As he walked toward the place Barney had chosen from the detailed map, he uncoiled the rope. He fastened the rope to a tall pine, some fifteen feet back from the cliff wall, fastening it with the knot Barney had instructed, a bowline. Then Joshua approached the sheer wall; he tossed the weighted rope down.
The belaying pin bounced against the rocks as it came down. Barney leaped for it. Swiftly he tied to the rope the topmost rope ladder. Then he gave three hard tugs. It began to ascend as Joshua hauled it up.
When the end of the rope ladder dangled right at Barney's feet, he waited for about two minutes. Then he tugged on it again, and felt the answering pulls. He put his foot in the first ratline and began to climb. In two minutes he stood on the top of the cliff with Joshua.
"Your knots held, sir," he said, and grinned. Then he leaned over the cliff. "Lanterns, Wolf," he called softly.
Wolf obediently swung the lantern, back and forth, back and forth. And, seeing it, aboard the French frigate Captain Connor gave a quick order. Then he turned to the Marquis de Bouille. "We are ready to commence landing operations, sir."
Four long rope ladders swung over the sides of the cliffs at Jen-kin's Bay. Boats pulled from the ships to shore and back again. And hand over hand, in the long hours of the night, uniformed French soldiers swarmed onto Stasia. They formed into small companies at the top, drawing back from the steep cliffs to let more of their fellows gain solid earth again after swinging between air and water for three hundred feet. Not many men could be landed at one time, because the boats had to be well crewed. The surf was heavy. And only one man could climb the swaying ladders at one time. It took four hours to land four hundred men. But at four o'clock. Captain Connor was able to say to the panting marquis, "I am able to report that only three men were lost in a difficult and lengthy landing operation, sir!"
They were landed, all right, Connor thought. From the height he could hear faintly the sounds of anchors being weighed, as the fore-
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most frigate weighed anchor; the rest would follow suit. In the morning they would be in the roadway at Stasia, appearing out of the night. His own men were moving off; every minute of the next hours had been well planned. He smiled as he came up to Barney and Joshua, the smile crinkling the scar on his face.
"We'll go ahead of the troops now, sirs," he said, looking delighted.
"It is roughly a mile," Joshua said, in muted tones. "Roughly a mile to Signal Hill, and then another mile to Tumbledown Dick, We can send a detail to man Tumbledown Dick."
They were moving up a dirt trail, rocky, steep. "This is formed by torrents of water," Joshua explained, "At Signal Hill only one man can walk abreast."
With them were a few picked men. They went single file; they carried no muskets, they hoped not to use pistols. They carried knives. With Joshua ahead, they climbed upward still, toward Signal Hill.
It didn't take them very long. Late moonlight infiltrated the scene. They slipped through the pass, and onto the bit of level land with the sugar cane stretching in the distance, here on the top of the island.
The small garrison was sound asleep. Signal House was a low barracks. Two sentries paced back and forth; within thirty men slept peacefully. Connor and one of his lieutenants moved forward like swift lightning. Before the surprised sentries had time to sling the muskets off their shoulders, Connor and his lieutenant sprang, knives in hand. Then the rest of the men moved out of the shadows to surround the building,
Connor flung open the door and ran down the center of the long room with Barney and Joshua and the rest of the men behind him. The garrison woke to look into leveled pistols. No resistance was possible. They were tied quickly, and the doors closed again, leaving each helpless on his cot, with five armed guards. Connor ran back to the pass, to hear the reassuring sound of more men marching. They appeared through the pass, formed into a line of four men abreast, and began the march down to the town.
It was five o'clock. The dawn was breaking over Stasia. In Upper Town, Colonel Cockburne's orderly roused, yawned, and sat up
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sleepily. The colonel always rode at daybreak, a brisk canter before breakfast. He rolled out of bed.
In Upper Town, Mrs. Bachels, widow, was already dressed. She went over to her window to look out. She stared. Then she ran out of her own room and to her son's door. She knocked.
He answered sleepily. She called, "I see the glitter of arms on the road to Signal Hill! Get up!"
In a few minutes he appeared. In response to her admonition, he ran downstairs and out into the garden; she followed him. He disappeared up the winding road toward Signal Hill.
He didn't return. In desperation she dashed down the road to the nearest house, forgetting her cows that needed milking. She knocked on the door of the house where Lieutenant Mackenzie was quartered. When the front door flew open, she said, breathless, "Tell the lieutenant I saw the glitter of arms on Signal Hill road! I sent my son William, and he has not come back!"
The lieutenant, too, rolled out of bed. At the same minute he did so. Colonel Cockburne rode out the lowered drawbridge of Fort Amsterdam, and clattered across it for his morning ride. Lieutenant Mackenzie saw him pass by, shouted to him, but could not make him hear. Mackenzie, dressed now, dashed downstairs and down the hill to the church.
A red flag raised over the church steeple was the warning signal, in case of danger. As he entered the church he heard hoofbeats behind him. He had the flag half raised when he heard a voice behind him.
"Halt or I fire," Connor said grimly.
Instead, Mackenzie yanked on the ropes. Connor raised the pistol and fired. Slowly Mackenzie's hands fell from the ropes; he swayed and crumpled. Above, the red flag slowly drifted downward. A loose end of it clung to an edge of the slanting roof.
Connor had commandeered Colonel Cockburne's horse; the colonel himself had ridden straight into the arms of the marching French. The colonel was not even armed. He could not believe it.
"A coup de main," he muttered. "But how?"
Joshua did not bother to enlighten him. The troops marched past steadily, at double pace. Joshua said, "The Frenchman you captured! De Bouille! Where is he?"
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The colonel was thinking he would face court-martial for this. "In the hospital," he said.
Joshua and Barney ran, followed by the twenty marines Barney had picked for tonight. They ran down past Mrs. Bachels, and past the church, and into the white hospital next to the church.
It was another long low building. Sixty-one men were its patients. The sixty-first was guarded.
Joshua did not even bother to disarm the guard. With twenty marines behind him, there was hardly need. De Bouille slept flat on his face, as always; it flashed through Joshua's mind that the entrance of twenty-two men had failed to disturb de Bouille's slumbers. "He can sleep through anything," Joshua said, as he stood over the bed and looked down at de Bouille's dark head.
De Bouille rolled over. His eyes flew open. Then he sat up slowly. His chest and one arm were swathed in clean bandages; they had shaved him and he looked thin. But the smile on his face made up for it. He held out a bandaged arm and hand. " 'Alio, Yank," he said.
Connor's men were marching across the drawbridge; the first intimation that the unwarned garrison had of imminent attack was the actual presence of enemy troops within the fort. Exactly three shots were fired, and then the flag that had just been raised was hauled down. Connor despatched a detail of his handsomest flaxen-haired English and Irish troops, with a lieutenant in charge. "Inform the Governor that he is a prisoner of war."