On the next night the attention of the excellent journalist was otherwise engaged.  Vaudreuil tried again to burn the English fleet.  “Late last night,” writes Knox, under date of the twenty-eighth, “the enemy sent down a most formidable fireraft, which consisted of a parcel of schooners, shallops, and stages chained together.  It could not be less than a hundred fathoms in length, and was covered with grenades, old swivels, gun and pistol barrels loaded up to their muzzles, and various other inventions and combustible matters.  This seemed to be their last attempt against our fleet, which happily miscarried, as before; for our gallant seamen, with their usual expertness, grappled them before they got down above a third part of the Basin, towed them safe to shore, and left them at anchor, continually repeating, All’s well.  A remarkable expression from some of these intrepid souls to their comrades on this occasion I must not omit, on account of its singular uncouthness; namely:  ’Damme, Jack, didst thee ever take hell in tow before?’”

According to a French account, this aquatic infernal machine consisted of seventy rafts, boats, and schooners.  Its failure was due to no shortcoming on the part of its conductors; who, under a brave Canadian named Courval, acted with coolness and resolution.  Nothing saved the fleet but the courage of the sailors, swarming out in their boats to fight the approaching conflagration.

It was now the end of July.  More than half the summer was gone, and Quebec seemed as far as ever beyond the grasp of Wolfe.  Its buildings were in ruins, and the neighboring parishes were burned and ravaged; but its living rampart, the army of Montcalm, still lay in patient defiance along the shores of Beauport, while above the city every point where a wildcat could climb the precipices was watched and guarded, and Dumas with a thousand men held the impregnable heights of Cap-Rouge.  Montcalm persisted in doing nothing that his enemy wished him to do.  He would not fight on Wolfe’s terms, and Wolfe resolved at last to fight him on his own; that is, to attack his camp in front.

The plan was desperate; for, after leaving troops enough to hold Point Levi and the heights of Montmorenci, less than five thousand men would be left to attack a position of commanding strength, where Montcalm at an hour’s notice could collect twice as many to oppose them.  But Wolfe had a boundless trust in the disciplined valor of his soldiers, and an utter scorn of the militia who made the greater part of his enemy’s force.

Towards the Montmorenci the borders of the St. Lawrence are, as we have seen, extremely high and steep.  At a mile from the gorge of the cataract there is, at high tide, a strand, about the eighth of a mile wide, between the foot of these heights and the river; and beyond this strand the receding tide lays bare a tract of mud nearly half a mile wide.  At the edge of the dry ground the French had built a redoubt