Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times Part 35

Satisfying to the appet.i.te was the dinner which landlord Winship set before a dozen British officers,--roast beef, dish gravy, mealy potatoes, plum-pudding, mince pie, crackers and cheese, prime old port, and brandy distilled from the grapes of Bordeaux.

"We will jog on slowly; it won't do to get there too early," said one of the officers as they mounted their horses and rode up past the green, and along the wide and level highways, towards Menotomy, paying no attention to Solomon Brown, plodding homeward in his horse-cart from market. When the old mare lagged to a walk, they rode past him; when he stirred her up with his switch she made the old cart rattle past them. The twinkling eyes peeping out from under his s.h.a.ggy brows saw that their pistols were in the holsters, and their swords were clanking at times.

"I pa.s.sed nine of them," he said to Sergeant Munroe when he reached Lexington Common; and the sergeant, mistrusting they might be coming to nab Adams and Hanc.o.c.k, summoned eight of his company to guard the house of Mr. Clark.

Mr. Devens and Mr. Watson met the Britishers.

"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 Hanc.o.c.k 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 pa.s.sing 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 sh.o.r.e, for the signal lights:--

"On the opposite sh.o.r.e 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 Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society, we learn that the signals were seen before he reached the Charlestown sh.o.r.e:--

"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, s.e.xton, 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 circ.u.mstantial. Both were Sons of Liberty and intimate with Revere. Newman was s.e.xton 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 pa.s.s. 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 gra.s.s 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 p.r.i.c.ks 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 pa.s.sed 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. Hanc.o.c.k."

"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 Hanc.o.c.k."

"It is Revere; let him in!" shouted Hanc.o.c.k 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.