Deep silence fell upon them both, and then Wolfe spoke gently.

“That would, indeed, be a glorious day! though I, a soldier trained to arms, say it.  But I fear me I shall never live to see it.”

Julian was silent awhile, and then said slowly: 

“We cannot tell.  Of that day and hour knoweth no man.  All we know is that it will come, and will come suddenly.  I have lived amongst those who looked to see it from day to day.  They had been waiting and watching for the Lord’s coming through hard upon a century, they and their fathers before them.  The hope was beginning to fade and die out.  Priests had come amongst them who bid them think of other things, and look no farther than the sacrifice of the Mass, daily offered before their eyes.  And yet I used to feel that the other was the fuller, more glorious hope.  I think I shall cherish it always.”

“I would were I you,” answered Wolfe in a low voice.  “I think it is that which has made you different from other men.  I think that if I were to be dying, Julian, I should like to hold your hand in mine and feel that you were near.”

Then the two friends pressed each other by the hand, and walked back to the camp.  As Julian had said, there were many French prisoners there, brought in from time to time after skirmishes.  They were treated exactly the same as the English wounded, and Wolfe made a point of visiting them daily, talking to them in their own tongue, and promising them a speedy exchange when any negotiation should be opened with the town.  Julian, too, went much amongst them, able to win their confidence very easily, since he seemed to them almost like a brother.  It was quite an easy thing for him to disguise himself in the white uniform of a French soldier, and to creep, under cover of the darkness, closer and closer to the wall of the town.

It so chanced that he could not have chosen a better night for his enterprise.  The booming of guns across the harbour and from the batteries behind had now become constant, and attracted little notice from sentries or soldiers beyond range.  But just as darkness began to fall, a shell from Wolfe’s newly-planted battery fell upon one of the French ships in the harbour, and set her on fire.  The glare rose in the sky, and suddenly there was the sound of an explosion, sparks rose in dense clouds into the air, and the ship plunged like a wild creature in terror, broke from her moorings, and drifted alongside a sister ship.  The flames spread to her rigging, and in a few minutes both were ablaze; and before the affrighted and bewildered crews could do anything to prevent it, a third vessel had become involved in the conflagration, and the town was illumined by the pillars of flame which shot up from the still waters of the harbour.

All was confusion and dismay, for the French had no ships to spare.  Four had been deliberately sunk in the harbour’s mouth to prevent the entrance of the English, and here were three all in a blaze.  The soldiers and inhabitants rushed madly down to the water’s edge to seek to stay the conflagration, and Julian, seizing his opportunity, rushed through the gateway with a small detachment of men from one of the outside batteries, and found himself within the town without having been so much as challenged.