At one o'clock the tide ebbed, and the order was given to cast off. Not a soldier or a sailor remained behind who was not cursing his ill-luck that he had not been chosen to go ahead in the boats. The order had been given for silence, and nothing could be heard but the gurgling of the water as it washed the sides of the boats; but the excitement, though suppressed, must have been intense as the men grasped their muskets and lay close together, looking at the stars above or those rugged heights, which ever and anon loomed darkly from the northern shore.
Jamie, with his two companions, was in the first boat eagerly scanning that dark outline and noting every headland, watching for that little indentation just between St. Nichol and Le Foulton, where he and Jack had so often landed their little fishing canoe during their enforced stay in Quebec.
Suddenly a low voice broke upon their ears from the stern sheets of the next boat, which was only a dozen feet away. It was the voice of Wolfe reciting to his officers and to a young midshipman, named Robinson, who has left the incident on record. He was quoting from memory the stanzas from "Gray's Elegy"--
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
"Gentlemen," Jamie heard him say, "I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec to-morrow." And every English schoolboy now knows how strangely prophetic and appropriate were those lines.
They were now rapidly approaching the little cove, and Jamie signalled to the steersman of his boat to edge in a little closer to the northern shore, which now towered above them like a great barrier. As he did so the voice of a sentry came through the gloom from the heights above--
"Qui vive?"
"La France!" replied a captain of the Highlanders from Jamie's boat.
"A quel régiment?" came back from the heights.
"De la Reine!" answered the Highlander.