enemies struggled on the steepest portion of their climb, Moore had seen his fire throw the assailants backwards. Those attackers had been following a rough and uneven path that zigzagged up the bluff, and Moore’s men could fire down at them, though in the shadowed darkness the attackers were hard to see. “Fire!” Moore shouted, then realized the call was unnecessary. His men were shooting as fast as they could reload, and all along the bluff the redcoats were hammering musket-fire down into the tangled trees. For a few moments Moore had thought they were winning, but there were scores of attackers who, as they reached less precipitous ground, began to shoot back. The bluff crackled with unending musket-fire, smoke filling the branches, heavy balls thumping into trees and flesh.
Captain Archibald Campbell, appalled by the sheer numbers of attackers, shouted at his men to retreat. “You heard that, sir?” Sergeant McClure asked Moore.
“Stay where you are!” Moore snarled at his men.
He tried to make sense of what had happened, but the noise and smoke were chaotic. All he was certain of was that beneath him on the slope were uniformed men and Moore’s duty was to throw them back to the sea, and so he stayed on the bluff’s upper face as the rest of Campbell’s picquet retreated to the summit. “Keep firing!” he told McClure.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” McClure said, and fired his musket down into a group of attackers. The response was a crash of musketry from below, flames leaping upward in smoke, and Private McPhail, just seventeen, gave a mewing sound and dropped his musket. A sliver of rib, astonishingly white in the dawn, was protruding through his red coat and his deerskin trousers were turning red as he fell to his knees and mewed again. “We can’t stay here, sir,” McClure shouted over the musket din to Moore.
“Step back!” Moore conceded. “Slow now! Keep firing!” He stooped beside McPhail, whose teeth were chattering, then the boy gave a convulsive shudder and went still and Moore realized McPhail had died.
“Watch right, sir,” McClure warned, and Moore had a second’s panic as he saw rebels climbing past him through the thick brush. Two squirrels went leaping overhead. “Time to get the hell uphill, sir,” McClure said.
“Go back!” Moore called to his men, “but slowly! Give them fire!” He sheathed his sword, unbuckled McPhail’s belt with its cartridge pouch, then carried the belt, pouch, and musket up the slope. The marines to the north had seen him and their musket-balls slashed around him, but then they veered away to attack Captain Campbell’s rearward men, and that distraction gave Moore time to struggle up the last few feet to the bluff’s top where he shouted at his men to form a line and stand. Some pine needles had dropped down the back of his neck and were trapped by his collar. They irritated him. He could not see Captain Campbell’s men and it seemed that his small picquet was the only British presence left on the bluff, but just then a blue-coated artillery lieutenant came running from the east.
The lieutenant, one of Captain Fielding’s men, commanded the three small cannon placed just behind Dyce’s Head. The gunners had replaced the naval crews, releasing the sailors back to their ships, which expected an attack by the enemy fleet. The gunner lieutenant, a boy no older than Moore, stopped beside the picquet. “What’s happening?”
“An attack,” Moore said with brutal simplicity. He had looped the dead man’s belt through his sword belt and now fumbled in the pouch for a cartridge, but McClure distracted him.
“We should go back, sir,” the sergeant declared.
“We stay here and keep firing!” Moore insisted. His Hamiltons were now in a single line at the bluff’s top. Behind them was a small clearing, then a stand of pines beyond which the three cannon still fired across the harbor at the rebel battery on Cross Island.
“Should I take the guns away?” the artillery lieutenant asked.
“Can you fire down the bluff?” Moore asked.
“Down the bluff?”
“At them!” Moore said impatiently, pointing to where the green-coated attackers were momentarily visible in the shadowed undergrowth.
“No.”
