The tide carried the boats near the great wall of rock.  Woods made denser shade on the background of night.  The cautious murmur of the speaker was cut short.

“Who goes there?” came the sharp challenge of a French sentry.

The soldiers were silent as dead men.

“France!” answered Colonel Fraser in the same language.

“Of what regiment?”

“The Queen’s.”

The sentry was satisfied.  To the Queen’s regiment, stationed at Cap Rouge, belonged the duty of convoying provisions down to Quebec.  He did not further peril what he believed to be a French transport by asking for the password.

Jeannette breathed.  So low had she sunk that she would have used her language herself to get the Highland colonel past danger.

It was fortunate for his general that he had the accent and readiness of a Frenchman.  Again they were challenged.  They could see another sentry running parallel with their course.

“Provision boats,” this time answered the Highlander.  “Don’t make a noise.  The English will hear us.”

That hint was enough, for an English sloop of war lay within sound of their voices.

With the swift tide the boats shot around a headland, and here was a cove in the huge precipice, clothed with sere herbage and bushes and a few trees; steep, with the hint of a once-used path across it, but a little less perpendicular than the rest of the rock.  No sentinel was stationed at this place.

The world was just beginning to come out of positive shadow into the indistinctness of dawn.  Current and tide were so strong that the boats could not be steered directly to shore, but on the alluvial strip at the base of this cove they beached themselves with such success as they could.  Twenty-four men sprung out and ran to the ascent.  Their muskets were slung upon their backs.  A humid look was coming upon the earth, and blurs were over the fading stars.  The climbers separated, each making his own way from point to point of the slippery cliff, and swarms followed them as boat after boat discharged its load.  The cove by which he breached the stronghold of this continent, and which was from that day to bear his name, cast its shadow on the gaunt, upturned face of Wolfe.  He waited while the troops in whom he put his trust, with knotted muscles and panting breasts, lifted themselves to the top.  No orders were spoken.  Wolfe had issued instructions the night before, and England expected every man to do his duty.

There was not enough light to show how Canada was taken.  Jeannette Descheneaux stepped on the sand, and the single thought which took shape in her mind was that she must scale that ascent if the English scaled it.