The New Englanders were so keen to land that they ran some danger of falling into complete disorder. But Pepperrell managed very cleverly. Seeing that some Frenchmen were ready to resist a landing on Flat Point, two miles south-west of Louisbourg, he made a feint against it, drew their fire, and then raced his boats for Freshwater Cove, another two miles beyond. Having completely outdistanced the handful of panting Frenchmen, he landed in perfect safety and presently scattered them with a wild charge which cost them about twenty in killed, wounded, and prisoners. Before dark two thousand Provincials were ashore. The other two thousand landed at their leisure the following day. The next event in this extraordinary siege is one of the curiosities of war. On May 14 the enthusiastic Vaughan took several hundreds of these newly landed men to the top of the nearest hillock and saluted the walls with three cheers. He then circled the whole harbour, keeping well inland, till he reached the undefended storehouses on the inner side of the North-East Harbour, a little beyond the Royal Battery. These he at once set on fire. The pitch, tar, wood, and other combustibles made a blinding smoke, which drifted over the Royal Battery and spread a stampeding panic among its garrison of four hundred men. Vaughan then retired for the night. On his return to the Royal Battery in the morning, with only thirteen men, he was astounded to see no sign of life there. Suspecting a ruse, he bribed an Indian with a flask of brandy to feign being drunk and reel up to the walls. The Indian reached the fort unchallenged, climbed into an embrasure, and found the whole place deserted. Vaughan followed at once; and a young volunteer, shinning up the flag-pole, made his own red coat fast to the top. This defiance was immediately answered by a random salvo from Louisbourg, less than a mile across the harbour. Vaughan's next move was to write a dispatch to Pepperrell: 'May it please your Honour to be informed that by the Grace of God and the courage of 13 Men I entered the Royal Battery about 9 o' the clock and am waiting for a reinforcement and a flag.' He had hardly sent this off before he was attacked by four boats from Louisbourg. Quite undaunted, however, he stood out on the open beach with his thirteen men and kept them all at bay till the reinforcement and the flag arrived with Bradstreet, who was afterwards to win distinction as the captor of Fort Frontenac during the great campaign of 1759.