The Fort by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page B

hero who inspired confidence. He had been captured by rebel civilians, the self-styled Sons of Liberty, while walking ashore in Falmouth. His release had been negotiated by the leading citizens of that proud harbor town, and the condition of Mowat’s release had been that he surrender himself next day so that the legality of his arrest could be established by lawyers, but instead Mowat had returned with a flotilla that had bombarded the town from dawn to dusk and, when most of the houses lay shattered, he had sent shore parties to set fire to the wreckage. Two thirds of Falmouth had been destroyed to send the message that Captain Mowat was not a man to be trifled with.
    Calef frowned slightly as Brigadier McLean and two junior officers strolled along the stony beach towards Mowat. Calef still had doubts about the Scottish brigadier, fearing that he was too gentle in his demeanor, but Captain Mowat evidently had no such misgivings because he smiled broadly as McLean approached. “You’ve not come to pester me, McLean,” he said with mock severity, “your precious guns are coming!”
    “I never doubted it, Mowat, never doubted it,” McLean said, “not for a moment.” He touched his hat to Doctor Calef, then turned back to Mowat. “And how are your fine fellows this morning, Mowat?”
    “Working, McLean, working!”
    McLean gestured at his two companions. “Doctor, allow me to present Lieutenant Campbell of the 74th,” McLean paused to allow the dark-kilted Campbell to offer the doctor a small bow, “and Paymaster Moore of the 82nd.” John Moore offered a more elegant bow, Calef raised his hat in response and McLean turned to gaze at the three sloops with the longboats nuzzling their flanks. “Your longboats are all busy, Mowat?”
    “They’re busy, and so they damn well should be. Idleness encourages the devil.”
    “So it does,” Calef agreed.
    “And there was I seeking an idle moment,” McLean said happily.
    “You need a boat?” Mowat asked.
    “I’d not take your matelots from their duties,” the brigadier said, then looked past Mowat to where a young man and woman were hauling a heavy wooden rowboat down to the incoming tide. “Isn’t that the young fellow who piloted us into the harbor?”
    Doctor Calef turned. “James Fletcher,” he said grimly.
    “Is he loyal?” McLean asked.
    “He’s a damned light-headed fool,” Calef said, and then, grudgingly, “but his father was a loyal man.”
    “Then like father, like son, I trust,” McLean said and turned to Moore. “John? Ask Mister Fletcher if he can spare us an hour?” It was evident that Fletcher and his sister were planning to row to their fishing boat, the Felicity , which lay in deeper water. “Tell him I wish to see Majabigwaduce from the river and will pay for his time.”
    Moore went on his errand and McLean watched as another cannon barrel was hoisted aloft from the Albany ’s deck. Smaller boats were ferrying other supplies ashore; cartridges and salt beef, rum barrels and cannon-balls, wadding and rammers, the paraphernalia of war, all of which was being hauled or carried to where his fort was still little more than a scratched square in the thin turf of the ridge’s top. John Nutting, a Loyalist American and an engineer who had traveled to Britain to urge the occupation of Majabigwaduce, was laying out the design of the stronghold in the cleared land. The fort would be simple enough, just a square of earthen ramparts with diamond-shaped bastions at its four corners. Each of the walls would be two hundred and fifty paces in length and would be fronted by a steep-sided ditch, but even such a simple fort required firesteps and embrasures, and needed masonry magazines that would keep the ammunition dry, and a well deep enough to provide plentiful water. Tents housed the soldiers for the moment, but McLean wanted those vulnerable encampments protected by the fort. He wanted high walls, thick walls, walls manned by men and