Now that he had them, he waited for no orders and asked for no instructions. He loaded quartermasters’ boats with detachments and rushed them to the waterfront of Boston and Chelsea where he knew of things he wanted. They returned with two tons of explosives and miscellaneous ordnance material that had been seized from merchants. He seized barb wire. From electric light plants and power works he obtained, by the same simple method, some forty miles of lead-covered cable for his mine-fields, and from ships in the harbor he took half a dozen searchlights.[86]
To Hold the Defenses
Before night, too, he had men entrenched behind entanglements with machine guns on the narrow neck of land that leads to Nahant’s broad cliff promontory on the north of Boston Harbor, to protect position finding stations there and a great 60-inch searchlight.
Southward at Point Allerton, on the long cape that juts toward Boston Harbor from Nantasket Beach, to defend the stations and searchlights and approaches of Fort Revere with its mighty batteries, he placed a strong force with ample artillery.[87]
This was the point where he feared a landing most. He built an armored train, seizing the material from the town of Hull, and armed it with quick-firers that it might be sent to threatened places.
Outposts were sent as far as Nantasket, for fear the enemy should try to land there or cross the narrow neck and take boats over it into the bay behind.
Beyond Fort Revere he destroyed certain houses that would interfere with the firing. At the far outlying islands called The Graves he posted men with signal rockets. He sent scout boats to lie at sea beyond the fire zone, from Nahant to the spot where the Light-ship was moored in times of peace.[88]
Within forty hours he had doubled the strength of his defense because he had the men. He looked up at a hostile aeroplane, flying well beyond gunshot. They had become almost commonplace objects in Boston’s sky during the past days. “Well, come on!” he said. “You and your ships! We’ll give you a whirl.”