The east and west sides of the hill were very steep. At the east base were brick kilns, clay pits and much marshland.
At the top of Breed’s Hill the men, at the command of their officers, threw down their packs, stacked arms and stood ready. In the dim light of the masked lanterns held by Ezra and his comrades, Colonel Gridley marked out the lines of the works; the tool carts came up, the tools were distributed and the men set to work. And as this began, Colonel Prescott ordered a guard, under Captain Maxwell of his own regiment, to patrol the shore of the lower part of the town near the old ferry.
“We must know what the enemy is about,” Ezra heard the colonel say to Colonel Gridley. “His movements are most interesting to us to-night.”
So near were they to the sentry-belted town of Boston that they could hear, now and then, the cry of the guard at Copp’s Hill battery. Also the sounds from the war-ships were carried to them on the quiet wind.
“Their vessels command our position very well,” said Colonel Gridley, as they stood looking out across the starlit waters. “That is the ‘Falcon,’ there off Moulton’s Point. The ‘Somerset’ is at the ferry, and that ship near to Craigie’s Bridge is the ‘Glasgow.’ The ‘Cerberus’ and some floating batteries are yonder where you see that tangle of lights.”
“It will be a surprise to me if our work is not suspected before daylight,” said Prescott. “However, the men are accustomed to handling their tools, and may carry it through unnoticed.”
And that is what happened. Diligently the thousand patriots cut into the earth. Perfect silence was maintained; and every little while the assuring cry that “All’s well” came from Maxwell’s patrol down along the water’s edge.
When dawn finally broke on that seventeenth of June, the works were about six feet in height, and the men were still laboring away on them with a will. The entrenchments were first discovered by the watch upon the twenty-gun vessel “Lively.” Captain Bishop, her commander, did not wait for orders, but put a spring in her cable and at once opened fire.
The roar of the “Lively’s” guns awoke the British camp, and soon all Boston was assembled, staring in wonderment at the fortifications which a night had caused to arise upon Breed’s Hill.
A little later a battery of six guns at Copp’s Hill took up the firing, and soon the heavier vessels joined in.