The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War

white crossbelt suddenly red. He fell to his knees in the small surf and coughed violently, each cough bringing more dark blood.

James Fletcher, his musket unslung, had run to a vast granite boulder that half-blocked the beach. “There’s a path here!” he shouted.

“You heard him!” Welch bellowed. “So follow me! Come on, you rogues!”

“Start playing, boy,” Wadsworth told Israel Trask, “give us a good tune!”

Marines were scrambling up the slope, which was steep enough to demand that they slung their muskets and used both hands to haul themselves up by gripping on saplings or rocks. A musket-ball struck a stone and ricocheted high above Wadsworth’s head. A marine staggered backwards, his face a mask of red. A musket-ball had slashed though his cheekbone and the cheek’s flesh now dangled over his leather collar. Wadsworth could see the man’s teeth through the ragged wound, but the marine recovered and kept climbing, making an incoherent noise as a chain shot sighed overhead to explode a larch into splinters. Wadsworth heard a clear, high voice shouting at men to aim low and, with a start, he realized he must be hearing an enemy officer. He drew his pistol and aimed it up the steep bluff, but he could see no target, only gray-white drifts of smoke revealing that the enemy was about halfway up the slope. He shouted at the longboat crews to get back to the transports where more men waited, then he walked northwards along the beach, his boots scrunching the low ridge of dried seaweed and small flotsam that marked the high-tide line. He found a dozen militiamen crouching under a shelf of rock and urged them up the slope. They stared at him as if dazed, then one of them abruptly nodded and ran out of his shelter and the others followed.

More boats scraped their bows ashore and more men piled over the gunwales. The whole length of the bluff’s narrow beach was now filled with men who ran into the trees and began to climb. The musket-balls buzzed, splashed, or struck stone, and still the cannons of Hunter and Sky Rocket crashed and boomed and dizzied the air with their vicious missiles. The noise of cannons and muskets was deafening the foggy shore, but Israel Trask played a descant to the gun’s percussion. He was trilling the jaunty “Rogue’s March” and standing exposed on the beach where, as he played, he gazed wide-eyed up the bluff. Wadsworth took hold of the boy’s collar, causing a sudden hiccup in the music, and dragged him to the seaward side of the vast boulder. “Stay there, Israel,” Wadsworth ordered, reckoning the boy would be safe in the granite’s shelter.

A body, facedown, was floating just by the rock. The man wore a deerskin jacket and a hole in the jacket’s back showed where the killing ball had left his body. The corpse surged in on the small waves, then was sucked out. In and out it moved, relentlessly. The dead man was Benjamin Goldthwait, who had elected to abandon his father’s loyalties and fight for the rebels.

A militia captain had scrambled to the boulder’s top and was shouting at his men to get on up the bluff. The enemy must have seen him because musket-balls crackled on the stone. “Get up the bluff yourself” Wadsworth shouted at the captain, and just then a ball struck the militia officer in the belly and his shout turned into a groan as he bent double and the blood seethed down his trousers. He fell slowly backwards, blood suddenly arcing above him. He slid down the boulder’s side and thumped into the surf just beside Ben Goldthwait’s corpse. Israel Trask’s eyes widened. “Don’t mind the bodies, boy,” Wadsworth said, “just keep playing.”

James Fletcher, ordered to stay close to Wadsworth, waded into the small waves to pull the wounded officer out of the water, but the moment he took hold of the man’s shoulders a pulse of blood spurted into James’s face and the injured captain writhed in agony.

“You!” Wadsworth was pointing at some sailors about to row their boat back to the transports. “Take that wounded man back with you! There’s a surgeon on the Hunter! Take him there.”

“I think he’s dead,” James said, shuddering at the blood which had splashed on his face and spread in the small waves.

“With me, Fletcher,” Wadsworth said, “come on!” He followed the path by the boulder. To his left the militia were struggling through the thick undergrowth that choked the bluff, but Wadsworth sensed the marines to his right were far higher up the slope. The path slanted southwards along the bluff’s face. It was not much of a path, more a vague track interrupted by roots, scrub, and fallen trees and Wadsworth had to use his hands to haul himself over the most difficult parts. The track zigzagged back north and at the turn a wounded marine was tying a strip of cloth round his bloodied thigh while just beyond him another marine lay as if asleep, his mouth open, but with no sign of a wound. Wadsworth felt a pang as he looked at the young man’s face; so good-looking, so wasteful. “He’s dead, sir,” the injured marine said.

