At last, on the 9th of May, a ship of war was descried in the river. The gaunt and toil-worn garrison were almost prostrate with excitement. Slowly the frigate beat up into the basin before the town, not yet displaying her ensign. Through a mishap to the halyards, no flag floated over the high bastion of Cape Diamond; but to make the stranger declare herself, Murray ordered a sailor to climb up the citadel flag-staff with the colours. Immediately the Union Jack ran up to the frigate's masthead, and the pent-up feelings of the garrison found relief. It was the _Leostaff_, no stranger, indeed, to Quebec; and she brought news that Colville's fleet was already in the river. "The gladness of the troops," writes Captain Knox, "is not to be expressed. Both officers and soldiers mounted the parapets in the face of the enemy, and huzzaed with their hats in the air for almost an hour. The garrison, the enemy's camp, the bay, and circumjacent country resounded with our shouts and the thunder of our artillery, for the gunners were so elated that they did nothing but fire and load for a considerable time." The French commander, however, was not the man to abandon the siege on account of a single warship, for as yet he did not know that the _Leostaff_ was but the herald of further arrivals; and his guns continued to hurl grenades and roundshot into the city. The English batteries returned their fire with so much violence that De Lévis again determined to try and carry the place by direct assault. Scaling-ladders and battering-rams were made ready, but no opportunity came to use them. Another week of vigorous siege passed; and at nightfall, on the 15th of May, to the unspeakable joy of the harassed garrison, the _Vanguard_ and the _Diana_, British ships of war, came to anchor in the basin. Next morning the three vessels made their way up the river past Quebec, and attacked the French squadron which had brought the army of De Lévis from Montreal. These were the ships, it will be remembered, which withdrew up the river on the approach of Holmes's fleet in the summer of 1759. The naval engagement was fierce but decisive, the French commander Vauquelin behaving with the utmost gallantry, and refusing to strike his flag even when his powder was spent and his ship a wreck. "Our ships," says Knox, in describing the battle, "forced _La Pomone_ ashore and burned her, then pursued the others; drove _l'Atalanta_ ashore near Pointe-aux-Trembles, and set her on fire; took and destroyed all the rest, except a small sloop of war which escaped to Lake St. Peter." On the English side, the _Leostaff_ wrecked on the rocks.