"They are the fellows who will help us to win this war," said the brigadier a few days later, as he watched them at their work. "But now for my news. The rough seas are delaying the landing of stores, and until they are all ashore we cannot, of course, undertake to lay siege to the fortress. Meanwhile the general has ordered me to march round to the far side of the harbour and erect a battery there. I will take these companies. We start at daybreak to-morrow." It would be tedious to narrate how Steve and his friends accompanied this expedition, and how, in spite of a galling fire from the batteries and the ships, General Wolfe managed to construct his earth-works and batteries at Lighthouse Point. It was a class of warfare which, like the attack on the cove, was entirely new to them, and all agreed in admiring the persistency and the cool bravery, not to say recklessness, of the soldiers. That battery, in spite of the heavy fire poured upon it, silenced the French guns, and broke to pieces a battery on Goat Island in the middle of the harbour. Its fire was soon followed by the bellow of the huge siege guns which had now been brought ashore, and very soon the din about the fortress of Louisbourg was such that men were deafened, and Steve had never heard the like of it before. Sorties were delivered, and were promptly met and driven back. The siege was pressed vigorously, shot and shell pouring on the devoted place, while the politest messages passed between besiegers and besieged. Then the Canadians and their Indians outside our lines delivered their attack, an attack which Steve and the light regiments, now employed as scouts, were able to detect in good time and drive off easily. And so a month passed, a month of endless cannonading, till the fortress was shattered, and the walls and buildings flying in fragments everywhere. The French were in desperate plight, and wisely agreed to surrender, having fought most gallantly. Thus the formidable fortress came into our hands, and Pitt's forward policy began to bring a long-looked for success. We had captured a place for long the greatest menace to our power in America, and with it had taken some six thousand soldiers and sailors, thus reducing the enemy's strength, while it set ten thousand of our own troops free to operate in other quarters. As for the fortress itself, it was of no use to us, and some two years later was torn to pieces and utterly dismantled. Hardly a stone of that fine costly place can be seen to-day.