31. From the evening of the Lexington fight General Gage was shut up in Boston. The patriots kept a strict guard on every road, and no parties were permitted to pass out or provisions to pass in. All supplies for the town came by sea. The officers chafed under the enforced inactivity. They would be done with the ignoble work of defense behind fortifications. They longed for an opportunity to regain the prestige lost on that fatal nineteenth of April. But General Gage was too wise a commander to risk the safety of his army, so he held the impatience of his officers in check and awaited events. 32. The patriot leaders were equally impatient. The enthusiasm of the moment must be turned to good account. The men were all unused to living in camps, and were peculiarly exposed to camp diseases and camp vices. Discipline had not yet counteracted the demoralizing tendencies of army life. The different divisions of the army were ranged under favorite local leaders, and while there was some show of order there was little or no concert of action. It was now the middle of June. Two months had elapsed since Lord Percy was driven back into Boston. All means to lure General Gage from the town had failed, and an aggressive movement was devised. It was resolved to take a new position threatening the town and the shipping in the port. The place selected was the highland on the Charlestown peninsula known as Bunker Hill, and the time fixed upon for the enterprise the night of June 16th. 33. Eight hundred men armed with shovels and picks assembled at six o'clock. The movement was known to be a perilous one, and every man felt that he took his life in his hand. President Langdon, of Harvard College, offered prayer with the ancient Puritan fervor. Colonel Prescott took command of the military operations and Colonel Gridley conducted the engineering. In early evening they set out. The march was in profound silence. With suppressed breathing and stealthy tread they made their way--an army of ghosts entering the land of shadows. But the grim faces of the officers and the clinched hands of the men showed more than ghostly purpose. About midnight the march ceased. Clear in the starlight they could see British ship and camp, and could hear the sentinel proclaim, "All is well." A redoubt eight rods square was laid out, and these eight hundred husbandmen bent their seasoned muscles to the work. The embankment grew up in the darkness, and at day-break its six feet of height amply protected the workers within.