alm was not the enemy to let the chance of Loudon's absence from
the scene of action pass unimproved. While Loudon is pottering at
Halifax, Montcalm marshals his troops to the {249} number of eight
thousand, including one thousand Indians at Carillon or Ticonderoga,
where Lake George empties into Lake Champlain. Portaging two hundred
and fifty flatboats with as many birch canoes up the river, the French
invade the mountain wilderness of Lake George. Towards the end of
July, Levis leads part of the troops by land up the west shore towards
the English post of Fort William Henry. Montcalm advances on the lake
with the flatboats and canoes, and the rafts with the heavy artillery.
Each night Levis' troops kindle their signal fires on the mountain
slope, and each night Montcalm from the lake signals back with torches.
It needs artist's brush to paint the picture: the forested mountains
green and lonely and silent in the shimmering sunlight of the summer
sky; the lake gold as molten metal in the fire of the setting sun; the
soldiers in their gay uniforms of white and blue, hoisting tent cloths
on oar sweeps for sails as a breeze dimples the waters; the French
voyageurs clad in beaded buckskin chanting some ditty of Old-World fame
to the rhythmic dip of the Indian paddles; the Indians naked, painted
for war, with a glitter in their eyes of a sinister intent which they
have no mind to tell Montcalm; and then, at the south of Lake George,
nestling between the hills and the water, the little palisaded
fort,--Fort William Henry,--with gates fast shut and two thousand
bushfighters behind the walls, weak from an epidemic of smallpox, and,
as usual, so short of provisions that siege means starvation.

{250} Twenty miles southeastward is another English fort,--Fort
Edward,--where General Webb with sixteen hundred men is keeping the
road barred against advance to Albany. Soon as scouts bring word to
Fort William Henry of the advancing French, Lieutenant Monro sends
frantic appeal to Webb for more men; but Webb has already sent all the
men he can spare. If he leaves Fort Edward, the French by a flank
movement through the woods can march on Albany, so Monro unplugs his
seventeen cannon, locks his gates, and bides his fate.

Montcalm follows the same tactics as at Oswego,--brings heavy artillery
against slab walls. For the first week of August, eight hundred of his
men are digging trenches by night to avoid giving target for the fie