The battle being over, full day was come. We sat in the stockade, blind to our surroundings. There was but one event in the sky, about noontime: a flight of geese.

We most of us slept an almost ensorcelled sleep, astounded by our fatigue. I awoke to find Pomp sitting near me, chewing seeds and spitting the husks into his hand. My weariness was so complete that I fell back into slumber, little heeding the objects around me.

I was gratified by a sight of Bono among his Company. He hailed me, and I went to his side; we clasped each other’s hands.

The word, his companions told me, was that we were to abandon the fort, the commanding officers nourishing no hope that the position could be held, did the rebels attack, their numbers being so superior to what we had been informed, and soon to be augmented, ’twas said, with Carolina militia. It was the surmise of many, Bono loud among them, that we were to fall back to Norfolk, to repair to the new entrenchments dug around that town and man them for all they were worth. I averred that the fortifications there were not in a complete state of readiness, but we could imagine no other strategy. With some pride in my familiarity with the situation to the north, I sketched the disposition of Norfolk’s new entrenchments in the mud, and Bono and others hunkered around us spake manfully of approaches and defense; and I was proud to be of their number.

In the afternoon, all hands were engaged in preparations to abandon the stockade. The tents and marquees within the yard were struck and bundled into carts. The dead were buried without the walls. The sentries still patrolled above us, surveying the marsh and the burning hamlet, and when they were relieved of duty, they spread word that our wounded brethren had been carried over the enemy’s berm with an astonishing gentleness and civility.

By night — when it was too dark for the piercing gaze of the adversary — we formed and took up our line of march. We left the place secretly — it was utterly abandoned — some four or five hundred of us issuing forth in a dismal parade to the north. In our wake, the cannons were spiked, and the muddy ground churned with bootprints and littered with the trash of war, comprising snapped buckles, bloody shirts, neglected spades, here a bayonet bent or a stub of candle, a burst barrel, or planks.

We left in silence, as near as we could, to ensure that the rebels would not know of their victory until we had gained Norfolk again.

Through the night we marched with the wounded on carts beside us, crying.

The next day’s dawn found us entering into Norfolk. It was the Sabbath, and the church bells rang.

Women on their way to service stopped and watched us in a line; they wore red cloaks, and their necks and faces muffled, so that all that shewed beneath the head-cloths were the eyes, which followed our ragged train.

The faceless congregants watched without speaking. We meandered past them, but a few of the regulars raising their hats.

Farm girls and fathers on horses watched us pass in wonderment; until, a cart come up wherein complained some of the wounded loudly —“Water, ladies, we beg of ye, water!”— several of the girls, moved to pity, darted back to a well and scurried down the line with a bucket, quenching this thirst and receiving the blessing of the fallen. I know not whether these angels of mercy were Loyalist or rebel; I know that they were moved to the quick, however, by the sight of the dying, and took a small pity, for which I felt gratitude myself, the act restoring memory of compassion.

We passed through the outskirts of Norfolk, and the people of that town surveyed our bedraggled carnage with a gray, defeated mien. With Great-Bridge fallen, nothing stood between their town and the rapacity of the enemy. The citizens watched keenly where we wended; for we did not return to our warehouse barracks; but we were mustered upon the docks, where boats and transports were in a readiness.

We fully anticipated that at any moment we should be detached and sent to the earthworks to begin the long wait for the rebels; we were in constant expectation of orders to take to the dirt ramparts and stand to arms, there to defend the safety of the loyal denizens of Norfolk, the honor of our King, and the dignity of our new-granted freedoms.

It was therefore with confusion that we observed companies boarding transports. They were rowed out to ships. It took us some minutes to realize that we would not be guarding our redoubts. We were retreating not simply from Great-Bridge, but from Norfolk itself.

We were astounded. That we should be asked to abandon not merely our southern approaches, but the town, having spent the better part of two weeks fortifying it; having cracked our hands and wearied our bones digging, hauling, raising embankments, affixing stakes, and settling gabions — this directive was greeted with outrage. We were not unforward nor imprecise in our criticism of our officers, muttering that cowering timidity was but poor cover for past incompetence.

Pomp spake angrily of the circumstances; and Slant, once he saw that others would speak with the voice of censure, joined his voice to Pomp’s. Will spake to none; but stared, hollow-eyed, at the ground.

We were, over the course of some two hours, herded onto boats and rowed out to ships that sat at anchor in the river. My company was posted aboard the Crepuscule sloop-of-war.

