Bunker Hill, Battle of, Boston, Mass., 1775 -- Juvenile fiction; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Juvenile fiction
The watch was coming back. They saw the light he carried. It wavered
to and fro. Then it stopped just at the wall of the graveyard. Gerry
Malory sprang hastily to his feet. “Kitty,” he whispered, “go back and
tell Sally Rose--I don’t know when I’ll see her--but tell her to get
out of Charlestown. We’re getting ready to move against the Americans.
I don’t know when. At least by the end of the week. Some say we’re for
Dorchester Heights, and some say Bunker Hill. Tell her to be gone. And
you go with her--Kitty.”
He vaulted over the low wall and disappeared in the darkness between
the fields and the flats along the river. Kitty peered after him, but
she saw only a scatter of fireflies and a light mist rising from the
earth. She was not afraid of the watch, but he did not challenge her
as she crept back to the Bay and Beagle. He did not know she had been
keeping a tryst with the enemy. Well, she had been, and felt herself
none the worse for it.
She, too, was wondering what would have happened if old Grandsire
Malory had taken that ship so many years ago.
_Chapter Eleven_
A GREAT SECRET
“We been long enough getting here,” said Tom Trask, as he dragged the
prow of a small rowboat up the shaly beach. “Are you sure this be
Charlestown Neck, Johnny?”
Tugging away at the other side of the boat, Johnny Pettengall answered
him. “Charlestown, sure enough. Hold on. Give me your hand. I got my
foot caught in a patch of eel grass or summ’at like.”
Tom did as he was bidden, and in a moment the two were climbing up a
steep bank into the hayfield above. Just to their left loomed a low
hill, sharp on its eastern side. A taller, more gently rounded hill
stood up behind it, and through the thick, fragrant grass around them
a rail fence wound away toward higher ground. Tom could see no lighted
windows anywhere.
“You ever been here before?” he asked doubtfully.
“No,” said Johnny, “but I come by here yesterday when I was aboard our
sloop that went up to the Penny Ferry to meet the supply carts from the
eastward. I had it pointed out to me. This is Breed’s Hill just ahead
of us, and Bunker Hill’s behind.”
“Charlestown’s said to be a village,” Tom continued to object. “I can
see orchards, and what looks like a brick kiln over there, and by the
smell there’s clay pits somewhere about. But I don’t see any houses at
all.”
“Town’s the other side of the hill,” Johnny reassured him. “Come on. We
got to get to the Bay and Beagle before Ma’am Greenleaf locks up for
the night.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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