Gerry began to put his uneaten food away in his knapsack. There wasn’t as much room in it as there should have been, because at the last moment he had decided to stuff in the rough shirt and breeches he wore when he went about the Yankee countryside. He smiled now, as he saw them there. Didn’t think he’d have a need for them, but you never know. Just then the bugles sounded and the officers called them to attention. Like one man the assembled army was on its feet. Gerry could see the newly landed troops drawn up away to the left, facing the redoubt. General Howe, dark, florid and heavily built, stood forth and spoke to his men. “Gentlemen, I am very happy to have the honor of commanding so fine a body.... I do not doubt that you will behave like Englishmen and as becometh good soldiers. If the enemy will not come from their entrenchments, we must drive them out, otherwise the town of Boston will be set on fire by them.... I shall not desire one of you to go a step further than where I go at your head. Remember, gentlemen, we have no recourse, if we lose Boston, but to go on board our ships ... which will be very disagreeable to us all.” General Howe stepped a little aside and stood smiling proudly round him, his hand on his sword. The troops stood tensely, bayonets in hand, waiting the order to move ahead. The cannonading from the ships was so steady that they did not hear it any more, but the guns of Boston now set up an iron clamor that seemed fit to shake the earth. Now the artillery rolled toward the redoubt. Gerry looked up at the serene blue sky, at a cluster of apple trees a little way ahead. There were trees like that on his father’s farm in Devon, and he wondered if he’d ever again see them growing there. He looked at the hill where spouts of dust shot upward as heavy balls hit the turf of the redoubt. Suppose they did have to board their ships and sail away? Maybe he wouldn’t sail away, maybe he’d go and find blue-eyed Kitty. Maybe he would.... The artillery seemed to have slowed and faltered, bogged down in the miry earth at the swamp edge, crushing the blue flag lilies as it moved forward again. At last came the order the scarlet host had been waiting for. Gerry gripped his bayonet and stepped out as he had been trained to do. A rippling field of buttercups and daisies lay ahead, and beyond it a rail fence, but he saw no likely danger there. He glanced toward the redoubt where General Pigot was to lead the attack. Howe would march on the rail fence that joined a stone wall running to the waterside. Then Howe’s regiments and the light infantry would shatter the Yankees’ left and sweep across it, swinging inland to overwhelm the earthworks from behind. It seemed like an unbeatable plan.