April gave place to May, and the artillery fire continued on the heights; but, as it grew noisier it grew also less important, for now the eyes of both commanders were fastened on the river. Two fleets were racing for Quebec, and she would belong to the first to drop anchor within her now navigable river.
Then came a day when, as Murray sat brooding by the fire in his quarters in St. Louis Street, an officer ran in with the news of a ship of war in the Basin, beating up towards the city. "Whatever she is," said the General, "we will hoist our colours." Weather had frayed out the halliards on the flagstaff over Cape Diamond, but a sailor climbed the pole and lashed the British colours beneath the truck. By this time men and officers in a mob had gathered on the ramparts of the Château St. Louis, all straining their eyes at a frigate fetching up close-hauled against the wind.
Her colours ran aloft; but they were bent, sailor-fashion, in a tight bundle, ready to be broken out when they reached the top-gallant masthead.
An officer, looking through a glass, cried out nervously that the bundle was white. But this they knew without telling. Only—what would the flag carry on its white ground? The red cross? or the golden fleurs-de-lys?
The halliards shook; the folds flew broad to the wind; and, with a gasp, men leaped on the ramparts—flung their hats in the air and cheered—dropped, sobbing, on their knees.
It was the red cross of England.
They were cheering yet and shouting themselves hoarse when the Lowestoffe frigate dropped anchor and saluted with all her twenty-four guns. On the heights the French guns answered spitefully. Lévis would not believe. He had brought his artillery at length into position, and began to knock the defences vigorously. He lingered until the battleship Vanguard and the frigate Diane came sailing up into harbour; until the Vanguard, pressing on with the Lowestoffe, took or burned the vessels which had brought his artillery down from Montreal. Then, in the night, he decamped, leaving his siege-train, baggage, and sick men behind him. News of his retreat reached Murray at nightfall, and soon the English guns were bowling round-shot after him in the dusk across the Plains of Abraham; but by daybreak, when Murray pushed out after him, to fall on his rear, he had hurried his columns out of reach.
Three months had passed since the flying of the signal from the Lowestoffe, and now in the early days of August three British armies were moving slowly upon Montreal, where Lévis and Governor Vaudreuil had drawn the main French forces together for a last resistance.
Murray came up the river from Quebec with twenty-four hundred men, in thirty-two vessels and a fleet of boats in company; followed by Lord Rollo with thirteen hundred men drawn off from dismantled Louisbourg. As the ships tacked up the river, with their floating batteries ranged in line to protect the advance, bodies of French troops followed them along the shore—regiments of white-coated infantry and horsemen in blue jackets faced with scarlet. Bourlamaque watched from the southern shore, Dumas from the northern. But neither dared to attack; and day after day through the lovely weather, past fields and settlements and woodlands, between banks which narrowed until from deck one could listen to the song of birds on either hand and catch the wafted scent of wild flowers, the British wound their way to Isle Sainte-Therese below Montreal, encamped, and waited for their comrades.
From the south came Haviland. He brought thirty-four hundred regulars, provincials, and Indians from Crown Point on Lake Champlain, and moved down the Richelieu, driving Bougainville before him.