December 6th, 1775
This day, all hands to raising a redoubt and securing emplacements for the guns. The cannons are aimed, for the moment, at cattle upon the glacis, and children batting at the sky with sticks.
Still do our numbers swell with those who flee to join us. This day a man named Peter, of some thirty years, was admitted to our Company. In the evening, when we were retired, Peter recounted his tale of escape to such as wished to listen.
He was all his life in the service of a Major Marshall, who is an arch-rebel among the provincial militia; and come the commencement of the rebellion, Peter said to his master, “Sir, if you want the freedom, why don’t you give me a little sip of that cup, too, if it please, sir?” His master would have none of it; but scolded him for his importunities.
Peter, serving his master as gentleman’s man, traveled with the rebel army as they marched to launch their assault upon Lord Dunmore and our gathering forces at Norfolk. They were, as is known to us, stopped in their progress at Great-Bridge, and here they now rest, entrenched, frowning at our stockade across a great marsh.
The rebels being so poor in numbers, Peter was given a musket and told he would sally forth as a soldier, when the time came to attack the stockade. “I tell him,” said Peter, “‘Sir, I ain’t going to fight them Royal Ethiopians.’ That’s what I tell him, boys — I ain’t going to fight you — and he said, ‘You will do what I tells you to do,’ and scritch and scratch and done.”
But one night, when Peter was sent out to victual several snipers who occupied houses on an island in the marsh, he found himself in the midst of an action, the Royal Ethiopians attacking; and when the Virginian shirtmen retreated, Peter did not flee with his rebel masters. They little noted in the confusion when he remained upon the island, nor when he stole down into the marsh and followed the Royal Ethiopians, hands up and whispering for quarter.
He was taken into custody, questioned closely, and eventually was hied to Norfolk, where he has enjoyed an audience with Lord Dunmore himself. “Lord Dunmore,” said he, “he asked me questions hisself. He wishes especially to know what I seen, and I don’t mind to help a man such as Lord Dunmore is, the Governor and all. I tell him, ‘I tell you how it lies, sir. Sir, right now, there ain’t above three hundred rebels there, at the Great-Bridge. You best move quick, sir, Your Honor, you best.’ I reckon that he will, based on my intelligence I brung him, because I say, ‘Sir, you best move soon, because in a few days, they bring up them cannons from North Carolina, they get them here, and they’ll shiver your little wood fort into splinters. Three hundred men right now. Just three hundred. But they get their thousand Carolinians and their cannons — you and the Ethiopian Regiment is through.’”
I surveyed the faces of the men as this tale was told; we none of us like his pride in predicting disaster, but we like less the sound of those cannons.
Thus the tale of Peter, our new recruit.