“Hardly a fight. We have been ordered to stand up and down the river with the tide. This has kept the enemy on the move, watching not only this brig, but also a number of other ships, and is gradually wearing the French soldiers out. Did you hear anything of their colonists deserting?”
“I did,” cried Henry. “Two men who were on guard said that a hundred men had left in one day, so he had heard. I didn’t get any particulars.”
“Montcalm will find that this campaign is not yet over,” responded the captain of the brig grimly. “He thinks Quebec cannot be taken, but Wolfe will teach him a trick or two ere we hoist anchor for England.”
It was an hour later when the brig dropped anchor in the stream, midway between the Island of Orleans and the northwest shore of the St. Lawrence. Not a battery from Quebec had fired on the ship, and the English batteries on the southeast shore were also silent.
“It is my duty to send you over to General Wolfe’s camp under guard,” said the captain of the brig. “I do not doubt but that you are to be trusted, but duty is duty, you know.”
“We’ll not complain,” answered Silvers.
A boat was soon lowered and the sharpshooter and Henry entered this, followed by a coxswain and his crew, and two army officers, who had been on the trip of the brig. This boat was followed by a second and a third, and then all three headed for the shore below the Falls of Montmorenci.
It did not take long to reach the mud flats below the rocks fronting the river bank. Here the party was challenged by the grenadier guards, but quickly passed, and Henry and Silvers were marched up the bank by a rough trail.
Both the young soldier and the sharpshooter were thoroughly worn out by the trials they had endured, and having received some food on the brig, and dried their clothing, they did not remain awake long after having been assigned quarters.
It was Henry who was the first to stir in the morning. The roll call of the long drums aroused him, and gazing out on something of a parade ground he saw the grenadiers forming to answer to their names.