On shore ``the freed slaves to despotism'' -- the town dwellers -- watched the ships and waited. The chevaux de frise, those sharp stakes and barriers around the fort at the Battery, pointed to a conflict between the town and sea power rolling in glassy swells as the tide came in. Across the bay the Palisades were heavy in green timber; their rock paths led down to the Hudson. Below in the open bay facing Manhattan was Staten Island, gritty with clam shells and mud flats behind which nested farms, cattle barns, and berry thickets. Along Wappinger Creek in Dutchess County, past the white church at Fishkill, past Verplanck's Point on the east bank of the Hudson, to the white salt crusted roads of the Long Island Rockaways there was a watching and an activity of preparing for something explosive to happen. Today, tomorrow, six months, even perhaps a year.

The fish hawk flew on and was lost from sight. The British ships rolled at anchor, sent out picket boats and waited for orders from London. Waited for more ships, more lobster-backed infantry, and asked what was to be done with a war of rebellion?

David Cortlandt, having slept away a day and a night, came awake in a plank farmhouse on the Harlem River near Spuyten Duyvil. He looked out through windowpanes turned a faint violet by sun and weather, looked out at King's Bridge toward Westchester. The road seemed animated with a few more wagons than usual; a carriage raising up the choking June dust, and beyond, in a meadow, a local militia company drilling with muskets, Kentuck' rifles, every kind of horse pistol, old sword, or cutlass.