CHAPTER XI
FORT TICONDEROGA AND THE ASSAULT
The following morning the Rangers were sent to the front, to the place we occupied the day before. Captain Stark with Captain Abercrombie and Mr. Clark, the engineer, went with two hundred Rangers to Rattlesnake Hill to reconnoitre the French works.
Fort Ticonderoga was at the southern end of the narrow strip of land which lies between Lake Champlain and the outlet of Lake George. A half-mile to the north of the fort, a little ridge runs across the peninsula. As we looked down from the hill, we saw the French hard at work on a strong breastwork of logs which they had nearly completed. At either end of it was low, marshy ground, difficult to pass. The breastwork zigzagged along the ridge in such a manner that if troops attacked it, the French could rake them with grapeshot, and it was too high to climb over.
"How are we going to get over that breastwork, Edmund? There's no slope to it, and we can't reach within two feet of the top."
"Oh, we'll knock it to pieces with cannon, and then we can rush over it. Our officers will know what to do."
"There won't be any rushing through that mass of sharpened stakes that they have driven into the ground in front of the works."
"No. That's so. There's a regular thicket of them with the points sticking out toward us. They'll have to be cut off or torn up, and the French will be raking us all the time."
"See those Canadians cutting down the forest just beyond the stakes. The tops of the trees fall outward, and the branches are matted together. If Abercrombie thinks his army can march up to the breastwork, he's greatly mistaken."
"Yes; it will be a piece of work to scramble through those branches; and then comes the abattis of stakes; and then a wall eight feet high. Montcalm knows his business, Ben. I wish he were on our side. We shall have no easy task. It looks tough to-day, and it will be worse to-morrow."