e the fort and just below the rapids, a bridge
spanned the river. A saw-mill stood beside it: and here Montcalm had
crossed and taken up his quarters, pushing forward Bourlamaque to
guard the upper end of the rapids, and holding Langy ready with three
hundred rangers to patrol the woods on the outer side of the river's
loop.

But when his scouts and Indians came in with the news of the British
embarking on the upper shore, and with reports of their multitude,
Montcalm perceived that the river could not be held; and, having
recalled Bourlamaque and broken down the bridges above and below the
rapids, withdrew his force again to Ticonderoga, leaving only Langy's
rangers in the farther woods to feel the enemy's approach.

Next he had to ask himself, Could the fort be defended? All agreed
that it could not, with Rattlesnake Mountain overtopping it: and the
most were for evacuating it and retiring up Lake Champlain to the
stronger French fort on Crown Point. But Montcalm was expecting
Levis at any moment with reinforcements; and studying the ridge at
the extreme end of which the fort stood, he decided that the position
ought not to be abandoned. This ridge ran inland, its slope narrowed
on either side between the river and the lake by swamps, and
approachable only from landward over the _col_, where it broadened
and dipped to the foothills. Here, at the entrance to the ridge, and
half a mile from his fort, he commanded his men to throw up an
entrenchment and cut down trees; and while the sappers fell to work
he traced out the lines of a rude star-fort, with curtains and
jutting angles from which the curtains could be enfiladed.
Through the dawn, while the British slept in the woods, the Frenchmen
laboured, hacking and felling. Scores of trees they left to lie and
encumber the ground: others they dragged, unlopped, to the
entrenchment, and piled them before it, trunks inward and radiating
from its angles; lacing their boughs together or roughly pointing
them with a few strokes of the axe.

In the growing daylight the _chevaux-de-frise_ began to look
formidable; but Bourlamaque, watching it with Montcalm, shook his
head, hunched his shoulders, and jerked a thumb toward a spur of
Rattlesnake Mountain, by which their defences were glaringly
commanded.

Montcalm said, "We will risk it. Those English Generals are
inconceivable."

"But a cannon or two--"

"If he think of them! Believe me, who have tried: you never k