The last words were lost in an explosion which seemed to lift the roof off the hangar. In the flare of it John saw the faces of the enemy—their arms outstretched and snatching at the palisade. Down upon them the grape-shot whistled, tearing through the gale it outstripped, and close on it followed the Canadians' volleys.
Barnsfare had sprung to the second gun. McQuarters nodded to him.…
For ten minutes the guns swept the pass. The flame of them lit up no faces now by the shivered palisade, and between the explosions came no cheering from down the road. The riflemen loaded, fired, and reloaded; but they aimed into darkness and silence.
Captain Chabot lifted a hand.
The squall had swept by. High in the citadel, drums were beating; and below, down by the waterside to the eastward, volleys of musketry crackled sharply. But no sound came up the pass of Près-de-Ville.
"That will be at the Sault-au-Matelot barrier," said McQuarters, nodding his head in the direction of the musketry.
"We've raked decks here, anyhow," Captain Barnsfare commented, peering down the road; and one or two Canadians volunteered to descend and explore the palisade. For a while Captain Chabot demurred, fearing that the Americans might have withdrawn around the angle of the cliff and be holding themselves in ambush there.
"A couple of us could make sure of that," urged John. "They have left their wounded, at all events, as you may hear by the groans. With your leave, Captain—"
Captain Chabot yielded the point, and John with a corporal and a drummer descended the pass.
A dozen bodies lay heaped by the palisade. For the moment he could not stay to attend to them, but, passing through, followed the road down to the end of its curve around the cliff. Two corpses lay here of men who, mortally wounded, had run with the crowd before dropping to rise no more. The tracks in the snow told plainly enough that the retreat had been a stampede.