He was still on board the “Sutherland.”  Every preparation was made, and every order given; it only remained to wait the turning of the tide.  Seated with him in the cabin was the commander of the sloop-of-war “Porcupine,” his former school-fellow, John Jervis, afterwards Earl St. Vincent.  Wolfe told him that he expected to die in the battle of the next day; and taking from his bosom a miniature of Miss Lowther, his betrothed, he gave it to him with a request that he would return it to her if the presentiment should prove true.[770]

[Footnote 770:  Tucker, Life of Earl St. Vincent, I. 19. (London, 1844.)]

Towards two o’clock the tide began to ebb, and a fresh wind blew down the river.  Two lanterns were raised into the maintop shrouds of the “Sutherland.”  It was the appointed signal; the boats cast off and fell down with the current, those of the light infantry leading the way.  The vessels with the rest of the troops had orders to follow a little later.

To look for a moment at the chances on which this bold adventure hung.  First, the deserters told Wolfe that provision-boats were ordered to go down to Quebec that night; secondly, Bougainville countermanded them; thirdly, the sentries posted along the heights were told of the order, but not of the countermand;[771] fourthly, Vergor at the Anse du Foulon had permitted most of his men, chiefly Canadians from Lorette, to go home for a time and work at their harvesting, on condition, it is said, that they should afterwards work in a neighboring field of his own;[772] fifthly, he kept careless watch, and went quietly to bed; sixthly, the battalion of Guienne, ordered to take post on the Plains of Abraham, had, for reasons unexplained, remained encamped by the St. Charles;[773] and lastly, when Bougainville saw Holmes’s vessels drift down the stream, he did not tax his weary troops to follow them, thinking that they would return as usual with the flood tide.[774] But for these conspiring circumstances New France might have lived a little longer, and the fruitless heroism of Wolfe would have passed, with countless other heroisms, into oblivion.

[Footnote 771:  Journal tenu a l’Armee, etc.]

[Footnote 772:  Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760.]

[Footnote 773:  Foligny, Journal memoratif.  Journal a l’Armee, etc.]

[Footnote 774:  Johnstone, Dialogue.  Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Oct.1759.]

For full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence.  The stars were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark.  The General was in one of the foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John Robison, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.  He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard to the officers about him.  Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of his thoughts.  Among the rest was the verse which his own fate was soon to illustrate,—­