Levis and his army were no less busy in digging trenches along the stony back of the Buttes-a-Neveu.  Every day the English fire grew hotter; till at last nearly a hundred and fifty cannon vomited iron upon them from the walls of Quebec, and May was well advanced before they could plant a single gun to reply.  Their vessels had landed artillery at the Anse du Foulon; but their best hope lay in the succors they daily expected from the river below.  In the autumn Levis, with a view to his intended enterprise, had sent a request to Versailles that a ship laden with munitions and heavy siege-guns should be sent from France in time to meet him at Quebec in April; while he looked also for another ship, which had wintered at Gaspe, and which therefore might reach him as soon as navigation opened.  The arrival of these vessels would have made the position of the English doubly critical; and, on the other hand, should an English squadron appear first, Levis would be forced to raise the siege.  Thus each side watched the river with an anxiety that grew constantly more intense; and the English presently descried signals along the shore which seemed to say that French ships were moving up the St. Lawrence.  Meantime, while doing their best to compass each other’s destruction, neither side forgot the courtesies of war.  Levis heard that Murray liked spruce-beer for his table, and sent him a flag of truce with a quantity of spruce-boughs and a message of compliment; Murray responded with a Cheshire cheese, and Levis rejoined with a present of partridges.

Bad and scanty fare, excessive toil, and broken sleep were telling ominously on the strength of the garrison when, on the ninth of May, Murray, as he sat pondering over the fire at his quarters in St. Louis Street, was interrupted by an officer who came to tell him that there was a ship-of-war in the Basin beating up towards the town.  Murray started from his revery, and directed that British colors should be raised immediately on Cape Diamond.[834] The halyards being out of order, a sailor climbed the staff and drew up the flag to its place.  The news had spread; men and officers, divided between hope and fear, crowded to the rampart by the Chateau, where Durham Terrace now overlooks the St. Lawrence, and every eye was strained on the approaching ship, eager to see whether she would show the red flag of England or the white one of France.  Slowly her colors rose to the mast-head and unfurled to the wind the red cross of St. George.  It was the British frigate “Lowestoffe.”  She anchored before the Lower Town, and saluted the garrison with twenty-one guns.  “The gladness of the troops,” says Knox, “is not to be expressed.  Both officers and soldiers mounted the parapet in the face of the enemy and huzzaed with their hats in the air for almost an hour.  The garrison, the enemy’s camp, the bay, and circumjacent country resounded with our shouts and the thunder of our artillery; for the gunners were so elated that