men off duty swarmed on to the Place
d'Armes, where Carleton, calm and intrepid as ever, took
post with the general reserve and waited. There was
nothing for him to do just yet. Everything that could
have been foreseen had already been amply provided for;
and in his quiet confidence his followers found their
own.

Towards five o'clock two green rockets shot up from
Montgomery's position beside the Anse des Meres under
Cape Diamond. This was the signal for attack. Montgomery's
column immediately struggled on again along the path
leading round the foot of the Cape towards the Pres-de-Ville
barricade. Livingston's serious 'patriots' on the top of
the Cape changed their dropping shots into a hot fire
against the walls; while Jerry Duggan's little mob of
would-be looters shouted and blazed away from safer cover
in the suburbs of St John and St Roch. Arnold's mortars
pitched shells all over the town; while his storming-party
advanced towards the Sault-au-Matelot barricade. Carleton,
naturally anxious about the landward walls, sent some of
the British militia to reinforce the men at Cape Diamond,
which, as he knew, Montgomery considered the best point
of attack. The walls lower down did not seem to be in
any danger from Jerry Duggan's 'patriots,' whose noisy
demonstration was at once understood to be nothing but
an empty feint. The walls facing the St Charles were well
manned and well gunned by the naval battalion. Those
facing the St Lawrence, though weak in themselves, were
practically impregnable, as the cliffs could not be scaled
by any formed body. The Lower Town, however, was by no
means so safe, in spite of its two barricades. The general
uproar was now so great that Carleton could not distinguish
the firing there from what was going on elsewhere. But
it was at these two points that the real attack was
rapidly developing.

The first decisive action took place at Pres-de-Ville.
The guard there consisted of fifty men--John Coffin, who
was a merchant of Quebec, Sergeant Hugh McQuarters of
the Royal Artillery, Captain Barnsfair, a merchant skipper,
with fifteen mates and skippers like himself, and thirty
French Canadians under Captain Chabot and Lieutenant
Picard. These fifty men had to guard a front of only as
many feet. On their right Cape Diamond rose almost sheer.
On their left raged the stormy St Lawrence. They had a
tiny block-house next to the cliff and four small guns
on the barricade, all double-charged