Towards 2 A.M. of December 31 the wind began to blow a hurricane. The bright moonlight became obscured by flying clouds, and earth and air were wrapped in a driving storm of sleet. Instantly the Congress troops rallied to their headquarters behind the city. Montgomery at quick march swept down the steep cliff of the river to the shore road, and in the teeth of a raging wind led his men round under the heights of Cape Diamond to the harbor front. Heads lowered against the wind, coonskin caps pulled low over eyes, ash-colored flannel shirts buttoned tight to necks, gun casings and sacks wrapped loosely round loaded muskets to keep out the damp, the marchers tramped silently through the storm. Overhead was the obscured glare where the lanterns hung out in a blare of snow above Cape Diamond. Here rockets were sent up as a signal to Arnold on St. Charles River. Then Montgomery's men were among the houses of Lower Town, noting well that every window had been barricaded and darkened from cellar to attic. Somewhere along the narrow path in front of the town Montgomery knew that barricades had been built with cannon behind, but he trusted to the storm concealing his approach till his men could capture them at a rush. At Près {306} de Ville, just where the traveler approaching harbor front may to-day see a tablet erected in memory of the invasion, was a barricade. Montgomery halted his men. Scouts returned with word that all was quiet and in darkness--the English evidently asleep; and uncovering muskets, the Congress fighters dashed forward at a run. But it was the silence that precedes the thunderclap. The English had known that the storm was to signal attack, and guessing that the rockets foretokened the assailants' approach, they had put out all lights behind the barricade. Until Montgomery's men were within a few feet of the log, there was utter quiet; then a voice shrieked out, "Fire!--fire!" Instantly a flash of flame met the runners like a wall. Groans and screams split through the muffling storm. Montgomery and a dozen others fell dead. The rest had broken away in retreat,--a rabble without a commander,--carrying the wounded. Behind the barricade was almost as great confusion among the English, for Quebec's defenders were made up of boys of fifteen and old men of seventy, and the first crash of battle had been followed by a panic, when half the guards would have thrown down their arms if one John Coffin, an expelled royalist from Boston, had not shouted out that he would throw the first man who attempted to desert into the river. Meantime, how had it gone with Arnold? [Illustration: SIR GUY CARLETON]