IT WAS WILL Roche who tipped the first stone. When Toker Johnson was spent, he passed the knife to the next in line, and Roche made sure it was him. He crouched low as the wall-gamers huffed and puffed above and around him. A patchwork of rocks roughly the size of a barrel had dropped, the stones no longer supported by anything but each other. A hole the size of an apple had appeared between them, and Roche’s view of the armoury and the barracks was clear.
‘The Yankees are comin’,’ he said as he peered through. ‘The Yankees are finally comin’. And with a fair wind, we ain’t stoppin’ till we get to Boston.’ He turned his head to call to the others – ‘Well, m’boys. We’re in!’ – and put his shoulder to the biggest stone. Others around him dipped and leaned their weight, too, and suddenly, the granite slid six inches. Now, they needed speed and surprise. The very closeness of escape, the proximity of guns and freedom, was a powerful drug. With a series of powerful lunges, four of the stones began to move. Inch by crunching inch, the centre of the granite wall was moving.
Around the back of Seven, at the end of the military walk, the new watch of the Somerset militia were completing their first patrol. The six men stopped briefly. The view to the left was Dartmoor; the view to the right took in Seven then ran along the retaining wall, the market square gates and One. They were about to march back around the arc when their lieutenant ordered them to halt. He turned to study the prisoners by the wall.
‘What is it, sir?’ asked one of his men.
‘This tedious game the Americans are playing,’ he said, ‘seems to have become more frantic.’
They saw men dip, disappear, then reappear at the back of the scrum. There was no disguising an increase in their speed and rigour.
‘What if it isn’t a game at all?’ said the lieutenant.
‘Sir?’ His men leaned, disbelieving, against the walk.
A sudden shift in the patterns of the players, and a beam of light appeared in their midst. The lieutenant frowned. ‘That’s not possible,’ he said.
One of his men leaned in closer, as far as the military walk would allow. ‘It is if there’s a hole in the wall.’
When the beam of light doubled in size, the lieutenant gripped his rifle. ‘Dear God in Heaven,’ he said. ‘Sound the alarm.’