There was a vandal with a poet’s heart, Andrew uncomfortably replies, to whom the fit response might be another patriotic ode, one that will stir the indignation even of New Englanders. Pen has a natural rhyme in men, for example, does it not, and palm in balm. Shall they give it a go?
Their camaraderie remains on this level, for Key is either ignorant of the actual defense preparations of Baltimore (which information Andrew solicits in the hope of both restoring his credit with Ross and Cochrane and misleading them) or distrustful of his new companion. The combination of pens and statuary suggests to Andrew that graven is a more promising rhyme for Barlow’s raven than the one Lord Byron came up with: he volunteers it to Key and resolves to send it on to Byron as well, for consideration in some future elegy to Sir Peter Parker.
When the fleet turns off the Bay and up into the Potomac on the 8th, they wonder whether they have been yet again deliberately misled; whether a follow-up attack on Washington is the real, at least the first, objective. But on the 9th they meet Captain Gordon’s flotilla returning from Alexandria; the diversion has been a standby for rescuing Gordon if necessary. The combined forces stand back downriver, anchor overnight at the mouth of the Patuxent, and on the 10th run north past frantic Annapolis. They sail through the night and by afternoon on Sunday the 11th begin assembling at anchor off North Point, at the mouth of the Patapsco, within sight of Fort McHenry eight miles upriver. “The Americans”—so Admiral Cochrane now refers to them, without a glance at Andrew — are transferred from the Surprize back to the flag-of-truce sloop they’d arrived on, still monitored by a British junior officer: Dr. Beanes is paroled to join them, and Andrew is included in their party without comment. He sees his erstwhile companion Admiral Cockburn rowed over from the Albion to the shallower-draft Fairy to confer with Ross about their landing strategy (they are to take the army and marines overland from North Point to fall on Baltimore from the east, while Cochrane moves a force of frigates, bomb ships, and rocket launchers upriver to reduce Fort McHenry and move on the city from below). He sees Admiral Cochrane transferred from the heavy Tonnant to the lighter Surprize in preparation for that maneuver — wherefore “the Americans” have been shifted. Andrew waves tentatively, still hopeful; but if Cochrane, Ross, and Cockburn see him, they make no sign.
Say now, Muse, for Henry’s sake, what Key can’t see, nor John Skinner nor Dr. Beanes nor Andrew Cook, from where they languish for the next three days. Speak of General Sam Smith’s determination that the Bladensburg Races shall not be rerun: his mustering and deployment of 16,000 defenders, including the remnants of Barney’s flotillamen, behind earthworks to the east of town and fortifications around the harbor; his dispatching of an attack force at once to meet the enemy at North Point when he’s certain they’ll land there. Declare what Major Armistead at Fort McHenry knows, and no one else: that the fort’s powder magazine is not, as everyone assumes it to be, bombproof; that one direct hit will send his fort, himself, and his thousand-man garrison to kingdom come and leave the harbor virtually undefended. Tell my son of the new letter that now arrives by dispatch boat from Governor-General Prevost in Canada to Admiral Cochrane, reporting further American atrocities on the Niagara Frontier and urging the admiral again to retaliate, not with indemnifications, but with fire. The British and even the American newspapers are praising Ross for his restraint in Washington: his firing only of public buildings, his care not to harm noncombatants; such solicitude is not what Prevost wants, and Cochrane is determined this time that Ross shall be hard, that the governor-general shall get what he wants. Say too, Muse, what Ross and Cochrane themselves can’t see: that even as this letter arrives, its author, at the head of an invasion force of 14,000 British veterans in upstate New York, is suffering a double defeat. His naval forces on Lake Champlain are destroyed before his eyes that same Sunday morning, and just as he commences a land attack on Plattsburgh in concert with it, he intercepts a letter from Colonel Fosset of Vermont to the defending American General Macomb, advising him of massive reinforcements en route to his aid. That very night, as Ross’s army lands for the second time in Maryland, Prevost panics and orders a retreat back to Canada.
