CHAPTER V
THE REGULARS COME OUT
While Don was asleep, breathing the damp, fragrant air that blew over the rolling hills and fields round Concord, his friend, Paul Revere, was being rowed cautiously from the vicinity of Hudson’s Point toward Charlestown. It was then near half-past ten o’clock.
Revere, muffled in a long cloak, sat in the stern of the small boat and glanced now at his two companions—Thomas Richardson and Joshua Bentley—and now at the British man-of-war, Somerset, only a few rods off. The tide was at young flood, and the moon was rising. The night seemed all black and silver—black shadows ahead where the town of Charlestown lay, black shadows behind that shrouded the wharfs and shipyards of the North End, and silver shimmering splashes on the uneasy water and on the sleek spars of the Somerset.
The sound of talking came from the direction of the man-of-war and was followed by a burst of laughter that reverberated musically in the cool night air. Revere blew on his hands to warm them. The little boat drew nearer, nearer to Charlestown; now he could see the vague outlines of wharfs and houses. Several times he glanced over his shoulder in the direction of a solitary yellow light that gleamed in the black-and-silver night high among the shadows on the Boston side,—a light that burned steadily in the belfry of the Old North Meeting-House behind Corps Hill as a signal that the British were on their way by land to attack the Colonists.
“Here we are,” said one of the rowers, shipping his muffled oar and partly turning in his seat.
A few minutes later the boat swung against a wharf, and the two men at the oars held it steady while Revere stepped out. A brief word or two and he was on his way up the dock. In the town he soon met a group of patriots, one of whom, Richard Devens, got a horse for him. Revere lost no time in mounting and setting off to warn the countryside of the coming of the Redcoats.
He had not gone far beyond Charlestown Neck, however, when he almost rode into two British officers who were waiting in the shadows beneath a tree. One of them rode out into the middle of the path; the other charged full at the American. Like a flash Revere turned his horse and galloped back toward the Neck and then pushed for the Medford road. The Redcoat, unfamiliar with the ground, had ridden into a clay pit, and before he could get his horse free Revere was safely out of his reach.
At Medford he roused the captain of the Minute-Men; and from there to Lexington he stopped at almost every house along the road and summoned the inmates from their beds. It was close to midnight when he reached Lexington. Riding to the house of the Rev. Jonas Clark, where Hancock and Adams were staying, he found eight men on guard in command of a sergeant.
“Don’t make so much noise!” cried the fellow as Revere clattered up to the gate.
“Noise!” repeated Revere in a hoarse voice. “You’ll have noise enough here before long—the regulars are coming out!”