oached so near
as to throw hand-grenades into the fort, while marines stationed in
the round-tops stood ready to pick off any of the garrison that came
in sight. The scene now became awful; incessant firing from ships,
forts, gondolas and floating batteries, with clouds of sulphurous
smoke, and the deafening thunder of cannon. Before night there was
hardly a fortification to defend; palisades were shivered, guns
dismounted, the whole parapet levelled. There was terrible slaughter;
most of the company of artillery were destroyed; Fleury himself was
wounded. Captain Talbot received a wound in the wrist, but continued
bravely fighting until disabled by another wound in the hip.

To hold out longer was impossible. Colonel Thayer made preparations to
evacuate the fort in the night. Everything was removed in the evening
that could be conveyed away without too much exposure to the murderous
fire from the round-tops. The wounded were taken over to Red Bank,
accompanied by part of the garrison. Thayer remained with forty men
until eleven o'clock, when they set fire to what was combustible of
the fort they had so nobly defended, and crossed to Red Bank by the
light of its flames.

The loss of this fort was deeply regretted by Washington, though he
gave high praise to the officers and men of the garrison. Colonel
Smith was voted a sword by Congress, and Fleury received the
commission of lieutenant-colonel. Washington still hoped to keep
possession of Red Bank, and thereby prevent the enemy from weighing
the chevaux-de-frise before the frost obliged their ships to quit the
river. "I am anxiously waiting the arrival of the troops from the
northward," writes he, "who ought, from the time they have had my
orders to have been here before this. Colonel Hamilton, one of my
aides, is up the North River, doing all he can to push them forward,
but he writes me word that he finds many unaccountable delays thrown
in his way. The want of these troops has embarrassed all my measures
exceedingly."

The delays in question will best be explained by a few particulars
concerning the mission of Colonel Hamilton. [Hamilton had expected to
find matters in such a train that he would have little to do but hurry
on ample reinforcements already on the march; but he soon discovered
that it was designed to retain the greater part of the Northern army
at Albany and in the Highlands, sparing only about four thousand men
to the commander-in-chief. Morgan an