For many miles inland the air trembled and hummed. The hills growled with rolling echoes. Windows in distant places blew inward and walls trembled. But the defenses held.
Ship after ship swung in that fierce circle and passed. It was the climax of the night’s bombardment. When the dawn spread far on the ocean horizon, the defenders saw the enemy fleet lying back against it, far out of the zone of fire.
The sea was bare between them and the forts, except for a rent ruin hanging on the Outer Brewster where a shattered destroyer was aground. Off Cohasset lay another, sprawling on the rocks called The Grampuses, half out of the sea as if it were the torn body of a weird monster that had thrown itself ashore in a dying agony.
“No damage,” said Fort Revere. “No damage, except dismounted searchlight,” said Fort Strong. “One 6-inch gun dismantled,” said Standish. “No damage,” reported Andrews and Banks. In Fort Warren two 3-inch quick firers were destroyed.
“We could hold them off forever,” said the battle commander, “if we were protected from the land.”
It Was His Last Fight
The successful fight of his defenses had made it only the more bitter for him. He knew that this was the last fight. He knew that the army that was sweeping northward would take him in the back before night.
He looked at one of his 12-inch rifles. He walked over to it and patted the beautiful thing, so shapely, so graceful that it seemed impossible that it should weigh 35 tons. “If they had just given you that little extra elevation!” he murmured. “Then yonder ships wouldn’t dare lie within 20,000 yards of us.”[101]
But “they” had not given the rifles that little extra elevation. “They” had found time enough and money enough to pay for bridges over muddy creeks, for printing millions of words of oratory, for hundreds of private bills. “They” had been able to find money to pay themselves for constructive recesses of Congress, and mileage for journeys that they had not made. But they had not been able to find money for defense.
Just a little foresight, and Boston, that now was trembling, might be sitting behind that charmed circle of its great guns and laughing at all the navies of the world.