The populace of the town little relished this evacuation. They attended in great crowds and watched, and we were sensible of their distress; for they had all sworn loyalty to Dunmore and to the King, and now they found themselves abandoned.

One man I saw tore off the red kerchief sewn to his breast, emblem of Loyalty, and cast it on the ground, turning from us in disgust. Women wept; children stared in wonder. It was no secret that the rebels despised the town of Norfolk for its pandering to Dunmore and his troops. There was every expectation that they would, at best, hang those who had colluded and performed their duty to the Crown; and that at worst, they would ignite the whole of the port and burn it to the ground.

Thus it was that later that afternoon, we saw the Loyalists begin their own evacuation of the city in preparation for its occupation by the rogue militia. The grander Tories came to the quays with great trunks and with cages for their birds; many had ships from which their fortunes were derived, which schooners or brigantines now would try their fortunes in even hotter waters.

Once aboard the Crepuscule, we were sent below to the ship’s one lower deck, a dark and windowless place. We crouched there, awaiting orders, expecting still to man fortifications, but no order came. After a time, Corporal Craigie informed us we would be spending the night upon the ship, and that we might settle upon the few straw mattresses provided to us, and draw lots as to who should enjoy the hammocks.

Nor did we return to shore the next day, but took our exercise upon the deck of the ship, beneath the watchful eye of the sailors.

Around our sloop-of-war lay a great confusion of ships, a floating town. There had been great numbers of them previous to our retreat, but now, with the threat of rebel incursion even greater, others had made for the port, that they might be protected by the guns of Lord Dunmore’s Navy. Countless crowds of them were at anchor, from the smallest fishing pinks and hoys to the great three-masters sitting at rest.

The wealthiest among the Loyalists had fled already to their ships. Now upon the docks gathered the Loyalists of the middling sort — leather-aprons; shopkeepers who knew that no quarter would be offered them did they stay, no mercy from the rebel Sons of Liberty, once their sympathies were known; smiths, chandlers, and butchers — all begging passage, any passage, for them and their family. They brought chests with what they could save of the instruments of their trade. Their wives sighed; and sometimes great arguments broke out upon the docks between men vying for passage, or between man and wife, the air full of remonstrances regarding which especial chair might be saved, or whether the gilt mirror would survive embarkation. A child cried for cats left behind in the barn.

They were taken off onto small snows and brigs, if that they could afford; and others, finding no route of escape upon the water, fled the town by land, praying for mercy.

Then, the day following that, came the most desperate to the docks — many who had fled to Norfolk from the raving countryside, leaving behind all they had, and now had to flee again without benefit of coin or goods to barter. They pled with the few who still loaded sideboards and escritoires into tenders.

We stood listless upon the deck of our sloop-of-war, with no employment but to observe the rout.

I could not countenance that we would abandon the town. ’Twas strongly fortified — stocked with Loyalists — our Governor’s last refuge upon the land. We wished to defend; we demanded confrontation; we felt all the transports of issueless rage, thinking of the rebels and their cries of self-congratulation.

Even now, I cannot abide this retreat. My hands are empty, and I sit enwombed in a ship.

Yesterday, the fourteenth of December, the rebels passed through our unmanned fortifications and entered the town of Norfolk unopposed. We still floated in the harbor.

They occupied the town; and we, yards from the shore, heard tales of skirmish and indignity. As the enemy marched through the occupied streets, a few desperate Loyalists fired upon them from gables, then slid down roofs on their bellies, and fled.

Last night, when the rebels reached the quays in their march of invasion, we heard musket- or rifle-shots fired at our fleet, and hoped to acquit ourselves in a contest with these bold scoundrels. We seized upon our weapons and awaited commands.

’Twas no attack, however. Merely a frolic by a few rebel sots. A cocksure, drunken game. We received no orders for reprisal.

Today, the docks were empty of commerce, the wide squares untenanted. We saw snipers take posts in warehouses with feline swagger. Once, a line of picket-guards came down to the dock, made a mock obeisance, and shouted, “All hail Lord Dunmore, King of the Negroes!” then fell about, laughing.

It was not an unfair epithet, though meant unkindly. With the flight of the Loyalists onto ships, royal power in this execrable Colony is restricted into still more minute compass. Williamsburg fell months ago, and with it the Palace and the House of Burgesses; then Norfolk County; then the approaches to Norfolk; and now Norfolk itself is not ours. Only the waters are ours; and how may one build on something so mutable?

Governmental authority no longer hath any purchase on land; chaos and the mob of slave-drivers rule all; and we are left, a tiny kingdom on the waves.