of this world to the next.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘She’ll find another,’ James said carelessly. ‘She’s not the ugliest girl in the world,’ he grinned, ‘are you?’
The brigadier turned his gaze back to the shore. He sometimes allowed himself the small luxury of imagining that no enemy would come to attack him, but he knew that was unlikely. McLean’s small force was now the only British presence between the Canadian border and Rhode Island and the rebels would surely want that presence destroyed. They would come. He pointed south. ‘We might return now?’ he suggested, and Bethany obliged by turning the Felicity into the wind. Her brother hardened the jib, staysail and main so that the small boat tipped as she beat into the brisk breeze and sharp dashes of spray slapped against the three officers’ red coats. McLean looked again at Majabigwaduce’s high western bluff that faced onto the wide river. ‘If you were in command here,’ he asked his two lieutenants, ‘how would you defend the place?’ Lieutenant Campbell, a lank youth with a prominent nose and an equally prominent Adam’s apple, swallowed nervously and said nothing, while young Moore just leaned back on the heaped nets as though contemplating an afternoon’s sleep. ‘Come, come,’ the brigadier chided the pair, ‘tell me what you would do.’
‘Does that not depend on what the enemy does, sir?’ Moore asked idly.
‘Then assume with me that they arrive with a dozen or more ships and, say, fifteen hundred men?’
Moore closed his eyes, while Lieutenant Campbell tried to look enthusiastic. ‘We put our guns on the bluff, sir,’ he offered, gesturing towards the high ground that dominated the river and harbour entrance.
‘But the bay is wide,’ McLean pointed out, ‘so the enemy can pass us on the farther bank and land upstream of us. Then they cross the neck,’ he pointed to the narrow isthmus of low ground that connected Majabigwaduce to the mainland, ‘and attack us from the landward side.’
Campbell frowned and bit his lip as he pondered that suggestion. ‘So we put guns there too, sir,’ he offered, ‘maybe a smaller fort?’
McLean nodded encouragingly, then glanced at Moore. ‘Asleep, Mister Moore?’
Moore smiled, but did not open his eyes. ‘Wer alles verteidigt, verteidigt nichts,’ he said.
‘I believe der alte Fritz thought of that long before you did, Mister Moore,’ McLean responded, then smiled at Bethany. ‘Our paymaster is showing off, Miss Fletcher, by quoting Frederick the Great. He’s also quite right, he who defends everything defends nothing. So,’ the brigadier looked back to Moore, ‘what would you defend here at Majabigwaduce?’
‘I would defend, sir, that which the enemy wishes to possess.’
‘And that is?’
‘The harbour, sir.’
‘So you would allow the enemy to land their troops on the neck?’ McLean asked. The brigadier’s reconnaissance had convinced him that the rebels would probably land north of Majabigwaduce. They might try to enter the harbour, fighting their way through Mowat’s sloops to land troops on the beach below the fort, but if McLean was in command of the rebels he reckoned he would choose to land on the wide, shelving beach of the isthmus. By doing that, the enemy would cut him off from the mainland and could assault his ramparts safe from any cannon-fire from the Royal Navy vessels. There was a small chance that they might be daring and assault the bluff to gain the peninsula’s high ground, but the bluff’s slope was dauntingly steep. He sighed inwardly. He could not defend everything because, as the great Frederick had said, by defending everything a man defended nothing.
‘They’ll land somewhere, sir,’ Moore answered the brigadier’s question, ‘and there’s little we can do to stop them landing, not if they come in sufficient force. But why do they land, sir?’
‘You tell me.’
‘To capture the harbour, sir, because that is the value of this place.’
‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of heaven, Mister Moore,’ McLean said, ‘and they do want the harbour and they will come for it, but let us hope they do not come soon.’
‘The sooner they come, sir,’ Moore said, ‘the sooner we can kill them.’
‘I would wish to finish the fort first,’ McLean said. The fort, which he had decided to name Fort George, was hardly begun. The soil was thin, rocky and hard to work, and the ridge so thick with trees that a week’s toil had scarcely cleared a sufficient killing ground. If the enemy came soon, McLean knew, he would have small choice but to fire a few defiant guns and then haul down the flag. ‘Are you a prayerful man, Mister Moore?’ McLean asked.
‘Indeed I am, sir.’
‘Then pray the enemy delays,’ McLean said fervently, then looked to James Fletcher. ‘Mister Fletcher, you would land us back on the beach?’
‘That I will, General,’ James said cheerfully.
‘And pray for us, Mister Fletcher.’
‘Not sure the good Lord listens to me, sir.’
‘James!’ Bethany reproved her brother.
James grinned. ‘You need prayers to protect yourself here, General?’
McLean paused for a moment, then shrugged. ‘It depends, Mister Fletcher, on the enemy’s strength, but I would wish for twice as many men and twice our number of ships to feel secure.’
‘Maybe they won’t come, sir,’ Fletcher said. ‘Those folks in Boston never took much note of what happens here.’ Wisps of fog were drifting with the wind as the Felicity ran past the three sloops of war that guarded the harbour entrance. James Fletcher noted how the three ships were anchored fore and aft so that they could not swing with the tide or wind, thus allowing each sloop to keep its broadside pointed at the harbour entrance. The ship nearest the beach, the North, had two intermittent jets of water pulsing from its portside, and James could hear the clank of the elmwood pumps as men thrust at the long handles. Those pumps rarely stopped, suggesting the North was an ill-found ship, though her guns were doubtless efficient enough to help protect the harbour mouth and, to protect that entrance even further, red-coated Royal Marines were hacking at the thin soil and rocks of Cross Island, which edged the southern side of the channel. Fletcher reckoned the marines were making a battery there. Behind the three sloops and making a second line across the harbour, were three of the transport ships that had carried the redcoats to Majabigwaduce. Those transports were not armed, but their size alone made them a formidable obstacle to any ship that might attempt to pass the smaller sloops.
McLean handed Fletcher an oilcloth-wrapped parcel of tobacco and one of the Spanish silver dollars that were common currency, as payment for the use of his boat. ‘Come, Mister Moore,’ he called sharply as the paymaster offered Bethany an arm to help her over the uneven beach. ‘We have work to do!’
James Fletcher also had work to do. It was still high summer, but the log pile had to be made for the winter and, that evening, he split wood outside their house. He worked deep into the twilight, slashing the axe down hard to splinter logs into usable firewood.
‘You’re thinking, James.’ Bethany had come from the house and was watching him. She wore an apron over her grey dress.
‘Is