A musket-ball thumped into a tree beside Wadsworth, opening a scar of fresh wood. He pulled himself up the hill. He could hear the musketry close ahead, and he could hear Welch roaring orders above that splintering noise. The marines were still advancing, but the slope had eased now, which freed their hands to use their muskets. A scream sounded from the trees and was abruptly cut off. “Don’t let the bastards stand!” Welch shouted. “They’re running! Keep the bastards running!”

“Come on, Fletcher!” Wadsworth called. He felt a sudden exaltation. The scent of victory was redolent in the rotten egg stench of powder smoke. He saw a redcoat among the trees to his left and pointed his pistol and pulled the trigger, and though he doubted his aim at that distance, he felt a fierce delight in shooting at his country’s enemies. James Fletcher fired his musket uphill, the recoil almost throwing him back off the track. “Keep going!” Wadsworth shouted. More militia were landing, and they too sensed that they were winning this fight and scrambled upwards with a new enthusiasm. Muskets were firing all along the bluff now, American as well as British, and the shots were filling the trees with balls and smoke, but Wadsworth sensed that the heavier fire came from the Americans. Men were shouting at each other, encouraging each other and whooping with delight as they saw the redcoats retreating ever higher. “Keep them running!” Wadsworth bellowed. My God, he thought, but they were winning!

A militiaman brought the American flag ashore and the sight of it inspired Wadsworth. “Come on!” he shouted at a group of Lincoln County men, and he pushed uphill. A musket-ball slashed close enough to his cheek for the wind of its passage to jar his head sideways, but Wadsworth felt indestructible. To his right he could see a rough line of marines, their bayonets glinting as they climbed the shallower upper slope of the bluff while to his left the woods were thick with militiamen in their deerskin coats. He heard the distant war cries of the Indians on the American left, then the militia took up the sound to fill the trees with the eerie, high-pitched shout. The rebel fire was much denser than the enemy’s musketry. The two warships had ceased firing, their broadsides more a danger to their own side than to the enemy, but the sound of American musket-fire was incessant. The top of the bluff was being riddled by musketry and every moment took the attackers higher.

Rachel, one of the smallest transport schooners, had been rowed to the shore. Her bows touched the shingle and still more attackers jumped down onto the beach. They brought the flag of the Massachusetts Militia. “Get on up!” Israel Trask paused in his playing to shout at them. “You’ll miss the fighting! Get on up!” The men obeyed him, streaming up the path to reinforce the attackers. Wadsworth realized he was close to the summit now and he reckoned he might rally the attackers there and keep them moving along Majabigwaduce’s ridge as far as the fort itself. He knew the fort was unfinished, he knew it was short of guns, and with such fine men and with such impetus why should the job not be done before the sun evaporated the fog? “Onwards,” he shouted, “on! On! On!” He heard a cannon fire, its sound much deeper and more percussive than any musket, and for an instant he feared the British had artillery on the bluff’s crest, then he saw the smoke jetting southwards and realized that the small enemy cannon on Dyce’s Head must still be firing at Cross Island. No danger from those guns, then, and he shouted at the marines that the cannon-fire was not aimed at them. “Keep going!” he bellowed, and scrambled upwards amidst a tangle of marines and militia. A man in a homespun tunic was leaning against a fallen tree, panting for breath. “Are you wounded?” Wadsworth asked, and the man just shook his head. “Then keep going!” Wadsworth said. “Not far now!” A body lay sprawled across Wadsworth’s path and he saw, almost with astonishment, that it was the corpse of a redcoat. The dead soldier wore a dark kilt and his hands were curled into fists and flies were crawling on the butcher’s mess that had been his chest. Then Wadsworth reached the summit. Men were cheering, the British were running, the American flags were being carried uphill and Wadsworth was triumphant.

Because the bluff was taken, the redcoats were defeated, and the way to the fort lay open.

It suddenly dawned on Lieutenant John Moore that the incon-ceivable was happening, that the rebels were winning this fight. The realization was horrible, damning, overwhelming, and his response was to redouble his efforts to beat them back. His men had been firing down the bluff’s steep slope, and at first, as his green-coated