A blast of musketry erupted on Moore’s right. Two of his men collapsed and another dropped his musket to clutch at his shoulder. One of the fallen men was writhing in agony as his blood spread on the ground. He began to scream in high-pitched yelps, and the remaining men backed away in horror. More shots came from the trees and a third man fell, dropping to his knees with his right thigh shattered by a musket-ball. Moore’s small line was ragged now and, worse, the men were edging backwards. Their faces were pale, their eyes skittering in fear. “Will you leave me here?” Moore shouted at them. “Will the Hamiltons leave me alone? Come back! Behave like soldiers!” Moore rather surprised himself by sounding so confident, and was even more surprised when the picquet obeyed him. They had been gripped by fear and the fear had been a heartbeat away from panic, but Moore’s voice had checked them. “Fire!” he shouted, pointing towards the cloud of powder smoke showing where the enemy’s destructive volley had been fired. He tried to see the enemy who had shot that volley, but the green coats of the marines melded into the trees. Moore’s men fired, the heavy musket butts thumping back into bruised shoulders.
“We have to get the guns out!” the artillery lieutenant said.
“Then do it!” Moore snarled and turned away. His men’s ramrods rattled in powder-fouled barrels as they reloaded.
A musket-ball hit the artillery lieutenant in the small of his back and he crumpled. “No,” he said, more in surprise than protest, “no!” His boots scrabbled in the leaf mold. “No,” he said again, and another volley came, this time from the north, and Moore knew he was in danger of being cut off from the fort.
“Help me,” the artillery lieutenant said.
“Sergeant!” Moore called.
“We have to go, sir,” Sergeant McClure said, “we’re the only ones left here.”
The artillery lieutenant suddenly arched his back and gave a shriek. Another of Moore’s men was on the ground, blood sheeting his bleached deerskin trousers.
“We have to go back, sir!” McClure shouted angrily.
“Back to the trees,” Moore called to his men, “steady now!” He backed with them, stopping them again when they reached the stand of pines. The guns were just behind them now, while in front was the clearing where the dead and the dying lay and beyond which the enemy was gathering. “Fire!” Moore shouted, his voice hoarse. The fog was much thinner and being lit by the rising sun so that the musket smoke seemed to rise into a glowing vapor.
“We have to go, sir,” McClure urged, “back to the fort, sir.”
“Reinforcements will come,” Moore said, and a musket-ball struck Sergeant McClure’s mouth, splintering his teeth, piercing his throat, and severing his spine. The sergeant dropped noiselessly. His blood spattered John Moore’s immaculate breeches. “Fire!” Moore shouted, but he could have wept for frustration. He was in his first battle and he was losing it, but he would not give in. Surely the brigadier would send more men, and so John Moore, the dead man’s musket still in his hand, stood his uncertain ground.
And still more rebels climbed the bluff.
Captain Welch was frustrated. He wanted to close on the enemy. He wanted to terrify, kill, and conquer. He knew he led the best soldiers and if he could just lead them to the enemy then his green-jacketed marines would rip through the red ranks with a ferocious efficiency. He just needed to close on that enemy, drive him back in terror, and then keep advancing until the fort, and every damned redcoat inside it, belonged to the marines.
The slope frustrated him. It was steep and the enemy, retreating slowly, kept up a galling fire on his men, a fire the marines could scarcely return most of the time. They shot upwards when they could, but the enemy was half-hidden by trees, by shadow, and by the smoke-writhing fog, and too many musket-balls were deflected by branches, or just wasted in the air. “Keep going!” Welch shouted. The higher they went the easier the slope became, but until they reached that friendlier ground good men were being killed or wounded, struck by musket- balls that plunged relentlessly from above, and every shot made Welch angrier and more determined.
He sensed, rather than saw, that he was opposed by a small group of men. They fired constantly, but because they were few their fire was limited. “Lieutenant Dennis! Sergeant Sykes!” Welch shouted, “Take your men left!” He would outflank the bastards.
“Aye aye, sir!” Sykes roared back. Welch could hear the cannons firing above him, but no round shot or grapeshot came his way, just the damned musket-balls. He gripped a spruce branch and hauled himself up the
