“And why shouldn’t I? We have been playmates for years, and we have hunted and fished and fought together for ever so long, too. Dave is as close as a brother to me.”
“Well, now you know he is safe, I reckon you won’t be so anxious to get to Fort Oswego as you was.”
“No, I am going to send word to him that I am here, and then stay a while.”
“So am I going to stay,” went on Silvers. “I feel it in my bones that there will be a big fight here before this campaign closes.”
General Wolfe had under him three brigadiers, Murray, Monckton, and Townshend. He now called them to him for consultation and submitted several propositions. A debate lasting a long time followed, and at last it was decided to attack the French at a point some distance above the city of Quebec. By doing this, Montcalm would be cut off from his base of supplies and compelled to either fight or surrender.
The task which General Wolfe had set for himself and his men was an exceedingly difficult one. As already mentioned, the river was fronted by a high wall of rocks, and to scale these seemed next to impossible. Besides, the French were on constant guard, and would be sure to sound the alarm quickly and pour a hot fire into the advancing British.
In order to carry out the plan decided upon General Wolfe had first to abandon the camp at the falls. He knew the French would harass him as much as possible, and so sent Monckton from Point Levi with a number of soldiers, under pretense of attacking Beauport, midway between the falls and the city. Montcalm looked on this with new alarm and sent his troops in that direction; and Wolfe withdrew without further trouble.
Henry and Silvers were with the soldiers who abandoned the Montmorenci and soon found themselves at Point Levi, where they joined a handful of other Colonial English mixed in with the Royal Grenadiers. This was early in September, and a few days later the troops were transferred to the ships under Admiral Holmes, and here General Wolfe joined the expedition.
To the French it looked as if the English were going to give up the campaign, and Wolfe and his officers, as well as the admiral of the squadrons, did all in their power to make the deception more real. Cannon were taken up and placed aboard the vessels in the most open manner, and soldiers were made to pack away the camp outfits as if getting ready for a long voyage. “The English are going to sail!” cried the people of Quebec and vicinity, and their hopes arose, to think that they would at last be free from the grim terror which had hung over them so long.
But Wolfe was not yet ready to force the attack. The plan of action was still in the rough. There was a high stone bluff, or cliff, to scale, and how to do it in comparative safety was a delicate problem to solve. The general listened patiently to what several who were acquainted with the locality had to say, and then surveyed the north shore with a telescope. Near what was then Anse du Foulon, and now called Wolfe’s Cove, he discovered a narrow path running between rocks and bushes from the water’s edge to the top of the bluff.