Gaspard took his gun, and trotted along his farm to the cover of the
trees. He had learned to fight in the Indian fashion; and Le Moyne
de Sainte-Hélène fought the same way. Before the boatloads of New
Englanders had all waded through tidal mud, and ranged themselves
by companies on the bank, Sainte-Hélène, who had been dispatched by
Frontenac at the first drumbeat on the river, appeared, ready to
check them, from the woods of Beauport. He had, besides three hundred
sharpshooters, the Lorette Hurons and the muster of Beauport militia,
all men with homes to save.

The New Englanders charged them, a solid force, driving the
light-footed bush fighters. But it was like driving the wind, which
turns, and at some unexpected quarter is always ready for you again.

This long-range fighting went on until nightfall, when the English
commander, finding that his tormentors had disappeared as suddenly as
they had appeared in the morning, tried to draw his men together at
the St. Charles ford, where he expected some small vessels would
be sent to help him across. He made a night camp here, without any
provisions.

Gaspard's house was dark, like the deserted Beauport homes all that
night; yet one watching might have seen smoke issuing from his chimney
toward the stars. The weary New England men did not forage through
these places, nor seek shelter in them. It was impossible to know
where Indians and Frenchmen did not lie in ambush. On the other side
of the blankets which muffled Gaspard's windows, however, firelight
shone with its usual ruddiness, showing the seignior of Beauport
prostrate on his old tenant's bed. Juchereau de Saint-Denis was
wounded, and La Hontan, who was with the skirmishers, and Gaspard had