"They mean mischief. We must let Gerry, Orne, and Joe know," Mr.
Devens said.
Quickly the chaise turned, and they rode back to Wetherby's. The moon
was higher in the eastern sky, and the hands of the clock pointed to
the figure nine when the officers rode past the house.
"We must put Adams and Hancock on their guard," said Mr. Gerry; and a
little later a messenger on horseback was scurrying along a bypath
towards Lexington.
In Boston, Abraham Duncan was keeping his eyes and ears open.
"What's the news, Billy?" was his question to Billy Baker, apprentice
to Mr. Hall, who sold toddy to the redcoats.
"I guess something is going to happen," said Billy.
"What makes you think so?"
"'Cause a woman who belongs to one of the redcoats was in just now
after a toddy; she said the lobsters were going somewhere."
"Is that so?"
"Yes; and they are packing their knapsacks."
Abraham whispered it to Doctor Warren, and a few minutes later William
Dawes was mounting his old mare and riding toward Roxbury. She was
thin in flesh, and showed her ribs; and the man on her back, who
dressed calf-skins for a living, jogged along Cornhill as if in no
hurry. The red-coated sentinels, keeping guard by the fortifications
on the Neck, said to themselves he was an old farmer, but were
surprised to see him, after passing them, going like the wind out
towards Roxbury, to the Parting Stone, then turning towards Cambridge,
making the gravel fly from her heels as she tore along the road.
* * * * *
Berinthia Brandon, sitting in her chamber, looking out into the
starlit night, saw the faint light of the rising moon along the
eastern horizon. Twilight was still lingering in the western sky. In
the gloaming, she saw the sailors of the warships and transports were
stepping into their boats and floating with the incoming tide up the
Charles. What was the meaning of it? She ran downstairs and told her
father and Tom what she had seen; and Tom, seizing his hat, tore along
Salem Street and over the bridge across Mill Creek to Doctor Warren's.
The clock on the Old Brick Meetinghouse was striking ten when he
rattled the knocker.
[Illustration: Paul Revere's House.]
"The boats are on their way up the river with the tide," he said, out
of breath with his running.
Abraham Duncan came in, also out of breath.
"The lobsters are marching across the Common, toward Barton's Point,"
he said.
"All of which means, they are going to take the boats and cross
Charles River, instead of marching by way of Roxbury," said the
doctor, reflecting a moment.
He asked Tom if he would please run down to North Square and ask Paul
Revere to come and see him.
A few minutes later Revere was there.
"I've already sent Dawes, but for fear Gage's spies may pick him up, I
want you to take the short cut to Lexington and alarm people on your
way; you'll have to look sharp for Gage's officers. Tell Newman to
hang out the two signals."
Revere hastened down Salem Street, whispered a word in the ear of
Robert Newman, ran to his own home for his overcoat, told two young
men to accompany him, then ran to the riverside and stepped into his
boat. The great black hull of the frigate Somerset rose before him. By
the light of the rising moon he could see a marine, with his gun on
his shoulder, pacing the deck; but no challenge came, and the rowers
quickly landed him in Charlestown.[54]
[Footnote 54: In the _Tales of a Wayside Inn_, the poet Longfellow
represents Paul Revere as impatiently waiting beside his horse, on the
Charlestown shore, for the signal lights:--
"On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse's side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly watched with eager search
The belfry tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!"
From the narrative of Paul Revere in the archives of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, we learn that the signals were seen
before he reached the Charlestown shore:--
"When I got into town, I met Colonel Conant and several others; they
said they had seen our signals; I told them what was acting, and I
went to get me a horse; I got a horse of Deacon Larkin. While the
horse was preparing, Richard Devens, Esq., who was one of the
Committee of Safety, came to me and told me that he came down the road
from Lexington after sundown, that evening; that he met ten British
officers, all well mounted and armed, going up the road."]
