for victory. And while the poor people starve for bread, poultry is daily fattened on precious wheat that it may make tenderest meat for Intendant Bigot's table, where the painted women and drunken gamblers and gay officers nightly feast! [Illustration: BOUGAINVILLE] Signal fires light up the hills with ominous warning as the English fleet glides slowly abreast the current of the St. Lawrence, now pausing to sound where the yellow riffle of the current shows shallows, now following the course staked out by flags, here depending on the Frenchman, whom they have compelled to act as pilot! Nightly from hill to hill the signal fires leap to the sky, till one flames from Cape Tourmente, and Quebec learns that the English are surely very near. Among the Englishmen who are out in the advance boats sounding is a young man, James Cook, destined to become a great navigator. June 25, sail after sail, frigate after frigate bristling with cannon, literally swarming with soldiers and marines, glide round the end of Orleans Island through driving rain and a squall, and to clatter of anchor chains and rattle of falling sails, come to rest. "Pray Heaven they be wrecked as Sir Hovenden Walker's fleet was wrecked long ago," sigh the nuns of Quebec. If they had {264} prayed half as hard that their corrupt rulers, their Bigots and their kings and their painted women whose nod could set Europe on fire with war,--if the holy sisterhood had prayed for this gang of vampires whose vices had brought doom to the land, to be swallowed in some abyss, their prayers might have been more effective with Heaven. Next day a band of rangers lands from Wolfe's ships and finds the Island of Orleans deserted. On the church door the curé has pinned a note, asking the English not to molest his church; and expressing sardonic regret that the invaders have not come soon enough to enjoy the fresh vegetables of his garden. Wolfe for the first time gazes on the prize of his highest ambition,--Quebec. He is at Orleans, facing the city. To his right is the cataract of Montmorency. From the falls past Beauport to St. Charles River, the St. Lawrence banks are high cliffs. Above the cliffs are Montcalm's intrenched fighters. Then the north shore of the St. Lawrence suddenly sheers up beyond St. Charles River into a lofty, steep precipice. The precipice is Quebec City: Upper Town and the convents and the ramparts and Castle St. Louis nestling on an upper ledge of the rock below Cape Diamond; Lower Town crowding between the foot of the precipice and tide water. Look again how the St. Lawrence turns in a sharp angle at the precipice. Three sides of the city are water,--St. Charles River nearest Wolfe, then the St. Lawrence across the steep face of the rock, then the St. Lawrence again along a still steeper precipice to the far side. Only the rear of the city is vulnerable; but it is walled and inaccessible. Quebec was a prize for any commander's ambition; but how to win it?