who is to have the key? So we shall follow
Saunders and Wolfe to Quebec.

Wolfe's little army of nine thousand men was really a landing party
from Saunders' big fleet, which included nearly fifty men-of-war
(almost a quarter of the whole Royal Navy) and well over two hundred
transports and supply ships. The bluejackets on board the men-of-war
and the merchant seamen on board the other ships each greatly
outnumbered the men in Wolfe's army. In fact, the whole expedition was
made up of three-quarters sea-power and only one-quarter land.

Admiral Durell, who had been left at Halifax over the winter, was too
slow in getting the advance guard under way in time to cut off the
twenty-three little vessels sent out from France to Montcalm in the
spring. But this reinforcement was too small to make any real
difference in the doom of Quebec when once British sea-power had sealed
the St. Lawrence. Saunders took Wolfe's army and the main body of his
own fleet up the great river in June: a hundred and forty-one vessels,
all told, from the flagship _Neptune_ of ninety guns down to the
smallest craft that carried supplies. It was a brave sight off the
mouth of the Saguenay, where the deep-water estuary ends, to see the
whole fleet, together at sunset, with its thousand white sails, in a
crescent twenty miles long, a-gleam on the blue St. Lawrence.

The French-Canadian pilots who had been taken prisoners swore that no
fleet could ever get through the Traverse, a tricky bit of water thirty
miles below Quebec. But, in the course of the summer, the British
sailing masters, who had never been there before, themselves took two
hundred and seventy-seven vessels right through it with greater ease in
squadrons than any French-Canadian could when piloting a single ship.
The famous Captain Cook, of whom we shall soon hear more, had gone up a
month ahead with Durell, and, in only three days, had sounded,
surveyed, and buoyed the Traverse to perfection.

When once the fleet had reached Quebec Montcalm was completely cut off
from the outside world, except for the road and river up to Montreal.
His French-Canadian militia more than equalled Wolfe's army in mere
numbers. But his French regulars from France, the backbone of the
whole defence, were not half so many. Vaudreuil, the French-Canadian
Governor, was a fool. Bigot, the French Intendant, was a knave. They
both hated the great and honest Montcalm and did all they could to
spite hi