brigadier’s left ear rather than into his eyes. “Of course they can be taken.”
“Then’”
“But at what price, Wadsworth? Tell me that! At what price?”
“You must tell me, sir.”
Saltonstall deigned to look directly at Wadsworth for a moment as if deciding whether his answer would be wasted on such a man. He evidently decided it would not be, because he sighed heavily as though he was weary of explaining the obvious. “The wind sets from the southwest,” he said, looking past Wadsworth again, “which means we can sail into the harbor, but we cannot sail out. Once inside the harbor we lay under the enemy’s guns. Those guns, Wadsworth, as you may have observed, are efficiently manned.” He paused, plainly tempted to make a comparison with the militia’s artillery, but he managed to suppress the comment. “The harbor is constricted,” he went on, “which dictates that we must enter in file, which in turn means the lead ship must inevitably sustain heavy damage from the enemy’s fire.” He waved briskly towards the Warren’s bows, which still showed evidence of hasty repairs to her bowsprit and forecastle. “Once inside we have no room to maneuver so we must anchor to preserve our position opposite the enemy ships. Either that or sail directly at them and board them. And all that while, Wadsworth, we are under the cannon of the fort, and what you don’t understand is that the fort is formidable.”
Wadsworth wondered whether to argue, but decided argument would merely goad Saltonstall into stubbornness. “It seems that what you’re saying, sir,” he said, “is that the ships will not fall till the fort is taken?”
“Precisely!” Saltonstall sounded relieved, as if Wadsworth was a dim pupil who had at last grasped the simplest of propositions.
“Whereas General Lovell is convinced the fort cannot be taken until the ships are destroyed.”
“General Lovell is entitled to his opinion,” Saltonstall said loftily.
“If we succeed in capturing the enemy’s remaining shore battery,” Wadsworth suggested, “it will make your task easier, sir?”
“My task?”
“Of capturing the enemy ships, sir.”
“My task, Wadsworth, is to support your forces in the capture of the fort.”
“Thank you, sir,” Wadsworth said, hiding his exasperation, “but might I assure General Lovell that you will attack their shipping if we mount an assault on the fort?”
“This presupposes that you have disposed of the enemy’s shore battery?”
“It does, sir.”
“A joint attack, eh?” Saltonstall still sounded suspicious, but after a brief hesitation, nodded cautiously. “I would consider a joint attack,” he said grudgingly, “but you do realize, I trust, that the position of Mowat’s ships becomes untenable once the fort is taken?”
“I do, sir.”
“But that McLean’s position is still formidable whether the ships are taken or not?”
“I understand that too, sir.”
Saltonstall turned to glower at the waist of the Warren, but saw nothing to provoke a complaint. “The Congress, Wadsworth, has spent precious public money building a dozen frigates.”
“Indeed it has, sir,” Wadsworth said, wondering what that had to do with the fort on Majabigwaduce’s peninsula.
“The Washington, the Effingham, the Congress and the Montgomery are all scuttled, Wadsworth. They are lost.”
“Sadly, sir, yes,” Wadsworth said. The four frigates had been destroyed to prevent their capture.
“The Virginia, taken,” Saltonstall went on remorselessly, “the Hancock, taken. The Raleigh, taken. The Randolph, sunk. Do you wish me to add the Warren to that sad record?”
“Of course not, sir,” Wadsworth said. He glanced up at the snake-embossed flag flying at the Warren’s stern. It bore the proud motto “Don’t Tread on Me,” but how could the British even try if the snake’s only ambition was to avoid battle?
“Capture the shore battery,” Saltonstall said in his most lordly voice, “and the fleet will reconsider its opportunities.”
“Thank you, sir,” Wadsworth said.
He had been silent as he was rowed ashore from the frigate. Saltonstall was right, Wadsworth did disagree with Lovell. Wadsworth knew the fort was the king on Majabigwaduce’s chessboard, and the three British ships were pawns. Take the fort and the pawns surrendered, but take the pawns and the king remained, yet Lovell would not be persuaded to attack the fort any more than Saltonstall could be persuaded to throw caution to the southwest wind and destroy Mowat’s three sloops. So now the battery must be attacked in hope that a successful assault would persuade the two commanders to greater boldness.
And time was short and it was shrinking, so Peleg Wadsworth would attack that night. In the dark.
James Fletcher tacked the Felicity south from Wasaumkeag Point where the rebels had taken over the remaining buildings of Fort Pownall, a decayed wooden and earth-banked fortress erected some thirty years before to deter attacks upriver by French raiders. There was no adequate shelter for wounded men on the heights of Majabigwaduce, so the house and storerooms of the old fort were now the rebels’ hospital. Wasaumkeag Point lay on the far bank of Penobscot Bay, just south of where the river opened from being a narrow and fast-flowing channel between high wooded banks. James, when he was not needed by Wadsworth, used the Felicity to carry wounded men to the hospital and now he did his best to hurry back, eager to join Wadsworth before dusk and the attack on the British battery.
The Felicity’s course was frustrating. She made good enough progress on each starboard tack, but inevitably the wind drove the small boat nearer and nearer the eastern bank and then James had to endure a long port tack, which, in the flooding tide, seemed to take him farther and farther from Majabigwaduce’s bluff beneath which he wanted to anchor the Felicity. But James was used to the southwest wind. “You can’t hurry the breeze,” his father had said, “and you can’t change its mind, so there’s no point in getting irritated by it.” James wondered what his father would think of the rebellion. Nothing good, he supposed. His father, like many who lived about the river, had been proud to be an Englishman. It did not matter to him that the Fletchers had lived in Massachusetts for over a hundred years, they were still Englishmen. An old, yellowing print of King Charles I had hung in the log house throughout James’s childhood, and was now tacked above his mother’s sickbed. The king looked haughty, but somehow sad, as if he knew that one day a rebellion would topple him and lead him to the executioner’s block. In Boston, James had heard, there was a tavern called the Cromwell’s Head which hung its inn-sign so low above the door that men had to bow their heads to the king-killer every time they entered. That story had angered his father.
He tacked the Felicity in the cove just north of the bluff. The sound of the cannonade between the fort and the rebel lines was loud now, the smoke from the guns drifting like a cloud above the peninsula. He was on a port tack again, but it would be a short one and he knew he would reach the shore well before nightfall. He sailed under the stern of the Industry, a transport sloop, and waved to its captain, Will Young, who shouted some good-natured remark that was lost in the sound of the cannons.
James tacked to run down the Industry’s flank where a longboat was secured. Three men were in the longboat while above them, at the sloop’s gunwale, two men threatened the trio with muskets. Then, with a shock, James recognized the three captives: Archibald Haney, John Lymburner, and William Greenlaw, all from Majabigwaduce. Haney and Lymburner had been friends of his father, while Will Greenlaw had often accompanied James on fishing trips downriver and had paid court to Beth once or twice, though never successfully. All three men were Tories, Loyalists, and now they were evidently prisoners. James let his sheets go so that the Felicity slowed and shivered. “What the devil are you doing with the bastards?” Archibald Haney called. Haney was like an uncle to James.
Before James could say a word in response a sailor appeared at the gunwale above the longboat. He carried a wooden pail. “Hey, Tories!” the sailor called, then upended the bucket to cascade urine and turds onto the
