hem to their duty, working at
the batteries with the barrow, pickaxe, and spade." The effect,
however, was admirable. The spirit of the men rose to the crisis.
Murray, no less than his officers, had all their confidence; for if
he had fallen into a fatal error, he atoned for it now by unconquerable
resolution and exhaustless fertility of resource. Deserters said that
Levis would assault the town; and the soldiers replied: "Let him come on;
he will catch a Tartar."

Levis and his army were no less busy in digging trenches
along the stony back of the Buttes-a-Neveu. Every day the
English fire grew hotter; till at last nearly a hundred and fifty
cannon vomited iron upon them from the walls of Quebec,
and May was well advanced before they could plant a single
gun to reply. Their vessels had landed artillery at the Anse
du Foulon; but their best hope lay in the succors they daily
expected from the river below. In the autumn Levis, with a
view to his intended enterprise, had sent a request to Versailles
that a ship laden with munitions and heavy siege-guns should be sent
from France in time to meet him at Quebec in April; while he looked
also for another ship, which had wintered at Gaspe, and which therefore
might reach him as soon as navigation opened. The arrival of these
vessels would have made the position of the English doubly critical; and,
on the other hand, should an English squadron appear first,
Levis would be forced to raise the siege. Thus each side
watched the river with an anxiety that grew constantly more
intense; and the English presently descried signals along the
shore which seemed to say that French ships were moving
up the St. Lawrence. Meantime, while doing their best to
compass each other's destruction, neither side forgot the
courtesies of war. Levis heard that Murray liked spruce-beer
for his table, and sent him a flag of truce with a quantity of
spruce-boughs and a message of compliment; Murray responded
with a Cheshire cheese, and Levis rejoined with a present of
partridges.

Bad and scanty fare, excessive toil, and broken sleep were
telling ominously on the strength of the garrison when, on the
ninth of May, Murray, as he sat pondering over the fire at
his quarters in St. Louis Street, was interrupted by an officer
who came to tell him that there was a ship-of-war in the
Basin beating up towards the town. Murray started from his
revery, and directed that British colors should be raised immediat