“It is plain now what he is doing,” said the Chief of Staff to the President in Washington. “He is keeping a powerful retaining force in Rhode Island, absolutely assuring his base and holding the gate open for reënforcements. Westward he is throwing masses of cavalry--probably most of the cavalry that he has--to clear the way for his infantry and artillery to march along the coast to New York. Northward those cavalry masses are screening him against any attempt by our army either to fall on his forces in Connecticut, or to move around north of him and attack the rear of his divisions that are marching on Boston. It isn’t tactics. It’s simple, commonsense use of numerical superiority.”[84] _Making a Fight for Boston_ The President played with a pile of dispatches. They were from Boston and New York. “You say that those companies of coast artillery from the south got through!” “I had a message from the Commander of the Artillery District of Boston,” he said. “The six companies arrived at Fort Banks yesterday morning. They had to go around by way of Lake Champlain and Vermont, but they got through. That will at least give the men some relief if there should be a sustained action.”[85] “You are sure it was not a mistake to--sacrifice them?” asked the President. The General shrugged his shoulders. “There are some things that one simply must do,” he said. “We had to give New York and Boston something. We absolutely must make some sort of a fight for them.” The Commander of the harbor defenses of Boston was not concerning himself about the occult reasons that had inspired the reënforcements. He had been praying for men, for he needed half a dozen men wherever he had one. He needed them for the searchlights, he needed men that he might establish defenses to the land approaches, he needed men for protection of base lines and cable stations. There were scout boats to be manned, and outlying islands to be posted with lookouts to guard against approach of ships in fog or darkness. Now that he had them, he waited for no orders and asked for no instructions. He loaded quartermasters’ boats with detachments and rushed them to the waterfront of Boston and Chelsea where he knew of things he wanted. They returned with two tons of explosives and miscellaneous ordnance material that had been seized from merchants. He seized barb wire. From electric light plants and power works he obtained, by the same simple method, some forty miles of lead-covered cable for his mine-fields, and from ships in the harbor he took half a dozen searchlights.[86] _To Hold the Defenses_ Before night, too, he had men entrenched behind entanglements with machine guns on the narrow neck of land that leads to Nahant’s broad cliff promontory on the north of Boston Harbor, to protect position finding stations there and a great 60-inch searchlight.