“Ah, gentlemen, you have missed your aim.”
“What aim?”
“You won’t get what you came for. I left Boston an hour before your troops were ready to cross Charles River. Messengers left before me, and the alarm will soon be fifty miles away. Had I not known it, I would have risked a shot from you before allowing myself to be captured.”
From the belfry of the meetinghouse the bell was sending its peals far and wide over fields and woodlands.
“Do you not hear it? The town is alarmed,” said Revere.
“Rub-a-dub-dub! rub-a-dub-dub! rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub-dub!” It was the drummer beating the long roll.
“The minute-men are forming; you are dead men!” said Dawes.
The drumbeat, with the clanging bell, was breaking the stillness of the early morning. The officers put their heads together and whispered a moment.
“Get off your horses,” ordered Captain Parsons of the king’s Tenth Regiment.
Revere and Dawes obeyed.