It was high noon, and the French were still busily strengthening their wooden ramparts with earth and sandbags when shots in the forest before them gave warning that the British advanced parties had struck against their picquets. Instantly they fell in behind the breast-work, three deep, eight battalions of regular troops and four hundred and fifty Canadians, numbering in all little more than a fourth of the British force. The advance of the British was covered by the Light Infantry and rangers while the columns of attack were forming under shelter of the forest. Then the skirmishers cleared the front and the scarlet masses came forward, solid and steady; the picquets leading, the grenadiers in support, the battalions of the main body after the grenadiers, and the Fifty-fifth and Forty-second Highlanders in reserve. It was little that they could see through the tangle of fallen trees and dying leaves; possibly they caught a glimpse of the top of the breast-work but of not a white coat of the defenders behind it. On they came in full confidence, knowing nothing of the obstacles before them, when suddenly the breast-work broke into a sheet of flame and a storm of grape and musketry swept the ranks from end to end. Abercromby's instructions had been that the position should be taken with the bayonet, but all order was lost in the maze of fallen trees, and very soon the men began to return the fire as they advanced, but with little effect, for not an enemy could they see. Nevertheless, though riddled through and through, they scrambled on over the prostrate trunks straight upon the breast-work, when they were stopped by the tangled hedge and sharpened boughs of the inner abatis. Strive as they might they could not force their way through this under the terrible fire that rained on them in front and flank from the angles of the breast-work; and after an hour's struggle they fell back, exclaiming that the position was impregnable. Reports were sent to Abercromby, who throughout the action had never moved from the saw-mills, two miles away, and for all answer there came back the simple order to attack again.