On the first day of June 1759, the ships sailed out of the harbour of Halifax for the river St. Lawrence. The harbour rang with the cheers of the soldiers, and the bands struck up the old melody "The Girl I left behind Me." When they reached the mighty river they ran great danger for want of a pilot. A French prisoner on board began wringing his hands, declaring that they would all go to the bottom. An old British captain of a transport laughed in his face: "I will show you," he roared with an oath, "that an Englishman shall go where a Frenchman dare not show his nose." And he steered his ship through in safety. The boast was no empty one. Vaudreuil wrote to France to say "that the enemy have passed sixty ships of war where we dare not risk a vessel of 100 tons by night or day." In Quebec, Montcalm during the long days of {213} early summer awaited the coming of the English. Not a man was idle. Drilling and building of earthworks filled up nearly every hour of the day. Montcalm's 18,000 men were as strongly entrenched as Nature and the art of war could make them. On the 27th of June the French in Quebec snatched their first glimpse of the masts of the English battleships. A few hours later the English fleet had halted before the Isle of Orleans, and Wolfe and his red-coated infantry landed on its shores. Mounting the point of land to the west, the young general took out a telescope and turned it towards the heights of Quebec, four miles away. As he scanned the mighty rock he felt that it was indeed a hard task which England had sent him to accomplish.