No more dillydallying and delay "to plant cabbages!" The thing is to reach Louisburg before the French have entered the harbor. Men-of-war are stationed to intercept the French vessels coming from the Mediterranean, and before winter has passed Admiral Boscawen has sailed for America with one hundred and fifty vessels, including forty men-of-war, frigates, and transports carrying twelve thousand men. General Amherst is to command the land forces, and with Amherst is Brigadier James Wolfe, age thirty-one, a tall, slim, fragile man, whose delicate frame is tenanted by a lion spirit; or, to change the comparison, by a motive power too strong for the weak body that held it. By May the fleet is in Halifax. By June Amherst has joined Boscawen, and the ships beat out for Louisburg through heavy fog, with a sea that boils over the reefs in angry surf. Louisburg was in worse condition than during the siege of 1745. The broken walls have been repaired, but the filling is false,--sand grit. Its population is some four thousand, of whom three thousand eight hundred are the garrison. On the ships lying in the harbor are three thousand marines, a defensive force, in all, {253} of six thousand eight hundred. On walls and in bastions are some four hundred and fifty heavy guns, cannon, and mortars. Imagine a triangle with the base to the west, the two sides running out to sea on the east. The fort is at the apex. The wall of the base line is protected by a marsh. On the northeast side is the harbor protected by reefs and three batteries. Along the south side, Drucourt, the French commander, has stationed two thousand men at three different points where landing is possible, to construct batteries behind barricades of logs. [Illustration: BOSCAWEN]