The troops who were firing at Jake were marines, members of a small party who had stayed close to the shoreline to prevent a flanking maneuver. They were tough soldiers, well trained and battle hardened, but even they could not see very far in the darkening woods. They held a makeshift line in the trees just down from the road, inland from the cove. Jake reckoned there were at most a dozen of them.
He pushed through the brambles as quietly as possible, hoping to sneak to the riverside and find a boat. In an instant, he had given up hope of taking his troops with him; there was simply no time to waste, and the unflappable patriot was prepared to fight Busch single-handed if necessary.
Jake snuck south twenty yards before turning back to the east, and was in sight of the river when he came under fire from a picket behind a rock across a narrow ravine. He just barely found cover beneath a tree trunk as a shot parted the leaves above him. Now a second picket took up the cause, and a third; the patriot spy was pinned beneath the cross fire. He crawled forward a few inches on his belly, but then could go no further; even in the looming darkness he would be an easy target on the barren ground that ran down to a small rivulet feeding the nearby creek. The rain was still light but steady, and his face as well as his clothes were smeared with reddish brown mud.
Even as Jake began to curse the redcoats who had trapped him, his salvation was at hand. Van Clynne and his men had overwhelmed a marine position and pressed their attack. The Dutchman grabbed an unfired British musket and pushed his way through the trees, grumbling and grousing like a bear whose hibernation had been interrupted. This drew the attention of a good portion of the force, and left the Connecticut men free to engage in a classic out-flanking maneuver.
The troops saw the gap open in the defenses and rushed it, and with a shout the fight erupted into hand-to-hand combat. The marines who had been sniping at Jake turned to hold down their flank, and the patriot spy ran forward, grabbing one of the lobster-coats by the neck as he reached for a new cartridge.
The Briton fell back against the rocks. The cloth of the cravat and collar he wore around his neck dampened some of the fierce force in Jake's fingers, but no coat would protect against the weight of his blows. As the marine continued to struggle, Jake grabbed his fallen musket and slapped him in the mouth with its stock; a more substantial blow to the forehead finished the struggle.
The Connecticut men in the meantime had begun rolling up the flank, sending the British into a confused panic northwards. There were shouts from the other side of the creek, and calls further inland as reinforcements began to take tentative steps toward a counterattack. But the growing night and the ferocity of the assault, as well as the woods, made the situation chaotic enough that a rally was impossible, and the Americans turned to mop up the stragglers.
Van Clynne, meanwhile, was operating more or less on his own, by now well west of the main troop. After discharging the Brown Bess musket into a receptive enemy body, he fell back on his favorite weapon, the tomahawk. The squire was as good with the hatchet as any woodsman alive, and had more than held his own during competitions with Indian companions, where a good showing tended to lower the price of proffered beaver pelts.
His showing now was applauded by a Connecticut soldier who found himself hard-pressed by a pair of marines. Van Clynne's two axes made their marks in the oppressors' foreheads; Cain was not sent upon the land with a grosser sign of his perfidy.
But as the Dutchman advanced to retrieve his weapons, he was confronted by a marine sergeant, sword in hand. Van Clynne just managed to grab one of the hatchets and hold it up in defense; the sergeant's blade glanced off the blade head with a sharp clang. His weapon was severely dented, but the Dutchman was left in a worse position — the force of the blow knocked the tomahawk from his hand.
"I can tell by your breath that you've been drinking rum," declared van Clynne loudly. "And cheap rum at that."
"I'll send you to hell," answered the sergeant, launching the sword in a forward parry. The Dutchman was able to avoid it, thanks to the shadows and a young stripling tree he let fly into his attacker's face.
"Really, sir," said van Clynne as the marine whirled back, "I would have expected a bolder threat from a member of the British marines. Who is your commanding officer?"
While his patter was completely characteristic, it was not without purpose. The Dutchman meant to keep the swordsman off balance and with any luck flustered until help arrived or a weapon presented itself. He thus inquired into the sorry state of the British armed forces, desiring to know why they were equipped with swords that could not hack out a few paltry weeds.
The sergeant spent several strong blows against the bushes between them trying to disprove this theory. Van Clynne found it expedient to retreat from each until at last his path was blocked by a large rock.
Even with the light fading, the glimmer of the British sergeant's eyes were unmistakable. The Dutchman was an inviting target; the most difficult task was deciding which limb to sever first. The sergeant drew the sword over his shoulder, aiming straight for van Clynne's tongue. "Perhaps, sir, we can negotiate a cease-fire," suggested the Dutchman. The smirk on the sergeant's face changed to a grotesque death mask, blood spurting from a gash in his neck.
The rock van Clynne had backed up against was the same outcropping used earlier by a marine as cover against Jake's assault, and the patriot spy had found himself in the vicinity when the Dutchman began his commentary.
