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The road was full of wagons, the fields near us were filled with infantry and artillery, and there were fifty wagons or more loaded with pontoons, great boats, or the frame-work of boats, which were to be covered with canvass, which was water-proof, and the boats were to be used for bridges across streams.
Biongianni Gianfigliazzi was sent against them, with a body of horse and foot, and checked their audacity, so that they pursued their depredations less boldly. The fleet continuing its efforts went to Livorno, and by pontoons and other means approached the new tower, playing their artillery upon it for several days, but being unable to make any impression they withdrew.
The cavalry seized the two crossings before daylight, drove the enemy's pickets guarding them away, and by six o'clock A.M. had the pontoons laid ready for the crossing of the infantry and artillery. This was undoubtedly a surprise to Lee. The fact that the movement was unopposed proves this.
In this, doubtless, he would have been successful, but "some one had blundered," and the Commander-in-Chief suffered the mortification of seeing his plans foiled, and his series of forced marches a failure, because the pontoons which were to meet him on his arrival before Fredericksburgh were still at Washington; and this through the criminal neglect of some one.
There seemed but a small force opposed to us; a strong picket on the bank, and the reserve posted behind the breastworks, were all that could be seen, though we well knew that the heights beyond swarmed with opposing hosts, as they had twice before. At length the engineers drew the pontoons to the edge of the river, the Seventy-seventh being detailed to assist in unloading.
Duncan, "about nine feet of water over the deck at the stern, and about three feet over the fore-hatch at low tide. The topgallant-forecastle is awash and the end of the bowsprit out of water, so that we can easily reach the upper ends of the bobstays. There is about five feet rise and fall of tide. Now, we have no pontoons nor casks. Our only plan, captain, is to lift her bodily."
After a little thinking, Gaunt came to the conclusion that it would be possible to construct such a raft, and he set to work to plan it. The structure, as decided upon by him, consisted of two flat-bottomed straight-sided pontoons, each twenty-four feet long by six feet wide, and six feet deep, their ends being curved up from the bottom until they met the deck in a sharp chisel-like form.
Had the Commander-in-Chief detached General Knyphausen's column in pursuit early next morning, General Washington might with ease have been intercepted, either at the Heights of Crum Creek, nine miles; at Derby, fourteen; or at Philadelphia, eighteen miles, from the British camp; or, the Schuylkill might have been passed at Gray's Ferry, only seventy yards over, and Philadelphia, with the American magazines, taken, had not the pontoons been improvidently left at New York as useless.
At two o'clock the Germans, having evacuated Saarbrück, retreated across the Saar to Saint-Johann. The latter village is also now being evacuated; the French are pushing across the Saar by means of pontoons; the three bridges are also being rapidly repaired. "Reports vary, but it is probable that the losses on the German side will number four officers and seventy-nine men killed wounded unknown.
If you fly them to Spindrift no one will know that Marks has even arrived. Tom will try to make sure no one is tailing him, and he'll help you to lose any cars that might try to follow." "We can do it," Rick assured him. "I can land close to the city. I've done it before with pontoons." "Good. Ordinarily, I'd have an agent meet them, but my Newark man is in the woods with the Boy Scout group.
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