The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

proposal to assail the bluff again, but this time to attack by moonlight. “We shall attack at midnight,” Wadsworth said, “and assault the bluff directly.” To Wadsworth’s exasperation Lovell insisted on offering both the time and place as motions for the Council’s vote, but no one voted against either, though Colonel Mitchell diffidently observed that midnight left little time to make the necessary preparations.

“No time like the present,” Wadsworth said.

“You expect me to attack their shipping by night?” Saltonstall reentered the discussion. “You want my ships grounded in the dark?”

“You can attack in the dawn, perhaps?” Lovell suggested and was rewarded with a curt nod.

The council ended and men went back to their ships as the bright moon climbed among the stars. The rebels had voted unanimously to make their attack, to bring the enemy to battle, and, with God’s good help, to make a great victory.

The fog came slowly on the morning of Wednesday, July 28th, 1779. At first it was a mist that thickened imperceptibly to shroud the cloud-haunted moon with a glowing ring. The tide rippled along the anchored ships. Midnight had come and gone, and there was still no attack. The Hunter and Sky Rocket, the two privateers that would cannonade the heights of the bluff as the rebels landed, had to be rowed upriver before anchoring close to shore and both ships arrived late. Some transport ships had too many lighters or longboats, and others too few, and the confusion had to be disentangled. Time passed and Peleg Wadsworth fretted. This was the attack that must succeed, the attack to capture the bluff and surge on to assault the fort. This was why the fleet had come to Penobscot Bay, yet one o’clock came and passed, then two o’clock, then three o’clock, and still the troops were not ready. A militia captain suggested the attack should be abandoned because the creeping fog would dampen the powder in the musket pans, a notion Wadsworth rejected with an anger that surprised him. “If you can’t shoot them, Captain,” he snapped, “then beat them to death with your musket butts.” The captain looked at him with an aggrieved face. “That’s what you came here for, isn’t it?” Wadsworth asked. “To kill the enemy?”

James Fletcher, at Wadsworth’s side, grinned, His only uniform was a white crossbelt from which hung a cartridge pouch, but most of the militia were similarly dressed. Only the marines and some militia officers wore recognizable uniforms. James’s heart was throbbing palpably. He was nervous. His job was to show the attackers where paths climbed the bluff, but right now that bluff was just a moon-shadowed cliff in the mist. No light showed there. Longboats bumped and jostled alongside the transport ships, waiting to take the soldiers ashore, while on deck men sharpened knives and bayonets and obsessively checked that the flints in their musket locks were firmly embedded in the dogheads. Wadsworth and Fletcher were on board the sloop Centurion from which they would embark with Welch’s marines. Those marines in their dark green jackets waited patiently in the Centurion’s waist and among them was a boy whom Wadsworth remembered from Townsend. The boy grinned at the general who tried desperately to remember the lad’s name. “It’s Israel, isn’t it?” Wadsworth said, the name suddenly coming to him

“Marine Fifer Trask now, sir,” the boy said in his unbroken voice.

“You joined the marines!” Wadsworth said, smiling. The lad had been provided with a uniform, the dark green coat cut down to his diminutive size, while at his waist hung a sword-bayonet. He lacked the marine’s distinctive leather collar and instead had a black scarf wound tight round his scrawny neck.

“We kidnapped the little bastard, General,” a marine spoke from the dark.

“Then make sure you look after him,” Wadsworth said, “and play well, Israel Trask.”

A rowboat banged against the Centurion’s side and a harried militia lieutenant scrambled over the gunwale with a message from Colonel McCobb. “Sorry, sir, it’ll be a while yet, the Colonel says he’s sorry, sir.”

“God damn it!” Wadsworth could not help exclaiming.

“There still aren’t enough boats, sir,” the lieutenant explained.

“Use what boats you have,” Wadsworth said, “and send them back for the rest of the men. Send me word when you’re ready!”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant, abashed, backed away to his boat.

“They call them minutemen?” Captain Welch appeared beside Wadsworth and asked with a hint of amusement.

Wadsworth was taken aback that the dour marine captain had even spoken. Welch was such a grim presence, so baleful, that his customary silence was welcome, yet he had sounded friendly enough in the darkness. “Your men have food?” Wadsworth asked. It was an unnecessary question, but the tall marine made him nervous.

“They have their morsel,” Welch said, still sounding amused. General Lovell had sent a message that every man must take “a morsel ashore to alleviate hunger,” and Wadsworth had dutifully passed the order on, though he suspected hunger would be the least of their problems. “Have you ever been to England, General?” Welch suddenly asked.

“No, no. Never.”

“Pretty place, some of it.”

“You visited it?”

Welch nodded. “Didn’t plan on it. Our ship was captured and I was taken there as a prisoner.”

“You were exchanged?”

Welch grinned, his teeth very white in the dark. “Hell, no. I strolled out of the prison and walked all the damn way to Bristol. I signed as a deckhand on a merchantman sailing for New York. Got home.”

“And no one suspected you?”

“Not a soul. I begged and stole food. Met a widow who fed me.” He smiled at the memory. “Glad I seen the place, but I won’t ever go back.”

“I’d like to see Oxford one day,” Wadsworth said wistfully, “and maybe London.”

“We’ll build London and Oxford here,” Welch said.

Wadsworth wondered if the usually laconic Welch was talkative because he was nervous, and then, with a start, he realized that the marine was talking because Welch had divined Wadsworth’s own nervousness. The general stared at the dark bluff, which, in the thickening mist, was being limned by a dull lightening of the eastern sky, just a hint of gray in the black. “Dawn’s coming,” Wadsworth said.

And then, suddenly, there were no more delays. Colonel McCobb and the Lincoln County militia were ready, and so the men clambered down into the boats and Wadsworth took his place in a longboat’s stern. The marines were gray-faced in the wan light, but to Wadsworth they looked reassuringly resolute, determined, and frightening. Their bayonets were fixed. The Centurion’s sailors gave a low cheer as the boats pulled away from the transport.

A louder cheer sounded from the Sky Rocket, and then Wadsworth plainly heard Captain William Burke shout at his crew, “For God and for America! Fire!”

The Sky Rocket split the dawn with its eight-gun broadside. Flame leaped and curled, smoke spread on the water and the first missiles crashed ashore.

The rebels were coming.

Excerpt from a letter sent by the Massachusetts Council to Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell, July 23rd, 1779:It is the Expression of the Council . . . that you will push your Operations with all possible Vigor and dispatch and accomplish the business of the Expedition before any reinforcement can get to the enemy at Penobscot. It is also reported here and believed by many that, a Forty Gun ship and the Delaware Frigate sailed from Sandy Hook on Sixteenth Current and Stood to the Eastward; their destination was not known.

Excerpt from an Order by the State of Massachusetts Bay Council, July 27th, 1779:Ordered that the Board of War be and they are hereby directed to furnish the two Indians of the Penobscott Tribe, now in the Town of Boston with Two Hats one of them laced two Blankets and two Shirts.

Excerpt from Brigadier-General Solomon Lovell’s daily orders, Majabigwaduce, July 27th, 1779:All