Robert Newman, sexton, had gone to bed. The officers of one of the
king's regiments, occupying the front chamber, saw him retire, but did
not see him a minute later crawl out of a window to the roof of a
shed, drop lightly to the ground, make his way to the church, enter,
turn the key, lock the door, climb the stairs to the tower, and hang
the lanterns in the loft above the bell. It was but the work of a
moment. Having done it, he hastened down the stairway, past the organ,
to the floor of the church. The full moon was flooding the arches
above him with its mellow light; but he did not tarry to behold the
beauty of the scene; not that he feared ghosts would rise from the
coffins in the crypt beneath the church,--he was not afraid of dead
men,--but he would rather the redcoats should not know what he had
been doing. He raised a window, dropped from it to the ground, ran
down an alley, reached his house, climbed the shed, and was in bed
when officers of one of the regiments came to make inquiry about the
lanterns. Of course, Robert, being in bed, could not have hung them
there. It must have been done by somebody else.[55]
[Footnote 55: Paul Revere in his narrative says "a friend" made the
signals. It has been claimed that John Pulling, and not Robert Newman,
hung the lanterns. The evidence favoring Newman and Pulling is in
each case circumstantial. Both were Sons of Liberty and intimate with
Revere. Newman was sexton in possession of the keys of the church. It
is said that Pulling obtained them; that the suspicion was so strong
against him he was obliged to leave the town secretly, not daring to
apply for a pass. Newman was arrested, but General Gage could find no
direct evidence against him. I have followed the generally accepted
opinion, favoring Newman.]
Paul Revere the while is flying up Main Street towards Charlestown
Neck. It is a pleasant night. The grass in the fields is fresh and
green; the trees above him are putting forth their young and tender
leaves. He is thinking of what Richard Devens has said, and keeps his
eyes open. He crosses the narrow neck of land between the Mystic and
Charles rivers, and sees before him the tree where Mark was hung ten
years before for poisoning his master. The bones of the negro no
longer rattle in the wind; the eyeless sockets of the once ghostly
skeleton no longer glare at people coming from Cambridge and Medford
to Charlestown, and Paul Revere has no fear of seeing Mark's ghost
hovering around the tree. It is for the living--Gage's spies--that he
peers into the night. Bucephalus suddenly pricks up his ears. Ah!
there they are! two men in uniform on horseback beneath the tree. He
is abreast of them. They advance. Quickly he wheels, and rides back
towards Charlestown. He reaches the road leading to Medford, reins
Bucephalus into it. He sees one of them riding across the field to cut
him off; the other is following him along the road. Suddenly the rider
in the field disappears,--going head foremost into a clay pit. "Ha!
ha!" laughs Revere, as the fleet steed bears him on towards Medford
town. He clatters across Mystic bridge, halts long enough to awaken
the captain of the minute-men, and then rattles on towards
Menotomy.[56]
[Footnote 56: "After I passed Charlestown Neck, and got nearly
opposite where Mark was hung in chains, I saw two men on horseback
under the tree. When I got near them I discovered they were British
officers. One tried to get ahead of me, and the other to take me. I
turned my horse quick and galloped towards Charlestown Neck, and then
pushed for the Medford road. The one who chased me, endeavoring to cut
me off, got into a clay pond. I got clear of him and went through
Medford over the bridge up to Menotomy. In Medford I awaked the
captain of the minute-men, and after that I alarmed every house till I
got to Lexington."--Revere's _Narrative_.]
It is past eleven o'clock. The fires have been covered for the night
in the farmhouses, and the people are asleep.
"Turn out! turn out! the redcoats are coming!"
Paul Revere is shouting it at every door, as Bucephalus bears him
swiftly on. The farmers spring from their beds, peer through their
window-panes into the darkness,--seeing a vanishing form, and flashing
sparks struck from the stones by the hoofs of the flying horse. Once
more across the Mystic on to Menotomy, past the meetinghouse and the
houses of the slumbering people, up the hill, along the valley, to
Lexington Green; past the meetinghouse, not halting at Buckman's
tavern, but pushing on, leaping from his foaming steed and rapping
upon Mr. Clark's door.
"Who are ye, and what d'ye want?" Sergeant Munroe asked the question.
"I want to see Mr. Hancock."
"Well, you can't. The minister and his family mustn't be disturbed, so
just keep still and don't make a racket."
"There'll be a racket pretty soon, for the redcoats are coming," said
Paul.
"Who are you and what do you wish?" asked Reverend Mr. Clark in his
night-dress from the window.
"I want to see Adams and Hancock."
"It is Revere; let him in!" shouted Hancock down the stairway.
"The regulars are coming, several hundred of them, to seize you!"
"It is the supplies at Concord they are after," cried Mr. Adams.
