summer storm.

With the utmost precipitation, without orders, and without waiting for
Monckton's brigade to come up, the grenadiers in front made a rush for
the redoubt near the foot of the hill. The French abandoned it; but the
assailants had no sooner gained their prize than the thronged heights
above blazed with musketry, and a tempest of bullets fell among them.
Nothing daunted, they dashed forward again, reserving their fire, and
struggling to climb the steep ascent; while, with yells and shouts of
_Vive le Roi!_ the troops and Canadians at the top poured upon them a
hailstorm of musket-balls and buckshot, and dead and wounded in numbers
rolled together down the slope. At that instant the clouds burst, and
the rain fell in torrents. "We could not see half way down the hill,"
says the Chevalier Johnstone, who was at this part of the line.
Ammunition was wet on both sides, and the grassy steeps became so
slippery that was impossible to climb them. The English say that the
storm saved the French; the French, with as much reason, that it saved
the English.

The baffled grenadiers drew back into the redoubt. Wolfe saw the madness
of persisting, and ordered a retreat. The rain ceased, and troops of
Indians came down the heights to scalp the fallen. Some of them ran
towards Lieutenant Peyton, of the Royal Americans, as he lay disabled by
a musket-shot. With his double-barrelled gun he brought down two of his
assailants, when a Highland sergeant snatched him in his arms, dragged
him half a mile over the mud-flats, and placed him in one of the boats.
A friend of Peyton, Captain Ochterlony, had received a mortal wound, and
an Indian would have scalped him but for the generous intrepidity of a
soldier of the battalion of Guienne; who, seizing the enraged savage,
held him back till several French officers interposed, and had the dying
man carried to a place of safety.

The English retreated in good order, after setting fire to the two
stranded vessels. Those of the grenadiers and Royal Americans who were
left alive rowed for the Point of Orleans; the fifteenth regiment rowed
for Point Levi; and the Highlanders, led by Wolfe himself, joined the
column from beyond the Montmorenci, placing themselves in its rear as it
slowly retired along the flats and across the ford, the Indians yelling
and the French shouting from the heights, while the British waved their
hats, daring them to come down and fight.

The grenadiers and the R