med; for on the
night after the fire in the King's Bastion, a shell filled with
combustibles set this building also in flames. A fearful scene ensued.
All the English batteries opened upon it. The roar of mortars and
cannon, the rushing and screaming of round-shot and grape, the hissing
of fuses and the explosion of grenades and bombs mingled with a storm of
musketry from the covered way and trenches; while, by the glare of the
conflagration, the English regiments were seen drawn up in battle array,
before the ramparts, as if preparing for an assault.

Two days after, at one o'clock in the morning, a burst of loud cheers
was heard in the distance, followed by confused cries and the noise of
musketry, which lasted but a moment. Six hundred English sailors had
silently rowed into the harbor and seized the two remaining ships, the
"Prudent" and the "Bienfaisant." After the first hubbub all was silent
for half an hour. Then a light glowed through the thick fog that covered
the water. The "Prudent" was burning. Being aground with the low tide,
her captors had set her on fire, allowing the men on board to escape to
the town in her boats. The flames soon wrapped her from stem to stern;
and as the broad glare pierced the illumined mists, the English sailors,
reckless of shot and shell, towed her companion-ship, with all on board,
to a safe anchorage under Wolfe's batteries.

The position of the besieged was deplorable. Nearly a fourth of their
number were in the hospitals; while the rest, exhausted with incessant
toil, could find no place to snatch an hour of sleep; "and yet," says an
officer, "they still show ardor." "To-day," he again says, on the
twenty-fourth, "the fire of the place is so weak that it is more like
funeral guns than a defence." On the front of the town only four cannon
could fire at all. The rest were either dismounted or silenced by the
musketry from the trenches. The masonry of the ramparts had been shaken
by the concussion of their own guns; and now, in the Dauphin's and
King's bastions, the English shot brought it down in masses. The
trenches had been pushed so close on the rising grounds at the right
that a great part of the covered way was enfiladed, while a battery on a
hill across the harbor swept the whole front with a flank fire. Amherst
had ordered the gunners to spare the houses of the town; but, according
to French accounts, the order had little effect, for shot and shell fell
everywhere. "Ther