"No," thundered the old Governor, never happier than when fighting, "I will answer your General with my cannon! I shall teach him that a man of my rank"--with covert sneer at Phips' origin, "is not to be summoned in such rude fashion! Let him do his best! I shall do mine!" It was now the turn of the English to be amazed. This was not the answer they had expected from a fort weakly garrisoned by a hundred men. If they had struck and struck quickly, they might yet have won the day; but all Monday passed in futile arguments and councils of war, and on Tuesday, the 17th, towards night, was heard wild shouting within Quebec walls. [Illustration: ATTACK ON QUEBEC, 1690] "My faith, Messieurs!" exclaimed one of the French prisoners aboard Phips' ship; "now you _have_ lost your chance! Those {182} are the coureurs de bois from Montreal and the bushrovers of the Pays d'en Haut, eight hundred strong." The news at last spurred Phips to action. All that night the people of Quebec could hear the English drilling, and shouting "_God save King William_!" with beat of drum and trumpet calls that set the echoes rolling from Cape Diamond; and on the 18th small boats landed fourteen hundred men to cross the St. Charles River and assault the Lower Town, while the four largest ships took up a position to cannonade the city. It was four in the afternoon before the soldiers had been landed amid peppering bullets from the Le Moyne bushrovers. Only a few cannon shots were fired, and they did no damage but to kill an urchin of the Upper Town.