The Hamiltons cocked their muskets, aimed, and let loose a ragged volley. The musket sound stuttered in the trees. Moore was standing to one side and was certain he saw a man in the nearest rowboat thrown violently forward. “Hold your fire!” Campbell shouted angrily from the summit.

“We hit a man,” Moore told McClure.

“We did?” the Sergeant sounded disbelieving.

“One less rebel, Sergeant,” Moore said, “God damn their disloyal souls.”

The wind carried the musket smoke away and the sun, which had momentarily been obscured by a ribbon of cloud above the bay’s western shore, suddenly flared bright and dazzling. There was a silence, except for the rush of wind and the fret of breaking waves.

A cheer sounded as the sun set. Brigadier McLean had led his officers down to the shore and along the beach to a place just beyond the Half Moon Battery and there, within easy earshot of the three Royal Navy sloops, he