the English cannon begin to do business. In a single
day half the houses of Lower Town are battered to bits, and high-tossed
bombs have plunged through roofs of Upper Town, burning the cathedral
and setting a multitude of lesser buildings on fire. In the confusion
of cannonade and counter-cannonade and a city on fire, shrouding the
ruins in a pall of smoke, some English ships slip up the river beyond
Quebec, but there the precipice of the river bank is still steeper, and
Bougainville is on guard with two thousand men. For thirty miles
around the English rangers have laid the country waste. Still Montcalm
refuses to come out and fight.

The enforced inaction exasperates Wolfe, whose health is failing him,
and who sees the season passing, no nearer the object of his ambition
than when he came. As he had stormed the batteries of Louisburg, so
now he decides to storm the heights of Montmorency. To any one who has
stood on the knob of rock above the gorge where the cataract plunges to
the St. Lawrence, or has scrambled down the bank slippery with spray,
and watched the black underpool whirl out to the river, Wolfe's venture
must seem madness; for French troops lined the intrenchments above the
cliff, and below a redoubt or battery had been built. Below the
cataract, when the tide ebbed, was a place which might be forded. From
sunrise to sunset all the last days of July, Wolfe's cannon boomed from
Levis across the city, from the fleet in mid channel, from the land
camp on the east side of Montmorency. Montcalm rightly guessed, this
presaged a night assault. To hide his design, Wolfe kept his
transports shifting up and down the St. Lawrence, as if to land at
Beauport halfway to the city. All the same, two armed transports, as
if by chance, managed to get themselves stranded just opposite the
redoubt below the cliff, where their cannon would protect a landing.
Montcalm saw the move and strengthened the troops behind the earthworks
on the {267} top of the cliff. Toward sunset the tide ebbed, and at
that time cannon were firing from all points with such fury that the
St. Lawrence lay hidden in smoke. As the air cleared, two thousand men
were seen wading and fording below the falls. There was a rush of the
tall grenadiers for the redoubt. The French retreated firing, and the
cliff above poured down an avalanche of shots. At that moment Wolfe
suffered a cruel and unforeseen check. A frightful thunderstorm burst
on