On the 31st, the day he wrote to his mother and had his long talk with Saunders, Wolfe began to send his guns and stores away from the Montmorency camp. Carleton managed the removal very cleverly; and on September 3 only the five thousand infantry who were to go up the St Lawrence were left there. Wolfe tried to tempt Montcalm to attack him. But Montcalm knew better; and half suspected that Wolfe himself might make another attack on the Beauport lines. When everything was ready, all the men at the Point of Levy who could be spared put off in boats and rowed over towards Beauport, just as Monckton's men had done on the disastrous last day of July. At the same time the main division of the fleet, under Saunders, made as if to support these boats, while the Levis batteries thundered against Quebec. Carleton gave the signal from the beach at Montmorency when the tide was high; and the whole five thousand infantry marched down the hill, got into their boats, and rowed over to where the other boats were waiting. The French now prepared to defend themselves at once. But as the two divisions of boats came together, they both rowed off through the gaps between the men-of-war. Wolfe's army had broken camp and got safely away, right under the noses of the French, without the loss of a single man. A whole week, from September 3 to 10, was then taken up with trying to see how the brigadiers' plan could be carried out. This plan was good, as far as it went. An army is even harder to supply than a town would be if the town was taken up bodily and moved about the country. An army makes no supplies itself, but uses up a great deal. It must have food, clothing, arms, ammunition, stores of all kinds, and everything else it needs to keep it fit for action. So it must always keep what are called 'communications' with the places from which it gets these supplies. Now, Wolfe's and Montcalm's armies were both supplied along the St Lawrence, Wolfe's from below Quebec and Montcalm's from above. But Wolfe had no trouble about the safety of his own 'communications,' since they were managed and protected by the fleet. Even before he first saw Quebec, a convoy of supply ships had sailed from the Maritime Provinces for his army under the charge of a man-of-war. And so it went on all through the siege. Including forty-nine men-of-war, no less than 277 British vessels sailed up to Quebec during this campaign; and not one of them was lost on the way, though the St Lawrence had then no lighthouses, buoys, or other aids to navigation, as it has now, and though the British officers themselves were compelled to take the ships through the worst places in these foreign and little-known waters. The result was that there were abundant supplies for the British army the whole time, thanks to the fleet.