The English spent some days in preparing their camp and reconnoitring the ground.  Then Scott, with five hundred provincials, seized upon a ridge within easy range of the works.  An officer named Vannes came out to oppose him with a hundred and eighty men, boasting that he would do great things; but on seeing the enemy, quietly returned, to become the laughing-stock of the garrison.  The fort fired furiously, but with little effect.  In the night of the thirteenth, Winslow, with a part of his own battalion, relieved Scott, and planted in the trenches two small mortars, brought to the camp on carts.  On the next day they opened fire.  One of them was disabled by the French cannon, but Captain Hazen brought up two more, of larger size, on ox-wagons; and, in spite of heavy rain, the fire was brisk on both sides.

Captain Rous, on board his ship in the harbor, watched the bombardment with great interest.  Having occasion to write to Winslow, he closed his letter in a facetious strain.  “I often hear of your success in plunder, particularly a coach.[257] I hope you have some fine horses for it, at least four, to draw it, that it may be said a New England colonel [rode in] his coach and four in Nova Scotia.  If you have any good saddle-horses in your stable, I should be obliged to you for one to ride round the ship’s deck on for exercise, for I am not likely to have any other.”

[Footnote 257:  “11 June.  Capt.  Adams went with a Company of Raingers, and Returned at 11 Clock with a Coach and Sum other Plunder.” Journal of John Thomas.]

Within the fort there was little promise of a strong defence.  Le Loutre, it is true, was to be seen in his shirt-sleeves, with a pipe in his mouth, directing the Acadians in their work of strengthening the fortifications.[258] They, on their part, thought more of escape than of fighting.  Some of them vainly begged to be allowed to go home; others went off without leave,—­which was not difficult, as only one side of the place was attacked.  Even among the officers there were some in whom interest was stronger than honor, and who would rather rob the King than die for him.  The general discouragement was redoubled when, on the fourteenth, a letter came from the commandant of Louisbourg to say that he could send no help, as British ships blocked the way.  On the morning of the sixteenth, a mischance befell, recorded in these words in the diary of Surgeon John Thomas:  “One of our large shells fell through what they called their bomb-proof, where a number of their officers were sitting, killed six of them dead, and one Ensign Hay, which the Indians had took prisoner a few days agone and carried to the fort.”  The party was at breakfast when the unwelcome visitor burst in.  Just opposite was a second bomb-proof, where was Vergor himself, with Le Loutre, another priest, and several officers, who felt that they might at any time share the same fate.  The effect was immediate.  The English,