into
a menacing tranquillity. There lay the Light Infantry, Bragg's,
Kennedy's, Lascelles', Anstruther's Regiments, Fraser's Highlanders,
and the much-loved, much-blamed Louisbourg Grenadiers. Steady,
indomitable, silent as cats, precise as mathematicians, he could
trust them, as they loved his awkward, pain-twisted body and ugly red
hair. "Damme, Jack, didst ever take hell in tow before?" said a sailor
to his comrades as the marines, some days before, had grappled with a
second flotilla of French fire-ships. "Nay, but I've been in tow of
Jimmy Wolfe's red head; that's hell-fire, lad!" was the reply.

[Illustration: CAPTAIN JAMES COOK
(Piloted Wolfe's Army up the Harbour of Quebec)]

From boat to boat the General's eye passed, then shifted to the
ships--the _Squirrel_, the _Leostaff_, the _Seahorse_, and the
rest--and lastly, to the spot where lay the army of Bougainville. Now
an officer came towards him, who said, quietly, "The tide has turned,
sir." For reply, he made a swift motion towards the _Sutherland's_
maintop shrouds, and almost instantly lanterns showed in them. In
response, the crowded boats began to cast away. Immediately descending
the General passed into his boat, drew to the front, and drifted in
the current ahead of his gallant forces.

It was two hours after midnight when the boats began to move, and
slowly they ranged down the stream, silently steered and carried by
the ebbing tide. No paddle, no creaking oarlock broke the stillness;
but ever and anon the booming of a thirty-two pounder from the Point
Levi battery echoed up the river walls.

To a young midshipman beside him, the General turned and said, "How
old are you, sir?"

"Seventeen, sir," was the reply.

"It is the most lasting passion," he said, musing. Then, after a few
moments' silence, he repeated aloud these verses from Gray's _Elegy_--

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day;
The lowing herds wind slowly o'er the lea;
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

* * * * *

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour--
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

"Gentlemen," he said, "I would rather have written those lines than
take Quebec."

Meanwhile, the tide had swept the foremost boats round the headland
above the _Anse du Foulon_,[30] a t