Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16 2 HOURS LATER Nate opened his eyes. Where was he? He seemed to be inside a big, deep hole. There was dirt and grass everywhere, even in his mouth. He must be in his grave! He'd been buried alive! He sat up, coughing and gasping.

No. This hole was not a grave. And Nate was still alive. Explosions and the smell of gunpowder smoke helped clear his mind. And he remembered. The Redcoat attack. Samuel. Hessians charging over the hill. That grunting soldier with his bayonet. The explosion. It must have been a shell… one of those new exploding cannonballs. It had blasted this crater in the ground. Somehow Nate had tumbled inside it. Nate struggled to his feet and checked himself from head to toe. His pants were ripped. The cut on his face was oozing blood. He felt like he'd been run over by a horse wagon. But amazingly, he was in one piece. He spat the dirt from his mouth and turned around, then reeled back in fear. There was a hand — a bloody hand — hanging over the edge of the crater. Nate crept closer until he could see that the hand was attached to a man — the Hessian.

The soldier was splayed out on his back, with one leg twisted in a way it shouldn't be. His silver cap was next to him, the musket and bayonet near his feet. His eyes were opened wide, unblinking. He was dead. Nate wanted to turn away, but he couldn't. The Hessian's eyes seemed to grab hold of Nate's, forcing him to look. He was very young, Nate could see, around Paul's age. He didn't look like a bloodthirsty killer anymore. He looked like someone's son, an older brother. Nate stood there until finally a cannon blast from somewhere very close jolted him out of his trance. The battle was still raging. He felt like he'd woken up from one nightmare, only to be locked inside a new one. Cannons and musket fire seemed to be crackling on both sides of him. The air was thick with smoke. What had happened to Paul and the men? How would Nate get back to the fort on Brooklyn

Heights? That's what Captain Marsh had told him to do. But how? He couldn't just stroll through the woods. There were Redcoats and Hessians everywhere. Nate might not be a real soldier, but he sure looked like one. He was tall for his age. He was wearing the frontier shirt that James had given him. He looked like any young American soldier, desperate to escape. Terrifying thoughts screamed through his mind. He'd be shot! Crushed by a cannonball! He'd be caught and locked away in a rat-filled British prison. The men had told terrible stories about how the British treated their American prisoners. They crammed them into filthy basements or old, rotting ships. Most men died slowly of starvation or fevers. Paul said he'd rather get shot on the battlefield than starve to death in a British prison. Nate started to shake. He looked at the big hole in the ground. Maybe he should just climb back

down and curl up into a ball. What else could he do? And then, once again, his mind flashed to the pirate Slash O'Shea. He remembered a story Papa had told him, about a time Slash was in London. He'd been working as a pirate for a few years. He'd come ashore to hand out gold coins to poor kids on the streets. A policeman spotted Slash and started to chase him. Slash managed to duck into a tavern. Inside was a man wearing a fancy blue velvet coat and a top hat. Slash dug into his pockets and pulled out a handful of gold coins. He slapped them on the table in front of the man. "For your coat and hat!" A minute later, Slash was strolling out of the tavern in that fancy outfit. He strolled right past a group of policemen, tipping his hat like a gentleman. Slash escaped from London that night, and was soon back at sea.

Nate looked at the Hessian, lying on the ground, and he knew what to do. He knelt down and unbuttoned the brass buttons of the green coat. It was wrong to steal from a dead man. But this dead man had tried to kill him. Nate carefully slipped the coat off the man's body. He shook it out and tried it on. It hung down past Nate's knees. But Nate could easily fix that. He shrugged it off, and used the Hessian's razor-sharp bayonet to help him tear off the bottom of the coat. He tried it on again. Better. Next he put on the helmet. He had to push it back so it didn't cover his eyes. Finally he picked up the Hessian's musket and bayonet and put it over his shoulder. Nate stood there, too scared to move. He just had to get out of the woods and across the field to the fort. It was only about a mile from here, Nate guessed. If he walked quickly, he'd be back inside the fort in fifteen minutes.