"They are certainly making a determined attack," said Henry. "If they had the fires to go by they'd get us yet. Look, there goes a new fire that they've lighted on the southern bank."
A high flame flared among the bushes, but the brass twelve pounder was promptly turned upon it, and after the second shot it disappeared.
"It ain't healthy, lightin' fires to-night," said Long Jim grimly.
The boats swung forward now at a slightly increased pace. On the Independence, Adam Colfax, Adolphe Drouillard, Thrale, Lyon and the others half stood, half knelt, looking steadily ahead, their minds attuned as only the minds of men can be concentrated at such a crisis. In this hour of darkness and danger the souls of the New Hampshire Puritan and of the Louisiana Frenchman were the same. One prayed to his Protestant God and the other to his Catholic God with like fervor and devotion, each praying that He would lead them through this danger, not for themselves, but for their suffering country.
The five in their own boat were not less devoted. They, too, felt that a Mighty Presence which was above wind, rain, and fire, alone could save them. Their hands were not on the trigger now. Instead they bent over the oars. Every one of them knew that bullets could do little the rest of the way, and it was for Providence to say whether they should reach the end of the watery pass.
The river narrowed still further. They were now at the point where the high banks came closest together and the danger would be greatest. But there was no flinching. The fire from either shore increased. Thunder and lightning, wind and rain raged about them, but they merely bent a little lower over the oars and sent their boats straight toward the flaming gate.
CHAPTER XX
THE TRUMPET'S PEAL
Major George Augustus Braithwaite, scholar of William and Mary College, man of refinement and experience, commissioned officer who had been in the assault at Ticonderoga, and who had stood victoriously with Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, leaned upon a bastion at Fort Prescott and watched one of the wildest nights that he had ever seen. He wore his three-cornered military hat, but the rain flowed steadily in a little stream from every corner. He was wrapped in an old military coat, badge of distinguished service, but the rain, too, ran steadily from every fringe of its hem and gathered in puddles about the military boots that enclosed his feet.