pers. But they had failed in their designs, for all my valuable
documents--and those desired by Doltaire among them--remained safe in
the Governor's strong-room.

I got away again for Quebec five days after reaching Louisburg. We came
along with good winds, having no check, though twice we sighted French
sloops, which, however, seemed most concerned to leave us to ourselves.
At last, with colours flying, we sighted Kamaraska Isles, which I
saluted, remembering the Chevalier de la Darante; then Isle aux Coudres,
below which we poor fugitives came so near disaster. Here we all felt
new fervour, for the British flag flew from a staff on a lofty point,
tents were pitched thereon in a pretty cluster, and, rounding a point,
we came plump upon Admiral Durell's little fleet, which was here to bar
advance of French ships and to waylay stragglers.

On a blithe summer day we sighted, far off, the Island of Orleans and
the tall masts of two patrol ships of war, which in due time we passed,
saluting, and ran abreast of the island in the North Channel. Coming up
this passage, I could see on an eminence, far distant, the tower of the
Chateau Alixe.

Presently there opened on our sight the great bluff at the Falls of
Montmorenci, and, crowning it, tents and batteries, the camp of General
Wolfe himself, with the good ship Centurion standing off like a sentinel
at a point where the Basin, the River Montmorenci, and the North Channel
seem to meet. To our left, across the shoals, was Major Hardy's post, on
the extreme eastern point of the Isle Orleans; and again beyond that, in
a straight line, Point Levis on the south shore, where Brigadier-General
Monckton's camp was pitched; and farther on his batteries, from which
shell and shot were poured into the town. How all had changed in the two
months since I left there! Around the Seigneur Duvarney's manor, in the
sweet village of Beauport, was encamped the French army, and redoubts
and batteries were ranged where Alixe and I and her brother Juste had
many a time walked in a sylvan quiet. Here, as it were, round the bent
and broken sides of a bowl, war raged, and the centre was like some
caldron out of which imps of ships sprang and sailed to hand up fires of
hell to the battalions on the ledges. Here swung Admiral Saunders's and
Admiral Holmes's divisions, out of reach of the French batteries, yet
able to menace and destroy, and to feed the British camps with men and
munitions. There was no