“If you can lend me forty men, sir?” Fielding suggested.
McLean thought about the request. He had almost two hundred men scattered in a picquet line guarding those places where the Yankees might attempt a landing. He reckoned the enemy’s approach to the bluff the previous evening had been just that, a bluff. They wanted him to think they would assault the peninsula’s western end, but he was certain they would choose either the harbor or the neck, and the neck was by far the likeliest landing place. Yet he had to guard all the possible landing places, and the picquets watching the shore consumed almost a third of his men. The rest were laboring to deepen the fort’s well and raise the fort’s walls, but if he were to grant Fielding’s request then he must detach some of those men, which meant slower progress on the vital ramparts. Yet the abatis was a good idea. “Will forty men be enough?”
“We’d need an ox team too, sir.”
“Aye, you will,” McLean said, but his ox teams were busy hauling material from the harbor’s beach, where most of Fielding’s guns were still parked.
McLean glanced at the twin bastions that flanked the fort’s western wall. So far he only had two guns mounted, which was a paltry defense. It would be easy enough to bring more guns into the fort, but the wall was now just at the height where those guns needed platforms, and platforms took time and men. “Where would you place the abatis?” he asked.
Fielding nodded westwards. “I’d cover that approach, sir, and the northern side.”
“Aye,” McLean agreed. An abatis curving around the west and north of the fort would obstruct any Yankee attack from either the bluff or the neck.
“Much of the timber’s already cut, sir,” Fielding said, attempting to persuade McLean.
“So it is, so it is,” McLean said distractedly. He beckoned the Englishman off the wall and across the ditch so they were out of earshot of the working parties that laid logs on top of the rampart. “Let me be frank with you, Captain,” McLean said heavily.
“Of course, sir.”
“There are thousands of the rebel rascals. If they come, Captain, and they will come, then I must suppose that two or three thousand will attack us. You know what that means?”
Fielding was silent for a few seconds, then nodded. “I do, sir.”
“I’ve seen enough war,” McLean said ruefully.
“You mean, sir, we can’t stand against three thousand men?”
“Oh, we can stand, Captain. We can give them a bloody nose, right enough, but can we defeat them?” McLean turned and gestured at the half-finished wall. “If that rampart was ten feet high I could die of old age inside the fort, and if we had a dozen guns mounted then I dare say we could defeat ten thousand men. But if they come today? Or tomorrow?”
“They’ll overrun us, sir.”
“Aye, they will. And that’s not cowardice speaking, Captain.”
Fielding smiled. “No one, sir, can accuse General McLean of cowardice.”
“I thank you, Captain,” McLean said, then stared west towards the high ground. The ridge rose gently, studded with the stumps of felled trees. “I’m being candid with you, Captain,” he went on. “The enemy is going to come, and we’re going to show defiance, but I don’t want a massacre here. I’ve seen that happen. I’ve seen men enraged to fury and seen them slaughter a garrison, and I did not come here to lead good young Scotsmen to an early grave.”
“I understand you, sir,” Fielding said.
“I hope you do.” McLean turned to look north where the cleared ground dropped away to the woods that screened the wide neck. That was where he thought his enemy would appear. “We’ll do our duty, Captain,” he said, “but I’ll not fight to the last man unless I see a chance of defeating the rascals. Enough mothers in Scotland have lost their sons.” He paused, then gave the artillery officer a smile, “But I’ll not surrender too easily either, so this is what we’ll do. Make your abatis. Start on the northern side, Captain. How many field-mounted guns do you have?”
“Three nine-pounders, sir.”
“Put them just outside the fort on the northeastern corner. You have case-shot?”
“Plenty, sir, and Captain Mowat’s sent some grape.”
“Well and good. So if the enemy comes from the north, which I think they will, you can give them a warm welcome.”
“And if they come this way, sir?” Fielding asked, pointing to the high western bluff.
“We lose our gamble,” McLean admitted. He hoped he had judged the tall Englishman right. A foolish man might construe the conversation as cowardice, even treasonable cowardice, but McLean reckoned Fielding was subtle and sensible enough to understand what had just been said. Brigadier Francis McLean had seen enough war to know when fighting was pointless, and he did not want hundreds of needless deaths on his conscience, but nor did he want to hand the rebels an easy victory. He would fight, he would do his duty, and he would cease to fight when he saw that defeat was inevitable. McLean turned back towards the fort, then suddenly remembered a matter that needed to be aired. “Have your rogues been stealing potatoes from Doctor Calef’s garden?” he asked.
“Not that I know of, sir.”
“Well someone has, and the doctor’s not happy!”
“Isn’t it early for potatoes, sir?”
“That won’t stop them! And doubtless they taste well enough, so tell your fellows I’ll be flogging the next man caught stealing the doctor’s potatoes. Or anyone else’s vegetables for that matter. Dear me, I do despair of soldiers. You could march them through heaven and they’d steal every last harp.” McLean gestured towards the fort. “Now let’s see if those eggs are cooked.”
There was a chance, McLean thought, just a slender chance that a rebel attack could be repulsed and Fielding’s proposed abatis would increase that chance a little. An abatis was simply an obstacle of rough timber; a line of big branches and untrimmed trunks. An abatis could not stop an assault, but it would slow an enemy attack as men sought a way through the tangle of timber and, as the Yankees bunched behind the web of branches, Fielding’s guns could hammer them with case-shot like giant shotguns. McLean would place the three nine-pounders on his right flank so that as the enemy came round the open space at the end of the abatis they would advance straight into the cannon-fire, and raw troops, inexperienced in war, would be cowed by such concentrated artillery fire. Maybe, just maybe, the abatis would give the guns time enough to persuade the enemy not to press home their attack. That was a slim chance, but if the Yankees came from the west, from the bluff, then McLean reckoned there was no chance at all. He simply did not have enough artillery and so he would greet them with shots from the two guns emplaced on the western ramparts and then submit to the inevitable.
Laird had poached eggs waiting on a table set in the open air. “And you have fried potatoes, sir,” he said happily.
“Potatoes, Laird?”
“New little potatoes, sir, fresh as daisies. And coffee, sir.”
“You’re a rogue, Laird, you’re an unprincipled damned rogue.”
“Yes, sir, I am, sir, and thank you, sir.”
McLean sat to his breakfast. He looked up at the flag that flew so bright in the day’s new light and wondered what flag would fly there as the sun set. “We must do our best,” he told Fielding, “and that’s all we can do. Our best.”
The marines would be attacking the British battery on Cross Island, which meant General Wadsworth could not use them in the assault on the bluff. “That really doesn’t signify,” Solomon Lovell had declared. “I’m sure the marines are very fine fellows,” he had told Wadsworth, “but we Massachusetts men must do the work! And we can do the work, upon my soul, we can!”
“Under your inspired leadership, General,” the Reverend Murray chimed in.
“Under God’s leadership,” Lovell had said reprovingly.
“The good Lord chooses His instruments,” Murray said.
“So this will be a victory for the militia alone,” Lovell had told Wadsworth.
And Wadsworth thought that perhaps Lovell was right. He felt that hope as he stood on the afterdeck of the sloop
