on before daylight of
July 6 to the landing place. The Rangers had brought in word that
Levis was coming posthaste to Montcalm's aid. Abercrombie thought to
defeat Montcalm before reenforcements could come; and now he committed
his cardinal error. He advanced across the portage without his heavy
artillery. Halfway over, the voice of the French scouts rang out, "Who
goes there?" "French," answer the English soldiers; but the French
were not tricked. The ambushed scouts fired. Lord Howe, the very
spirit of the English army, dropped dead, shot through the breast,
though the English avenged his loss by cutting the French scouts to
pieces. On the night of the 7th the English army bivouacked in sight
of the French barricade. Promptly at twelve o'clock next day a cannon
shot from Ticonderoga brought every Frenchman behind the tree line to
his place at a leap. Abercrombie had ordered his men to rush the
barricade. There was fearful silence till the English were within
twenty paces of the trees. There they broke from quick march to a run
with a wild halloo! Death unerring blazed from the French
barricade,--not bullets only, but broken glass and ragged metal that
tore hideous wounds in the ranks of the English. Caught in the
brushwood, unable even to see their foes, the maddened troops wavered
and fell back. Again Abercrombie roared the order to charge. Six
times they hurled themselves against the impassable wall, and six times
the sharpshooters behind the lines met the advance with a rain of fire.
The Highland troops to the right went almost mad. Lord John Murray,
their commander, had fallen, and not a tenth of their number remained
unwounded; but the broadswords wrought small havoc against the spiked
branches of the log barricade. Obstinate as he was stupid, Abercrombie
kept his men at the bloody but futile attempt till the sun had set
behind the mountains, etching the sad scene with the long painted
shadows. Already almost two thousand English had fallen,--seven
hundred killed, the rest wounded. The French behind the barricade,
where Montcalm marched up and down in his shirt {259} sleeves, grimed
with smoke, encouraging the men, had lost less than four hundred. In a
spirit of hilarious bravado a young Frenchman sprang to the top of the
barricade and waved a coat on the end of his bayonet. Mistaking it for
a flag of surrender, the English ceased firing and dashed up with
muskets held on the horizontal abov