nsports brought
troops up the St Lawrence from Boston or the mother
country, and no vessel brought Carleton down. The loyalists
were, however, encouraged by the presence of two small
men-of-war, one of which, the _Hunter_, had been the
guide-ship for Wolfe's boat the night before the Battle
of the Plains. Some minor reinforcements also kept
arriving: veterans from the border settlements and a
hundred and fifty men from Newfoundland. On the 3rd of
November, the day St Johns surrendered to Montgomery, an
intercepted dispatch had warned Cramahe of Arnold's
approach and led him to seize all the boats on the south
shore opposite Quebec. This was by no means his first
precaution. He had sent some men forty miles up the
Chaudiere as soon as the news of the raids on Lake
Champlain and St Johns had arrived at the end of May.
Thus, though neither of them had anticipated such a bolt
from the blue, both Carleton and Cramahe had taken all
the reasonable means within their most restricted power
to provide against unforeseen contingencies.

Arnold's chance of surprising Quebec had been lost ten
days before he was able to cross the St Lawrence; and
when the habitants on the south shore were helping his
men to make scaling-ladders the British garrison on the
north had already become too strong for him. But he was
indefatigable in collecting boats and canoes at the mouth
of the Chaudiere, and at other points higher up than
Cramahe's men had reached when on their mission of
destruction or removal, and he was as capable as ever
when, on the pitch-black night of the 13th, he led his
little flotilla through the gap between the two British
men-of-war, the _Hunter_ and the _Lizard_. The next day
he marched across the Plains of Abraham and saluted Quebec
with three cheers. But meanwhile Colonel Maclean, who
had set out to help Carleton at Montreal and turned back
on hearing the news of St Johns, had slipped into Quebec
on the 12th. So Arnold found himself with less than seven
hundred effectives against the eleven hundred British
who were now behind the walls. After vainly summoning
the city to surrender he retired to Pointe-aux-Trembles,
more than twenty miles up the north shore of the St
Lawrence, there to await the arrival of the victorious
Montgomery.

Meanwhile Montgomery was racing for Carleton and Carleton
was racing for Quebec. Montgomery's advance-guard had
hurried on to Sorel, at the mouth of the Richelieu,
forty-five miles