The Fort

‘Gladly.’ The men bowed their heads as the Reverend Murray prayed that God would send a swift victory. ‘May the forces of righteousness glorify Thy name, O Lord,’ the Reverend Murray beseeched, ‘and may we show magnanimity in the triumph that Thy words have promised us. We ask all this in Thy holy name, amen.’

‘Amen,’ Lovell said fervently, his eyes tight shut, ‘and amen.’

‘Amen,’ Brigadier McLean muttered in response to the grace before supper. He had been invited to Doctor Calef’s house, which lay two hundred yards east of Fort George. That name, he thought ruefully, was a grand name for a fort that was scarcely defensible. Captain Mowat had sent one hundred and eighty burly seamen to help the work, yet still the walls were only waist-high and a mere two cannons had been emplaced in the corner bastions.

‘So the wretches are here?’ Calef enquired.

‘So we hear, Doctor, so we hear,’ McLean responded. News of the enemy fleet’s arrival had come from the river’s mouth, brought by a fisherman who had fled the rebels so quickly that he had been unable to count the ships and could only say that there was a terrible lot of them. ‘It seems they’ve sent a considerable fleet,’ McLean commented, then thanked the doctor’s wife who had passed him a dish of beans. Three candles lit the table, a finely polished oval of gleaming walnut. Most of the doctor’s furniture had come from his Boston home and it looked strange here, much as if the contents of a fine Edinburgh mansion were to be moved to a Hebridean croft.

‘Will they come tonight?’ Mrs Calef enquired nervously.

‘I’m assured no one can navigate the river in the dark,’ McLean said, ‘so no, ma’am, not this night.’

‘They’ll be here tomorrow,’ Calef averred.

‘So I expect.’

‘In some force?’ Calef asked.

‘So the report said, Doctor, though I am denied any specific detail.’ McLean flinched as he bit onto a grindstone chip trapped in the cornbread. ‘Very fine bread, ma’am,’ he said.

‘We were maltreated in Boston,’ Calef said.

‘I am sorry to hear that.’

‘My wife was insulted in the streets.’

McLean knew what was in Calef’s mind, that if the rebels were to take Majabigwaduce then the persecution of the loyalists would start again. ‘I regret that, Doctor.’

‘I dare say,’ Calef said, ‘that if the rebels were to find me, General, they would imprison me.’ The doctor was merely toying with his food, while his wife watched him anxiously.

‘Then I must do my utmost,’ McLean said, ‘to keep you from imprisonment and your wife from insult.’

‘Scourge them,’ Calef said angrily.

‘I do assure you, Doctor, that is our intent,’ McLean said, then smiled at Calef’s wife. ‘These are very fine beans, ma’am.’

They ate mostly in silence after that. McLean wished he could offer a greater reassurance to the loyalists of Majabigwaduce, but the arrival of the rebel fleet surely meant an imminent defeat. His fort was unfinished. True he had made three batteries to cover the harbour entrance. There was one on Cross Island, the large Half Moon Battery down on the shore, and a third, much smaller, on the high bluff above the harbour mouth, but none of those batteries was a fort. They were emplacements for cannon that were there to fire at the enemy ships, but not one of the earthworks could withstand an assault by a company of determined infantry. There had simply not been enough time, and now the enemy was here.