From his
ship above Quebec Wolfe could see there was one path just behind the
city where men might ascend to the Plains of Abraham outside the rear
wall, but the path was guarded, and Bougainville's troops patrolled
westward as far as Cape Rouge.

[Illustration: LOUIS JOSEPH, MARQUIS DE MONTCALM]

It was now September. From their trenches above the river the French
could see the English evacuating camp at Montmorency. They were
jubilant. Surely the English were giving up the siege. Night after
night English transports loaded with soldiers ascended the St. Lawrence
above Quebec. What did it mean? Was it a feint to draw Montcalm's men
away from the east side? {269} The French general was sleeplessly
anxious. He had not passed a night in bed since the end of June. The
fall rains were beginning, and another month of work in the trenches
meant half the army invalided.

The most of the English fleet was working up and down with the tide
between the western limits of Quebec and Cape Rouge, nine miles away.
Bougainville's force was increased to three thousand men, and he was
ordered to keep especial watch westward. The steepness of the
precipice was guard enough near the town. Wednesday, the 12th of
September, the English troops were ordered to hold themselves in
readiness. They passed the day cleaning their arms, and were ordered
not to speak after nightfall or permit a sound to be heard from the
ranks. Admiral Saunders with the main fleet was to feign attack on the
east side of the city. Admiral Holmes with Wolfe's army, now numbering
not four thousand men, was to glide down with the tide from Cape Rouge
above Quebec. Because the main fleet lay on the east side Montcalm
felt sure the attack would come from that quarter. Deserters had
brought word to Wolfe that some flatboats with provisions were coming
down the river to Quebec that night.

Here, then, the position! Saunders on the east side, opposite
Beauport, feigning attack; Montcalm watching him from the Beauport
cliffs; Wolfe nine miles up the river west of the city; Bougainville
watching him, watching too for those provisions, for Quebec was down to
empty larder.

It is said that as Wolfe rested in his ship, the _Sutherland_, off Cape
Rouge, he felt strange premonition of approaching death, and repeated
the words of Gray's "Elegy,"--"The paths of glory lead but to the
grave,"--but this has been denied. Certainly he had such strange
consciousness