ides to fetch a circuit through the
woods and open a feint attack in the rear of the fort, prepared for a
general assault. But first he resolved to summon the garrison again.

To carry his message he chose the same officer as before, a Captain
Muspratt of the Forty-fourth Regiment.

Now as yet the cannonade had not slackened, and it chanced that as
the General gave Muspratt his instructions, an artillery sergeant in
command of a battery of mortars on the left, which had been advanced
within two hundred yards of the walls, elevated one of his pieces and
lobbed a bomb clean over the summit of the flagstaff tower.

It was a fancy shot, fired--as the army learnt afterwards--for a
wager; but its effect staggered all who watched it. The fuse was
quick, and the bomb, mounting on its high curve, exploded in a direct
line between the battery and the flagstaff. One or two men from the
neighbouring guns shouted bravos. The sergeant slapped his thigh and
was turning for congratulations, but suddenly paused, stock-still and
staring upward.

The flagstaff stood, apparently untouched. But what had become of
the flag?

A moment before it had been floating proudly enough, shaking its
folds loose to the light breeze. Now it was gone. Had the explosion
blown it to atoms? Not a shred of it floated away on the wind.

A man on the sergeant's right called out positively that a couple of
seconds after the explosion, and while the smoke was clearing, he had
caught a glimpse of something white--something which looked like a
flag--close by the foot of the staff; and that an arm had reached up
and drawn it down hurriedly. He would swear to the arm; he had seen
it distinctly above the edge of the battlements. In his opinion the
fort was surrendering, and someone aloft there had been pulling down
the flag as the bomb burst.

The General, occupied for the moment in giving Captain Muspratt his
instructions, had not witnessed the shot. But he turned at the shout
which followed, caught sight of the bare flagstaff, and ordering his
bugler to sound the "Cease firing," sent forward the captain at once
to parley.

With Muspratt went a sergeant of the Forty-sixth and a bugler.
The sergeant carried a white flag. Ascending the slope briskly, they
were met at the gate by M. Etienne.

The sudden disappearance of the flag above the tower had mystified
the garrison no less thoroughly than the British. They knew the
Commandant to be aloft t