Once on the narrow strip of muddy beach beyond the fence, they worked desperately to rear a wall across it before the British should come on. Some fetched stones from other walls that divided the pastures on the hillside. Others toiled to heap them in a bulwark straight to the water’s edge. Tom was with those who carried boulders flung from the bank and piled them ready to the builder’s hand. Once he climbed up the ledge himself to take a look at the field above. “Hey, Caleb,” he called eagerly, as he noticed a young man standing where the rail fence ended, a musket in his hand. Colonel Stark’s first-born son, sixteen-year-old Caleb, turned around and a grin broke over his lean face as he recognized his old hunting companion. He stepped forward. “Tom!” he exclaimed. “Haven’t seen you since you left for Newburyport with the log raft, back sometime in the spring.” “No, I ain’t had a chance to get home. Ever since Concord Fight I been in camp. Where you been?” “Round home mostly. Just got here this morning. Word’s gone all around the countryside that the British be about to attack. Figured my dad could use another man. Say, Tom, Jean’s been asking about you--” Fife and drum music burst forth from the red-coated ranks below the hill, and the bugles uttered an urgent cry. “Here they come!” yelled Tom. He leaped down the bank and ran to where he had left his blunderbuss, in the center of the stone wall. Crouched behind it, he watched the British come on. He could not see the field above him that sloped upward to the redoubt, and ’twas likely the heaviest charge would be there. But there were plenty of red coats and white breeches moving toward the New Hampshire line. Once the attackers stopped and reformed in groups of four. Then on they came. Just to his right a musket spoke, though they had received no order to fire. Tom lifted his own blunderbuss, but before he could pull the trigger Colonel Stark strode fearlessly between the opposing armies. He had a tree branch in his hand. With a sharp stab he thrust it into the earth. “Don’t another man fire till they pass this stake. Whoever does, I’ll knock him down,” he said. He looked around him to make sure his words were understood. Then he walked back to his own line as calmly as if he were going down to his sawmill on any summer afternoon. Behind him the advancing British fixed their bayonets. He leaped down into the shelter of the wall. When the word came, Tom was ready, and his blunderbuss spoke punctually as the British passed the stake. He could not tell how many times he fired, and he did not stop to see what damage he had done. Aim, fire, load. Aim, fire, load. He kept relentlessly on, scarce conscious that all around him other men were doing the same. He knew that the ground in front of the stone wall was covered with wounded and dying redcoats, but their line kept still coming on, and so long as it did, he would do nothing but fire, load, aim.