“We’ll keep this; the other is only fit for the crows to pick,” said one of the officers, cutting the saddle-girth of Dawes’s horse, turning it loose, and mounting Bucephalus. Then all rode away, dashing past the minute-men on Lexington Green.
“The minute-men are forming,—three hundred of them,” reported the officers to Colonel Smith, who was marching up the road.[58]
The bell and the drumbeat, the lights in Buckman’s tavern and the other houses, the minute-men in line by the meetinghouse, had quickened the imagination of the excited Britishers.
“The country is alarmed. It is reported there are five hundred rebels gathered to oppose me. I shall need reinforcements.” Such was the message of Colonel Smith to General Gage.
He directed Major Pitcairn to push on rapidly with six companies of light infantry.
“Jonathan! Jonathan! Get up quick! The redcoats are coming and something must be done!”[59]
Abigail Harrington shouted it, bursting into her son Jonathan’s chamber. He had not heard the bell, nor the commotion in the street. Jonathan was only sixteen years old, but was fifer for the minute-men. In a twinkling he was dressed, and seizing his fife ran to join the company forming in line by the meetinghouse; answering to their names, as clerk Daniel Harrington called the roll.
John Hancock and Samuel Adams hear the drumbeat; Hancock seizes his gun.
“This is no place for you; you must go to a place of safety,” said Reverend Mr. Clark.
“Never will I turn my back to the redcoats,” said Hancock.