A moment later other hoofs were striking fire from the stones, and
another horseman, William Dawes, appeared, confirming what Revere had
said.
[Illustration: REVEREND JONAS CLARK'S HOUSE Where Samuel Adams, John
Hancock, and Dorothy Quincy were staying]
XVI.
THE MORNING DRUMBEAT.
"Ring the bell!"
Samuel Adams said it, and one of Sergeant Munroe's men ran to the
green, seized the bell-rope, and set the meetinghouse bell to
clanging, sending the alarm far and wide upon the still night air.
In the farmhouses candles were quickly lighted, and the minute-men,
who had agreed to obey a summons at a moment's warning, came running
with musket, bullet-pouch, and powder-horn, to the rendezvous. They
formed in line, but, no redcoats appearing, broke ranks and went into
Buckman's tavern.
* * * * *
Silently, without tap of drum, the grenadiers and light infantry under
Colonel Francis Smith, at midnight, marched from their quarters to
Barton's Point, together with the marines under Major Pitcairn.
"Where are we going?" Lieutenant Edward Gould of the King's Own put
the question to Captain Lawrie.
"I suppose General Gage and the Lord, and perhaps Colonel Smith, know,
but I don't," the captain replied, as he stepped into a boat with his
company.
It was eleven o'clock when the last boat-load of troops reached
Lechmere's Point,--not landing on solid ground, but amid the last
year's reeds and marshes. The tide was flowing into the creek and
eddies, and the mud beneath the feet of the king's troops was soft and
slippery.
"May his satanic majesty take the man who ordered us into this bog,"
said a soldier whose feet suddenly went out from under him and sent
him sprawling into the slimy oose.
"By holy Saint Patrick, isn't the water nice and warm!" said one of
the marines as he waded into the flowing tide fresh from the sea.
"Gineral Gage intends to teach us how to swim," said another.
With jokes upon their lips, but inwardly cursing whoever had directed
them to march across the marsh, the troops splashed through the water,
reached the main road leading to Menotomy, and waited while the
commissary distributed their rations. It was past two o'clock before
Colonel Smith was ready to move on. Looking at his watch in the
moonlight and seeing how late it was, he directed Major Pitcairn to
take six companies of the light infantry and hasten on to Lexington.
* * * * *
From the house of Reverend Mr. Clark, Paul Revere, William Dawes, and
young Doctor Prescott of Concord, who had been sparking his intended
wife in Lexington village, started on their horses up the road towards
Concord. From the deep shade of the alders a half dozen men suddenly
confronted them.
"Surrender, or I will blow out your brains!" shouts one of the
officers.
[Illustration: BUCKMAN'S TAVERN]
Revere and Dawes are prisoners; but Doctor Prescott, quick of eye,
ear, and motion, is leaping his horse over the stone wall, riding
through fields and pastures, along bypaths, his saddle-bags flopping,
his horse, young and fresh, bearing him swiftly on over the meadows to
the slumbering village, with the news that the redcoats are
coming.[57]
[Footnote 57: Longfellow in his poem has Revere riding on to Concord
bridge.
"It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town."
Revere's account reads:--
"We had got nearly half way; Mr. Dawes and the Doctor stopped to alarm
the people of a house. I was about one hundred rods ahead when I saw
two men, in nearly the same situation as those officers were near
Charlestown. I called for the Doctor and Dawes to come up; in an
instant I was surrounded by four.... We tried to get out there; the
Doctor jumped his horse over a low stone wall and got to Concord. I
observed a wood at a small distance and made for that. When I got
there, out rushed six officers on horseback and ordered me to
dismount."]
"Tell us where we can find those arch traitors to his majesty the
king, or you are dead men," the threat of an officer.
Paul Revere sees the muzzle of the pistol within a foot of his breast,
but it does not frighten him.
"Ah, gentlemen, you have missed your aim."
"What aim?"
"You won't get what you came for. I left Boston an hour before your
troops were ready to cross Charles River. Messengers left before me,
and the alarm will soon be fifty miles away. Had I not known it, I
would have risked a shot from you before allowing myself to be
captured."
From the belfry of the meetinghouse the bell was sending its peals
far and wide over fields and woodlands.
"Do you not hear it? The town is alarmed," said Revere.
"Rub-a-dub-dub! rub-a-dub-dub! rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub-dub!"
