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When within speaking distance Vergor called through his trumpet that he was in command of a ship of the King of France carrying provisions and munitions to the troops of his majesty. The English captain in reply ordered him to lay to or he would sink him.
He was given for the purpose a letter of unlimited credit on Boston; and every regiment in Nova Scotia was brought up to the strength of one thousand men. By May the expedition was ready. Monckton, with two thousand troops, embarked at Annapolis Royal, and by June 1 the expedition was at Chignecto. In the meantime Vergor, the French commandant at Beausejour, had not been passive.
Vergor leaped from bed and tried to run off, but was shot in the heel and captured. His men, taken by surprise, made little resistance. One or two were caught, the rest fled. Journal of Sergeant Johnson. The main body of troops waited in their boats by the edge of the strand.
Vergor's official report conveys the idea that Cornwallis was rather doubtful as to whether Rous had acted in a legitimate manner. The council held five or six meetings without coming to any decision. Meanwhile, with the governor's approval, Vergor had a new main-mast cut and drawn from the woods by the crew of the St. Francis and arrangements were made to repair the damaged sails and shrouds.
But the young Repentigny felt for Vergor such contempt as only an incompetent officer inspires. No sentinels were stationed. The few soldiers remaining busied themselves over their mess fires. Jacques looked down a cove not quite as steep as the rest of the cliff, yet as nearly perpendicular as any surface on which trees and bushes can take hold.
There was no sentry on the shore, and no appearance of any camp along the top. It was believed that the French officer Vergor, with a small detachment of troops, was somewhere in the vicinity; but the renown of that worthy was not such as to check the ardour of the English troops. Wolfe remained below, silent and motionless.
The officer stationed there was Vergor, one of the Bigot gang and a great friend of Vaudreuil's. Vergor had disgraced himself by giving up Fort Beausejour in Acadia without a fight.
First, the deserters told Wolfe that provision-boats were ordered to go down to Quebec that night; secondly, Bougainville countermanded them; thirdly, the sentries posted along the heights were told of the order, but not of the countermand; fourthly, Vergor at the Anse du Foulon had permitted most of his men, chiefly Canadians from Lorette, to go home for a time and work at their harvesting, on condition, it is said, that they should afterwards work in a neighboring field of his own; fifthly, he kept careless watch, and went quietly to bed; sixthly, the battalion of Guienne, ordered to take post on the Plains of Abraham, had, for reasons unexplained, remained encamped by the St.
The boy thought it strange that such a man should be put in charge of any part of the defensive cordon around Quebec. But Vergor had a friend in the intendant Bigot, who knew how to reinstate his disgraced favorites. The arriving cart drew the captain's attention from his departing men. He smiled, his depressed nose and fleshy lips being entirely good-natured.
The British charged with a loud cheer. The Canadians scurried away through the trees. And Vergor ran for dear life in his nightshirt. The ringing cheer with which Delaune charged home told Wolfe at the foot of the road that the actual top was clear. Then Howe went up; and in fifteen minutes all the light infantry had joined their comrades above.
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