The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

An oppressive silence fell for a moment on Dick and all his comrades, while their eyes glistened; then, simultaneously, they raised a wild, half hysterical cheer, and many a man grasped his weapon tighter, and sent towards the scarlet line afar an unconscious smile of defiant welcome.

The thunder of the British batteries and ships all at once swelled to tremendous volume. The fields by the river, below the redoubt, were deluged with cannon-shot. "To hinder us frae ganging doon to stop their landing," explained MacAlister to Dick. Scarlet troops could be seen moving in Boston towards different wharves, from which at last they crowded into barges, a few of them hauling field-pieces along with them.

Dick thrilled at the fine sight when the barges were rowed out into the river and towards a point of land eastward from the hill on which the Yankee army waited. Passing between the belching vessels and the river's mouth, and as the wind drove the cannon smoke westward, the barges with their loads of scarlet and steel stood out clear in the sunlight.

It was one o'clock when the barges huddled together at the point, and the red-coated troops filed ashore, and began to form in lines, now on the same side of the river with the colonials who had defied them. Dick admired the precision of the three lines in which they formed, the patience with which they waited while their officers consulted and while the barges went back apparently for more troops, the matter-of-fact manner in which many of them ate their dinners while they stood.

He was drawn from this sight presently by a cheer from his own comrades, which heralded the arrival of some teams with provisions and barrels of beer. While he was partaking of the consequent good cheer, there was another outburst of enthusiasm, this time over the arrival of Doctor Warren, recently made a general, and General Pomeroy, who both came to serve for the day in the ranks, as volunteers. Soon General Putnam rode back again to the redoubt.

Now the British were seen beginning a movement from the point, and along the Mystic River, which ran by the hill's northern base as the Charles ran by its southern one. Some artillery and some Connecticut troops, detached to oppose this movement, went down the hill and began to construct a kind of breastwork of a pair of stone and rail fences and some fresh-cut hay that lay in the fields. But Dick had no attention for this business, or for the reinforcements that began to arrive over Charlestown Neck in the fire of the British ships and batteries. All his powers of sight were for the well-drilled enemy, who had ceased to move along the Mystic, and now stood near the point.

At about three o'clock the British barges came back from Boston on their second trip, and, landing short of the point, disembarked their troops at a place much nearer the redoubt than the first force was. "It's them we'll be having dealings wi'," said MacAlister, nodding towards the new arrivals. "There's a regiment that we'll ken the name of later, and a battalion of marines, not to speak of them companies of light infantry and grenadiers. Whist, lad, it's like we'll hae the worth of our labors."

While Dick waited, with his eyes on the force at the foot of the hill, in front of him, he was vaguely conscious that things were doing elsewhere; that the field-pieces of the British right wing—the force first landed—were conversing with the Yankees' cannon; that parties were being sent out from the redoubt to flank the enemy and were doing a little futile skirmishing; and that the roars of cannon were more deafening, the balls raining more thickly and incessantly on the hillside from the ships and the Boston batteries. At last the British left wing—the newly landed force, of which Tom had spoken—began to march towards the redoubt. This left wing had meanwhile been augmented by some of the regiments that had crossed the river on the first trip of the barges.

"They're coming, boy," said old Tom. "It's a general movement of both divisions. They are the best troops in the world, son, dour devils every ane of them, and they mane to tak' this hill as sure as we mane to hould it. It's a grand disputation ye're like to see this day, lad!"

Colonel Prescott strode around the platform, instructing the men upon it how to fire, the men behind it how to hand loaded guns to the first, how to reload, how to take the places of the disabled. "Remember," said he, "wait for the word before you fire. Mind you put every grain of powder to good use; there's none for wasting. Aim at their waist-bands, and bring down their officers. That musket must be lower, man, when you come to fire. You, there, with your finger ready to pull, wait for the word, I tell you!"