assault. At last he conceived an alternative plan, in the event that he
would not have sufficient powder to risk a direct assault, and the two
plans were balanced and matured in his own mind with the determination
to act promptly, and solely, at his own independent will.

Few facts testify more significantly of the value to the army and the
American cause of that long course of training, in the presence of the
enemy, than the preparations thus made by Washington, without the
knowledge of most of the officers of his command. He collected
forty-five batteaux, each capable of transporting eighty men, and built
two floating batteries of great strength and light draught of water.
Fascines, gabions, carts, bales of hay, intrenching-tools, and two
thousand bandages, with all other contingent supplies, were gathered,
and placed under a guard of picked men.

Three nights of _mock bombardment_ kept the garrison on the alert,
awaiting an assault. "On the night of the fourth of March, and through
all its hours, from candle-lighting time to the clear light of another
day, the same incessant thunder rolled along over camps and city; the
same quick flashes showed that fire was all along the line, and still,
both camps and city dragged through the night, waiting for the daylight
to test the work of the night, as daylight had done before."

When daylight came,--

"Two strong redoubts capped Dorchester Heights."


By the tenth of March, the Americans had fortified Nook's Hill, and this
drove the British from Boston Neck. Eight hundred shot and shell were