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On the last day of June, the hostile forces confronted each other at the Boyne. The gentle, legendary river, wreathed in all the glory of its abundant foliage, was startled with the cannonade from the northern bank, which continued through the long summer's evening, and woke the early echoes of the morrow.
As night approached, the main fleet, under Admiral Saunders, below Quebec, ranged itself opposite Beauport, and opened a tremendous cannonade, while the boats were lowered, and filled with sailors and marines.
"No, sir, not I"; and as soon as he had said the words, I think we all agreed with him. For it was not only a piece of stout, seamanly, good feeling; it was good policy besides and showed our enemies that we despised their cannonade. All through the evening they kept thundering away.
An hour or two later, during this brisk cannonade, I, being No. 3, stood with my thumb on the vent as the gun was being loaded. From a shell which exploded a few yards in front I was struck on the breast by the butt-end, weighing not less than three pounds, and at the same time by a smaller piece on the thigh. After writhing for a time I was accompanied to our surgeon in the rear.
The muffled thunder resembled the echo of a distant cannonade below the horizon, and the two men seemed to be listening to it in sullen silence. "This diabolical calumny will end in actually and literally taking my life from me," thought Heyst. Then, suddenly, he laughed. Portentously spectral, Mr. Jones frowned at the sound. "Laugh as much as you please," he said.
Yet he knew Wolfe; he knew Vergor; and now the sound of the cannonade alarmed him. Setting spurs to his horse, he galloped down from Beauport to the bridge of boats, giving orders as he went to turn out every man at once. At the bridge he found Vaudreuil writing a letter to Bougainville.
The poor horses, tied and helpless, were kicking and plunging in their terror, and one after another went down, killed or wounded. I was told that General Meade and staff were soon compelled to leave the place. "The hours of the cannonade grew monotonous and oppressive. Again and again caissons were exploded and added to the terrible list of casualties.
Knowing the difficulty once afflicting Beauchamp in the art of speaking on politics tersely, Lydiard was rather astonished at his well-delivered cannonade; and he fancied that his modesty had been displaced by the new acquirement; not knowing the nervous fever of his friend's condition, for which the rattle of speech was balm, and contention a native element, and the assumption of truth a necessity.
On the 23rd of July, he took the city of Roermond, after a sharp cannonade, at which place his troops already began to disgrace the honorable cause in which they were engaged, by imitating the cruelties and barbarities of their antagonists.
Seated on the edge of the shaky veranda in the darkness, he filled and lighted his cob pipe and, smoking tranquilly, listened to the distant cannonade which had begun about sundown. Thousands of fire-flies sailed low in the damp swale beyond the store-house, or, clinging motionless to the long wet grass and vines, sparkled palely at intervals. There was no wind.
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