quickly as it had arisen. The night fell black and moonless. Towards
midnight the British sentinels on the point of the Isle of Orleans saw
drifting silently through the gloom the outlines of a cluster of ships.
They were eight huge fire-ships, floating mines packed with explosives.
The nerve of the French sailors, fortunately for the British, failed
them, and they fired the ships too soon. But the spectacle of these
flaming monsters as they drifted towards the British fleet was appalling.
The river showed ebony-black under the white flames. The glare lit up
the river cliffs, the roofs of the city, the tents of Montcalm, the
slopes of the distant hills, the black hulls of the British ships. It
was one of the most stupendous exhibitions of fireworks ever witnessed!
But it was almost as harmless as a display of fireworks. The boats from
the British fleet were by this time in the water, and pulling with steady
daring to meet these drifting volcanoes. They were grappled, towed to
the banks, and stranded, and there they spluttered and smoked and flamed
till the white light of the dawn broke over them. The only mischief
achieved by these fire-ships was to burn alive one of their own captains
and five or six of his men, who failed to escape in their boats.

Wolfe, in addition to the Isle of Orleans, seized Point Levi, opposite
the city, and this gave him complete command of the basin of Quebec; from
his batteries on Point Levi, too, he could fire directly on the city, and
destroy it if he could not capture it. He himself landed the main body
of his troops on the east bank of the Montmorenci, Montcalm's position,
strongly entrenched, being between him and the city. Between the two
armies, however, ran the deep gorge through which the swift current of
the Montmorenci rushes down to join the St. Lawrence. The gorge is
barely a gunshot in width, but of stupendous depth. The Montmorenci
tumbles over its rocky bed with a speed that turns the flashing waters
almost to the whiteness of snow. Was there ever a more curious military
position adopted by a great general in the face of superior forces!
Wolfe's tiny army was distributed into three camps: his right wing on the
Montmorenci was six miles distant from his left wing at Point Levi, and
between the centre, on the Isle of Orleans, and the two wings, ran the
two branches of the St. Lawrence. That Wolfe deliberately made such a
distribution of his forces under the very eye