cade flashed to flame with a
thousand sharpshooters. Wolfe had foreseen the snare and had waved his
{254} troops off when he noticed that two boat loads were rowing ashore
through a tremendous surf under shelter of a rocky point. Quickly he
signaled the other boats to follow. In a trice the boats had smashed
to kindling on the reefs, but the men were wading ashore, muskets held
high over head, powder pouches in teeth, and rushed with bayonets
leveled against the French, who had dashed from cover to prevent the
landing. This unexpected landing had cut the French off from
Louisburg. Retreating in panic, they abandoned their batteries and
fifty dead. The English had lost one hundred and nine in the surf. It
is said that Wolfe scrambled from the water like a drowned rat and led
the rush with no other weapon in hand but his cane.

[Illustration: THE SIEGE OF LOUISBURG (From a contemporary print)]

To land the guns through the jostling sea was the next task. It was
done, as in 1745, by a pontoon bridge of small boats, but the work took
till the 29th of June. Wolfe, meanwhile, has marched with twelve
hundred men round to the rear of the marsh and comes so suddenly on the
Grand and Lighthouse Batteries, which defend the harbor, that the
French abandon them to retreat within the walls. This gives the
English such control of the harbor entrance that Drucourt, the French
commander, sinks six of his ships across the channel to bar out
Boscawen's fleet, the masts of the sunken, vessels sticking above the
water. Amherst's men are working like demons, building a road for the
cannon across the marsh and trenching up to the back wall; but they
work only at night and are undiscovered by the French till the 9th of
July. Then the French rush out with a whoop to drive them off, but the
English already have their guns mounted, and Drucourt's men are glad to
dash for shelter behind the cracking walls. It now became a game of
cannon play pure and simple. Boscawen from harbor front hurls his
whistling bombs overhead, to crash through roofs inside the walls.
Wolfe from the Lighthouse Battery throws shells and flaming
combustibles straight into the midst of the remaining French fleet. At
last, on July 21st, masts, sails, tar ropes, take fire in a terrible
conflagration, and three of the fleet burn to the water line with
terrific explosions of their powder magazines; then the flames hiss out
above {255} the rocking hulls. Only tw