Not satisfied with this achievement, a few days later his men were
at work upon an entrenchment within half a mile and under the fire of a
British man-of-war, a squad of these intrepid soldiers being commanded
by his eldest son, Israel.
The British were now alarmed, and doubtless believed, in the language of
a writer commenting on these events, that "every fort which was defended
by General Putnam might be considered as impregnable, if daring courage
and intrepidity could always resist superior force."
Still, while the British feared to advance upon the Americans, the
latter, though eager to drive them out of their stronghold, were unable
to do so from lack of artillery and ammunition. This lack was to some
extent supplied by the capture of some ordnance ships by our gallant
privateers, though as late as January, 1776, one of the Provincial
colonels wrote to another: "The bay is open; everything thaws here
except Old Put. He is still as hard as ever, crying out for
_powder--powder_--ye gods, give us powder!"
Cannon-balls, several hundred of them, he had secured (if we may credit
a story told at the time) by conspicuously posting some of his men on an
elevation in front of a sandy hill in sight of a British war-ship, from
which by this ingenious ruse he drew a rain of shot, which supplied his
needs for the time being, as they were afterward easily dug out of the
sand!
Among the captures by the privateers was a 13-inch brass mortar weighing
nearly three thousand pounds, which was taken to Cambridge, where
(according to the same veracious narrator of the "powder cry," the witty
Provincial colonel), it was the occasion of a great jubilation.
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