It was Sunday, the twentieth.  Everything was quiet till noon, when the French filed out of the woods and marched across the ice in procession, ostentatiously carrying their scaling-ladders, and showing themselves to the best effect.  They stopped at a safe distance, fronting towards the fort, and several of them advanced, waving a red flag.  An officer with a few men went to meet them, and returned bringing Le Mercier, chief of the Canadian artillery, who, being led blindfold into the fort, announced himself as bearer of a message from Rigaud.  He was conducted to the room of Major Eyre, where all the British officers were assembled; and, after mutual compliments, he invited them to give up the place peaceably, promising the most favorable terms, and threatening a general assault and massacre in case of refusal.  Eyre said that he should defend himself to the last; and the envoy, again blindfolded, was led back to whence he came.

The whole French force now advanced as if to storm the works, and the garrison prepared to receive them.  Nothing came of it but a fusillade, to which the British made no reply.  At night the French were heard advancing again, and each man nerved himself for the crisis.  The real attack, however, was not against the fort, but against the buildings outside, which consisted of several storehouses, a hospital, a saw-mill, and the huts of the rangers, besides a sloop on the stocks and piles of planks and cord-wood.  Covered by the night, the assailants crept up with fagots of resinous sticks, placed them against the farther side of the buildings, kindled them, and escaped before the flame rose; while the garrison, straining their ears in the thick darkness, fired wherever they heard a sound.  Before morning all around them was in a blaze, and they had much ado to save the fort barracks from the shower of burning cinders.  At ten o’clock the fires had subsided, and a thick fall of snow began, filling the air with a restless chaos of large moist flakes.  This lasted all day and all the next night, till the ground and the ice were covered to a depth of three feet and more.  The French lay close in their camps till a little before dawn on Tuesday morning, when twenty volunteers from the regulars made a bold attempt to burn the sloop on the stocks, with several storehouses and other structures, and several hundred scows and whaleboats which had thus far escaped.  They were only in part successful; but they fired the sloop and some buildings near it, and stood far out on the ice watching the flaming vessel, a superb bonfire amid the wilderness of snow.  The spectacle cost the volunteers a fourth of their number killed and wounded.

On Wednesday morning the sun rose bright on a scene of wintry splendor, and the frozen lake was dotted with Rigaud’s retreating followers toiling towards Canada on snow-shoes.  Before they reached it many of them were blinded for a while by the insufferable glare, and their comrades led them homewards by the hand.[471]