It was the drummer beating the long roll.
"The minute-men are forming; you are dead men!" said Dawes.
The drumbeat, with the clanging bell, was breaking the stillness of
the early morning. The officers put their heads together and whispered
a moment.
"Get off your horses," ordered Captain Parsons of the king's Tenth
Regiment.
Revere and Dawes obeyed.
"We'll keep this; the other is only fit for the crows to pick," said
one of the officers, cutting the saddle-girth of Dawes's horse,
turning it loose, and mounting Bucephalus. Then all rode away, dashing
past the minute-men on Lexington Green.
"The minute-men are forming,--three hundred of them," reported the
officers to Colonel Smith, who was marching up the road.[58]
[Footnote 58: "We heard there were some hundreds of people collected
there, intending to oppose us and stop our going out. At five o'clock
we arrived there, and a number of people, I believe between two and
three hundred, formed on a common in the middle of the town." "Diary
of a British Officer," _Atlantic Monthly_, April, 1877.]
The bell and the drumbeat, the lights in Buckman's tavern and the
other houses, the minute-men in line by the meetinghouse, had
quickened the imagination of the excited Britishers.
"The country is alarmed. It is reported there are five hundred rebels
gathered to oppose me. I shall need reinforcements." Such was the
message of Colonel Smith to General Gage.
He directed Major Pitcairn to push on rapidly with six companies of
light infantry.
"Jonathan! Jonathan! Get up quick! The redcoats are coming and
something must be done!"[59]
[Footnote 59: There were two Jonathan Harringtons. The fifer to the
Lexington minute-men was sixteen years old. He died March 27, 1854,
the last survivor of the battle, and was buried with distinguished
honors. See _Hist. Lexington_.]
Abigail Harrington shouted it, bursting into her son Jonathan's
chamber. He had not heard the bell, nor the commotion in the street.
Jonathan was only sixteen years old, but was fifer for the minute-men.
In a twinkling he was dressed, and seizing his fife ran to join the
company forming in line by the meetinghouse; answering to their names,
as clerk Daniel Harrington called the roll.
John Hancock and Samuel Adams hear the drumbeat; Hancock seizes his
gun.
"This is no place for you; you must go to a place of safety," said
Reverend Mr. Clark.
"Never will I turn my back to the redcoats," said Hancock.
"The country will need your counsels. Others must meet the enemy face
to face," was the calm, wise reply of the patriotic minister.
Other friends expostulate; they cross the road and enter a thick wood
crowning the hill.
"Stand your ground. If war is to come, let it begin here. Don't fire
till you are fired upon," said Captain John Parker, walking along the
lines of his company.
The sun is just rising. Its level beams glint from the brightly
polished gun-barrels and bayonets of the light infantry of King
George, as the battalion under Major Pitcairn marches towards
Lexington meetinghouse. The trees above them have put forth their
tender leaves. The rising sun, the green foliage, the white
cross-belts, the shining buckles, the scarlet coats of the soldiers,
and the farmers standing in line, firmly grasping their muskets, make
up the picture of the morning.
Major Pitcairn, sitting in his saddle, beholds the line of minute-men,
rebels in arms against the sovereign, formed in line to dispute his
way. What right have they to be standing there? King George is
supreme!
"Disperse, you rebels! Lay down your arms and disperse!" he shouts.
Captain John Parker hears it. The men behind him, citizens in their
everyday clothes, with powder-horns slung under their right arms, hear
it, but stand firm and resolute in their places. They see the
Britisher raise his arm; his pistol flashes. Instantly the front
platoon of redcoats raise their muskets. A volley rends the air. Not a
man has been injured. Another volley, and a half dozen are reeling to
the ground. John Munroe, Jonas Parker, and their comrades bring their
muskets to a level and pull the triggers. With the beams of the rising
sun falling on their faces, they accept the conflict with arbitrary
power.
"What a glorious morning is this!" the exclamation of Samuel Adams on
yonder hill.
[Illustration: JONATHAN HARRINGTON'S HOUSE Jonathan Harrington was
wounded where the stone now stands, and fell dead at the doorstep of
his house]
Seven minute-men have been killed, nine wounded. Captain Parker sees
that it is useless for his little handful of men to contend with a
force ten times larger, and orders them to disperse.
