, and half-thawed ice. "It was a
frightful night," says Levis; "so dark that but for the flashes of
lightning we should have been forced to stop." The break of day found
the vanguard at the edge of the woods bordering the farther
side of the marsh. The storm had abated; and they saw before
them, a few hundred yards distant, through the misty air, a
ridge of rising ground on which stood the parish church of
Ste.-Foy, with a row of Canadian houses stretching far to
right and left. This ridge was the declivity of the plateau of
Quebec; the same which as it approaches the town, some five
or six miles towards the left, takes the names of Cote d'Abraham
and Cote Ste.-Genevieve. The church and the houses were occupied by
British troops, who, as the French debouchedfrom the woods, opened
on them with cannon, and compelledthem to fall back. Though the ridge
at this point is not steep, the position was a strong one; but had
Levis known how fewwere as yet there to oppose him, he might have
carried it byan assault in front. As it was, he resolved to wait
till night, and then flank the enemy by a march to the right along
the border of the wood.

It was the morning of Sunday, the twenty-seventh. Till late
in the night before, Murray and the garrison of Quebec were
unaware of the immediate danger; and they learned it at last
through a singular stroke of fortune. Some time after midnight
the watch on board the frigate "Racehorse," which hadwintered in
the dock at the Lower Town, heard a feeble cryof distress from the
midst of the darkness that covered the St. Lawrence. Captain Macartney
was at once informed of it; and, through an impulse of humanity,
he ordered a boat to put outamid the drifting ice that was sweeping
up the river with thetide. Guided by the faint cries, the sailors
found a man lying on a large cake of ice, drenched, and half dead
with cold; and, taking him with difficulty into their boat, they
carried him to the ship. It was long before he was able to speak
intelligibly; but at last, being revived by cordials and other remedies,
he found strength to tell his benefactors that he was a sergeant of
artillery in the army that had come to retake Quebec; that in
trying to land a little above Cap-Rouge, his boat had been
overset, his companions drowned, and he himself saved by
climbing upon the cake of ice where they had discovered him;
that he had been borne by the ebb tide down to the Island of
Orleans, and then brought