More British and Americans pressed to the wooden wall.  The new Black Watch, stalwart Scotchmen, bagpipes playing, charged over everything.  Two British columns made a powerful and tremendous attack upon the French right, where stood the valiant battalions of Bearn and Guienne.  It seemed, for a while, that they might overwhelm everything.  They were against the barrier itself, and were firing into the defense.  Montcalm rushed to the spot with all the reserves he could muster.  St. Luc sprang among the men and shouted to them to increase their fire.  This point became the center of the battle, and its full fury was concentrated there.  A mass of Highlanders, tearing at the wooden wall, refused to give back.  Though they fell fast, a captain climbed up the barrier.  Officers and men followed him.  They stood a moment on the crest as if to poise themselves, and then leaped down among the French, where they were killed.  Those who stood on the other side were swept by a hurricane of fire, and at last they yielded slowly.

Robert saw all, and he was seized with a great horror.  The army was not crashing over everything.  Those who entered the French works died there.  The wooden wall held.  Nowhere was the line of defense broken.  Boats loaded with troops coming down the outlet of Lake George to turn the French left were repelled by the muskets of the Canadian volunteers.  Some of the boats were sunk, and the soldiers struggled in the water, as cannon balls and bullets beat upon them.

His view of the field was blurred, for a while, by the smoke from so much firing, which floated in thickening clouds over all the open spaces and the edges of the forest.  It produced curious optical illusions.  The French loomed through it, increased fourfold in numbers, every individual man magnified in size.  He saw them lurid and gigantic, pulling the triggers of their rifles or muskets, or working the batteries.  The cannon also grew from twelve-pounders or eighteen-pounders into guns three or four times as large, and many stood where none had stood before.

The smoke continued to inflame his brain also, and it made him pass through great alternations of hope and fear.  Now the army was going to sweep over the wooden wall in spite of everything.  With sheer weight and bravery it would crush the French and take Ticonderoga.  It must be.  Because he wanted it to be, it was going to be.  Then he passed to the other extreme.  When one of the charges spent itself at the barrier, sending perhaps a few men over it, like foam from a wave that has reached its crest, his heart sank to the depths, and he was sure the British and Americans could not come again.  Mortal men would not offer themselves so often to slaughter.  If the firing died for a little space he was in deep despair, but his soul leaped up again as the charge came anew.  It was certainly victory this time.  Hope could not be crushed in him.  His vivid fancy made him hear above the triumphant shouts of the French the deep cheers of the advancing army, the beating of drums and the playing of invisible bands.