“Whose would they be?” scoffed the sergeant. “Do you think the Yankees have guns like that?”
“No—no.” He was wide awake now, wider awake than he wanted to be, he thought, for the cannonading sounded ominous and near. “What’s happening, Jack? Are we marching against them? Have we attacked—or they?”
“Can’t tell yet,” said Sergeant Higgs. “All we know is, we hear gunfire. Lieutenant Apthorp has gone to headquarters to find out. You better get some breakfast. It’s best we be ready for anything.”
In the cobbled square outside, the men of the Twenty-third had built their usual cookfire, just as they did every morning, and gathered round it, salt pork spitted on bayonets and stale bread handed round by the mess sergeant. Lieutenant Apthorp did not come back, and Lieutenant Julian went to see what was keeping him. The cannonading went on. It was coming from the ships in the river beyond the North End, most of the men agreed. Maybe the Yankees had got together some sort of raft and were moving by water against Boston. The Twenty-third seemed more amused than frightened at this suggestion.
And then, without any official announcement being made, the word was passed from mouth to mouth, and everybody knew.
The Yankees had taken the hills above Charlestown in the night, and built some sort of entrenchment there. They were being fired at from three sides by the British men-o’-war, but it began to seem as if this would not be enough to dislodge them, as if a force would have to go out and drive them from the hill.
In the town behind him Gerry could hear the rattle of artillery carriages, the thud of horses’ hoofs as the dragoons galloped here and there. General Gage had called for his officers to meet at the Province House, and some of the men went off to hover about that grim, narrow structure and get the word as soon as it was handed down.
Gerry did not go to the Province House. He went to the edge of the wharf and sat there, dangling his legs over the side. The sun was getting higher and hotter, and he looked up at the sun, and then down at the thick grayish water lapping silently round the piers below. He thought about his dream, and he thought about the girl called Kitty, who was not so distractingly fair as Sally Rose, and wondered if she had got safe away. He thought about Captain Blakeslee lying dead under the locust tree. True, he had never wanted to be a soldier, but once he became one, he’d expected to bear his part well. Once he’d have been eager to march out when he heard firing, but he was none so eager now. Maybe he was afraid. Maybe that was a bad omen. He’d heard around the campfire that men who were going into their last battle often felt that way. If only he could forget the dream....
The sounds of confusion in the town behind him seemed to increase and grow. Now that he thought of it, none of the usual daily noises could be heard: not the tapping of the carpenters’ hammers, nor the thumping of handlooms, nor the creak of wooden machinery. The little Negro boys were nowhere about with their cries of “Sweep oh! Sweep oh!” He suspected that the town of Boston would do no work this day. Everywhere men were shouting and bells were ringing: Christ’s Church with its royal peal, the North Church with its sour note, and half a dozen more. Just as usual, the breeze that blew over Long Wharf smelled of fish and whale oil and the nearby stables, of tar, and spice, and wood smoke, but now, or did he imagine it, it had an acrid brimstone tang.
At eleven the men came trooping back, and the word was out. Every man knew what was to be the order of his day.