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All the officers of this regiment have been killed and by grace of courage and intuition he now leads it better than it was ever led before." Lannes extended his hand. Bougainville's met it, and the two closed in the clasp of those who knew, each, that the other was a man. Then a drum began to beat, and Bougainville, waving his sword aloft, led his regiment forward again with a rush.
Shortly afterwards, there was an outbreak of hot firing in the rear, where the light troops, under Colonel Howe, repulsed a detachment of Bougainville's command, which came up and attacked them. Montcalm had been on the alert all night. The guns of Saunders' fleet thundered unceasingly, opposite Beauport, and its boats hovered near the shore, threatening a landing.
Such was the fortune of Bougainville's cook, who, in spite of the law to the contrary, effected his escape to the shore in company with a complying damsel. The poor fellow soon returned on board, more dead than alive.
This, however, owing to the state of the Swallow, was an inconsiderable advantage, and soon ceased to exist. The particulars of the meeting which took place betwixt that vessel and Bougainville's, have been related in our account of Carteret's voyage, to which the reader is referred.
It is six or seven leagues in circuit, and makes the N.E. point of Bougainville's Passage. At noon the breeze began to slacken.
The details which Pigafetta and Martin Transylvain have given with regard to the topographical and hydrographical dispositions of this strait are rather vague, and as we shall have to mention it again when we speak of De Bougainville's expedition, we shall not dilate upon it now.
The descent was made in flat-bottomed boats, past midnight, on the 13th of September. They dropped down silently with the swift current. "Qui va la?" "La France," replied a captain in the first boat, who understood the French language. "A quel regiment?" was the demand. Fortunately, a convoy of provisions was expected down from De Bougainville's, which the sentinel supposed this to be.
But having ascertained, however, that the anchorage was not safe here, and that the boats could not get up the river, except at high water, he removed eastward to a small bay, in which in 1765, as related in the account of Byron's voyage, he had taken in wood for the Falkland Islands, and which had been named after him Bougainville's Bay.
It was a chronic condition of affairs, and Bougainville's business was to watch the upper river, where an attack was really expected. It was a rare piece of good-fortune for Wolfe that the confusion among the French was so great as to cause this strange omission. But then it was Wolfe's daring that had thus robbed a brave enemy of their presence of mind and created so pardonable a confusion.
[Footnote 788: Bigot, as well as Vaudreuil, sets Bougainville's force at three thousand. "En réunissant le corps M. de Bougainville, les bataillons de Montréal [laissés au camp de Beauport] et la garrison de la ville, il nous restoit encore près de 5,000 hommes de troupes fraîches." Journal tenu
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