The redcoats look down exultantly upon the dying and the dead, give a
hurrah, and shoot at the fleeing rebels.[60]
[Footnote 60: "We then formed on the Common, but with some difficulty.
The men were so wild they could hear no orders. We waited a
considerable time, and at length proceeded on our way to Concord,
which we then learned was our destination." "Diary of a British
Officer," _Atlantic Monthly_, April, 1877.]
Jonas Parker will not run.
"Others may do as they will, I never will turn my back to a redcoat,"
he said a few minutes ago. He is on his knees now, wounded, but
reloading his gun. The charge is rammed home, the priming in the pan,
but his strength is going; his arms are weary; his hands feeble. The
redcoats rush upon him, and a bayonet pierces his breast. He dies
where he fell.
With the blood spurting from his breast, Jonathan Harrington staggers
towards his home. His loving wife is standing in the doorway. He
reaches out his arms to her, and falls dead at her feet.
Caleb Harrington falls by the meetinghouse step. A ball plows through
the arm of John Comee, by Mr. Munroe's doorway.
The Britishers are wild with excitement, and remorselessly take aim at
the fleeing provincials. They have conquered and dispersed the rebels.
Colonel Smith joins Major Pitcairn, and, glorying over the easy
victory, they swing their hats, hurrah for King George, and march on
towards Concord.
XVII.
BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA.
Roger Stanley, asleep in the old farmhouse on the banks of Concord
River, was aroused from slumber by his mother.
"Roger! Roger! the meetinghouse bell is ringing!" she shouted up the
stairs to him.
With a bound he was on his feet, raised the window and heard the
sweet-toned bell. He understood its meaning, that the redcoats were
coming. Quickly putting on his clothes, he seized the powder-horn and
bullet-pouch which his father carried at Louisburg.
"You must eat something, Roger, before you go," said his mother.
A moment later and his breakfast was on the table, bread and butter, a
slice of cold beef, a mug of cider.
"There's no knowing when I shall be back, mother, for if the war has
begun, as I fear it has, I shall be in the ranks till the last redcoat
is driven from the country."
"I know it, Roger. Your father would have done just what you are
doing. I know you'll do your duty. You won't show the white feather.
Here's some lunch for you," she said, putting a package into his
knapsack.
"Good-by."
[Illustration: ROBERT MUNROE'S HOUSE Joseph Comee, a minute-man, was
wounded at the doorway]
Her arms were about his neck; tears were on her cheeks as she kissed
his lips.
[Illustration: Route of the British to Concord.]
He ran across the meadow to the village. The minute-men and militia
were gathering. In the stillness of the morning they could hear the
report of guns far away, and knew that they of Sudbury and Acton were
hearing the alarm. People were hurrying to and fro in the village,
loading barrels of flour into carts, removing the supplies purchased
by the Committee of Safety. Reverend Mr. Emerson was there with his
gun and powder-horn. Many times Roger had listened to his preaching.
It was gratifying to see him ready to stand in the ranks with his
parishioners. He told the women not to be frightened, and smiled upon
the boys who took off their hats, and the girls who courtesied to him.
They heard, far away, the drumbeat of the advancing British.
No messengers had arrived to inform the minute-men of Concord what had
happened at Lexington; for Doctor Prescott did not know that British
muskets had fired a fatal volley.
From the burial ground Roger could look far down the road and see the
sunlight glinting from the bayonets of the grenadiers, as the
red-coated platoons emerged from the woodland into the open highway.
Major Buttrick with the minute-men and Colonel Barrett with the
militia formed in line by the liberty pole.
"Prime and load!" his order.
Roger poured the powder into the palm of his hand, emptied it into the
gun, and rammed it home with a ball. Never had he experienced such a
sensation as at the moment. He was not doing it to take aim at a deer
or fox, but to send it through the heart of a fellow-being if need be;
to maintain justice and liberty. He could die in their defense; why
should it trouble him, then, to think of shooting those who were
assailing what he held so dear?
"I am doing right. Liberty shall live, cost what it may," he said to
himself as he poured the priming into the pan.
On in serried ranks came the British.
"We are too few, they are three to our one. We must cross the river
and wait till we are stronger," said Colonel Barrett.
[Illustration: REVEREND WILLIAM EMERSON'S HOUSE--THE OLD MANSE The
conflict at the Bridge was in plain view from this house]