Those complaints were now renewed with great vigor, van Clynne concluding that, if the present army and navy were to have fought against the Netherlands for control of New Amsterdam, the lands here would still be Dutch and there would be no need for the Revolution.
"Think of it this way," suggested Jake, cleaning off his thin assassin's blade. "If you were alive then, you'd be dead."
"That is a most slippery form of logic, sir," declared van Clynne. "I believe it pure sophistry, and denounced specifically by St. Thomas. A live man cannot be dead, especially if he is Dutch."
"You're welcome," said Jake sarcastically.
"I was indeed about to thank you," said van Clynne. "You saved me a certain amount of exertion, though I would have defeated the heathen dog in due course." "By talking him to death?" "I would have thought by now, my friend, that you understood the brilliant subtlety of Dutch battle tactics." Their conference was interrupted by Private Martin's arrival.
"All present and accounted for, sir," declared the private. "We've a few nicks and bruises, but no bullet holes."
The main British force had marched further inland and was fighting in the hilly area above, between the village and the creek, where it had met militia and Putnam's regulars. They were undoubtedly so preoccupied that an assault from their rear would wipe them out, but Jake had other priorities.
"Which way to our friend Green's?" he asked van Clynne.
"I believe that is his abode yonder," said van Clynne, pointing toward the settlement on the riverbank. "There should be a boat or two in the yard. If you knock on his door — "
"No time," said Jake. "Martin and I will find a boat. You take the soldiers and continue north across the creek. Advance up the shoreline as quickly as possible. Send a man to Fort Independence and tell them to direct snipers to the chain."
"Begging your pardon, sir," asked Martin, "but if the Dependence is on the river, won't we have a difficult time in our boat?"
"I wouldn't be surprised."
For a stretch of land under violent attack, the shoreline was remarkably peaceful. In truth, the few local inhabitants had wisely fled for their lives. With the British marines vanquished, Jake and Private Martin had their pick of the vessels beached along the cove.
Their pick of one, that is, which was perched precariously on a group of rocks overlooking the water. It was the only craft in sight, if one excepts the British whale-boats, which were too large for them to maneuver successfully, and the equally impractical galley well offshore.
As it happened, they would have chosen the boat even among a million others. For the craft in question was a birch bark canoe.
Were there more time to praise the construction of this genre of vessel, several pages could be filled regarding the sturdiness of the hull and the effectiveness of the very lightweight structure, which made the boat highly maneuverable. Jake lifted it without Martin's help and launched it immediately into the river, where the doughty private quickly joined him. The two men pushed their paddles into the water and the craft seemed to jump beneath them, hurrying northward as if its Indian maker had bestowed a supernatural spirit within its ribs.
The weak fires ashore, hampered by the drizzle, were now the only source of illumination. Behind them to the west, fierce Bear Mountain growled in the wet darkness, throwing fits and shadows across the channel as they broke into the open water.
A brilliant red and yellow flash lit the river above them, and the waves reverberated with the sound of the Dependence's 32-pound cannon unleashing an awesome missile. The round iron ball groaned and whistled as it rent the air, and for a moment even Jake feared that the cannon had been fired at them. The dull thud of the projectile crashing harmlessly against rock and mud was not so much a reprieve as a warning; they had a long way to go before fulfilling their mission.
Fortunately, the British vessel seemed to be concentrating on Fort Independence and was busy maneuvering at the mouth of the creek below it, seeking to draw as much attention as possible. The current and the rising wind made it difficult for the galley to stay in position to fire.
It also made it extremely difficult for Jake and Private Martin to paddle upstream, as the rain now started to pick at their faces like a swarm of angry bees.
"Pace yourself with long strokes," Jake instructed his bowman. "Lean against the left side of the canoe and I'll compensate back here."
Martin did not answer, but Jake noticed a better pull. He hoped that the heavily laden bomb canoe would find the going several times as difficult.
Their small boat shook with the reflected reverberation of another round from the Dependence. Jake looked up and realized that the vessel was considerably closer to them than he had thought — and in fact was speeding south on a collision course with their canoe. "Stroke, Martin, stroke!" commanded Jake, going at the water like a grave digger in the last moment before Armageddon. The private responded not only with strong strokes, but with a cheery hum meant to revive his sagging spirits. The song, naturally enough, was "Yankee Doodle."
Before Jake could order the private to keep quiet in hopes the enemy might miss them, an alarm rose on the Dependence. As a swivel was manned and aimed in their direction, Jake took up the chorus of the song — and bent hard over the canoe, tucking the boat closer to the rocky shore.
The Dependence, which had been changing position to cover the force that seemed to be under attack at the cove, came on strong. But Jake managed to slip the canoe to the side, escaping the collision and clearing the long arms of the sweeping oars.
"Fire, damn you!" shouted the master of the galley, barely ten yards away. "Sink that infernal boat and its blasted singing!"