e St. Lawrence, now
pausing to sound where the yellow riffle of the current shows shallows,
now following the course staked out by flags, here depending on the
Frenchman, whom they have compelled to act as pilot! Nightly from hill
to hill the signal fires leap to the sky, till one flames from Cape
Tourmente, and Quebec learns that the English are surely very near.
Among the Englishmen who are out in the advance boats sounding is a
young man, James Cook, destined to become a great navigator.

June 25, sail after sail, frigate after frigate bristling with cannon,
literally swarming with soldiers and marines, glide round the end of
Orleans Island through driving rain and a squall, and to clatter of
anchor chains and rattle of falling sails, come to rest. "Pray Heaven
they be wrecked as Sir Hovenden Walker's fleet was wrecked long ago,"
sigh the nuns of Quebec. If they had {264} prayed half as hard that
their corrupt rulers, their Bigots and their kings and their painted
women whose nod could set Europe on fire with war,--if the holy
sisterhood had prayed for this gang of vampires whose vices had brought
doom to the land, to be swallowed in some abyss, their prayers might
have been more effective with Heaven.

Next day a band of rangers lands from Wolfe's ships and finds the
Island of Orleans deserted. On the church door the cure has pinned a
note, asking the English not to molest his church; and expressing
sardonic regret that the invaders have not come soon enough to enjoy
the fresh vegetables of his garden.

Wolfe for the first time gazes on the prize of his highest
ambition,--Quebec. He is at Orleans, facing the city. To his right is
the cataract of Montmorency. From the falls past Beauport to St.
Charles River, the St. Lawrence banks are high cliffs. Above the
cliffs are Montcalm's intrenched fighters. Then the north shore of the
St. Lawrence suddenly sheers up beyond St. Charles River into a lofty,
steep precipice. The precipice is Quebec City: Upper Town and the
convents and the ramparts and Castle St. Louis nestling on an upper
ledge of the rock below Cape Diamond; Lower Town crowding between the
foot of the precipice and tide water. Look again how the St. Lawrence
turns in a sharp angle at the precipice. Three sides of the city are
water,--St. Charles River nearest Wolfe, then the St. Lawrence across
the steep face of the rock, then the St. Lawrence again along a still
steeper precipice to the far s