led at speed for the patch of muddy foreshore already
selected. The Grenadiers and Royal Americans leaped ashore in the mud,
and--waiting neither for orders, nor leaders, nor supports--dashed up the
hill to storm the redoubt. They reached the first redoubt, tumbled over
it and through it, only to find themselves breathless in a semi-circle of
fire. The men fell fast, but yet struggled fiercely upwards. A furious
storm of rain broke over the combatants at that moment, and made the
steep grass-covered slope as slippery as mere glass. "We could not see
half-way down the hill," writes the French officer in command of the
battery on the summit. But through the smoke and the driving rain they
could still see the Grenadiers and Royal Americans in ragged clusters,
scarce able to stand, yet striving desperately to climb upwards. The
reckless ardour of the Grenadiers had spoiled Wolfe's attack, the sudden
storm helped to save the French, and Wolfe withdrew his broken but
furious battalions, having lost some 500 of his best men and officers.

The exultant French regarded the siege as practically over; but Wolfe was
a man of heroic and quenchless tenacity, and never so dangerous as when
he seemed to be in the last straits. He held doggedly on, in spite of
cold and tempest and disease. His own frail body broke down, and for the
first time the shadow of depression fell on the British camps when they
no longer saw the red head and lean and scraggy body of their general
moving amongst them. For a week, between August 22 and August 29, he lay
apparently a dying man, his face, with its curious angles, white with
pain and haggard with disease. But he struggled out again, and framed
yet new plans of attack. On September 10 the captains of the men-of-war
held a council on board the flagship, and resolved that the approach of
winter required the fleet to leave Quebec without delay. By this time,
too, Wolfe's scanty force was diminished one-seventh by disease or losses
in battle. Wolfe, however had now formed the plan which ultimately gave
him success, though at the cost of his own life.

From a tiny little cove, now known as Wolfe's Cove, five miles to the
west of Quebec, a path, scarcely accessible to a goat, climbs up the face
of the great cliff, nearly 250 feet high. The place was so inaccessible
that only a post of 100 men kept guard over it. Up that track, in the
blackness of the night, Wolfe resolved to lead his army to