The Fort Read Online Free PDF

passed she offered no sign of recognition. A man at her taffrail looked at Saltonstall, then spat into the sea and the Warren ’s captain bridled, suspecting an insult. He watched her go towards the fog. The King-Killer was off hunting, going across the bay, around the northern hook of Cape Cod, and out into the Atlantic where the fat British cargo ships wallowed on their westward runs from Halifax to New York.
    “Gew-gaws,” Saltonstall growled.
    A stub-masted open barge, painted white with a black stripe around its gunwale, pushed off from the Castle Island quay. A dozen men manned the oars, pulling hard against the small waves, and the sight of the barge made Captain Saltonstall fish a watch from his pocket. He clicked open the lid and saw that it was ten minutes past eight in the morning. The barge was precisely on time, and within an hour he would see it return from Boston, this time carrying the commander of the Castle Island garrison, a man who preferred to sleep in the city. Saltonstall approved of the Castle Island barge. She was smartly painted and her crew, if not in real uniform, wore matching blue shirts. There was an attempt at order there, at discipline, at propriety.
    The captain resumed his pacing, larboard to starboard, starboard to larboard.
    The King-Killer vanished in the fog.
    The Castle Island barge threaded the anchorage. A church bell began to toll.
    Boston harbor, a warm morning, June 23rd, 1779.
    *    *    *
    The paymaster of His Majesty’s 82nd Regiment of Foot strode west along Majabigwaduce’s ridge. From behind him came the sound of axes striking trees, while all around him was fog. A thick fog. Every morning since the fleet had arrived there had been fog. “It will burn off,” the paymaster said cheerfully.
    “Aye, sir,” Sergeant McClure answered dully. The sergeant had a picquet of six men from the 82nd Foot, the Duke of Hamilton’s regiment and so known as the Hamiltons. McClure was thirty, older by far than his men and twelve years older than the paymaster, a lieutenant, who led the picquet at a fast, enthusiastic pace. His orders were to establish a sentry post at the peninsula’s western heights from where a lookout could be kept on the wide Penobscot Bay. If any enemy was to come, then the bay was their likeliest approach. The picquet was in thick woodland now, dwarfed by tall, dark, fog-shrouded trees. “The brigadier, sir,” Sergeant McClure ventured, “said there might be rebels here.”
    “Nonsense! There are no rebels here! They have all fled, Sergeant!”
    “If you say so, sir.”
    “I do say so,” the young officer said enthusiastically, then stopped suddenly and pointed into the underbrush. “There!”
    “A rebel, sir?” McClure asked dutifully, seeing nothing worthy of note among the pines.
    “Is it a thrush?”
    “Ah,” McClure saw what had interested the paymaster and looked more closely, “it’s a bird, sir.”
    “Strangely, Sergeant, I was apprised of that fact,” the lieutenant said happily. “Note the breast, Sergeant.”
    Sergeant McClure dutifully noted the bird’s breast. “Red, sir?”
    “Red indeed. I congratulate you, Sergeant, and does it not put you in mind of our native robin? But this fellow is larger, much larger! Handsome fellow, isn’t he?”
    “Want me to shoot him, sir?” McClure asked.
    “No, Sergeant, I merely wish you to admire his plumage. A thrush is wearing his majesty’s red coat, would you not consider that an omen of good-fortune?”
    “Oh, aye, sir, I would.”
    “I detect in you, Sergeant, a lack of zeal.” The eighteen-year-old lieutenant smiled to show he was not serious. He was a tall lad, a full head above the stocky sergeant, and had a round, eager, and mobile face, a smile quick as lightning, and shrewdly observant eyes. His coat was cut from expensive scarlet cloth, faced with black and bright with buttons that were rumored to be made of the finest gold. Lieutenant John Moore was not wealthy,