as steep as the rest of the cliff, yet as nearly perpendicular as any
surface on which trees and bushes can take hold. It was clothed with
a thick growth of sere weeds, cut by one hint of a diagonal line.
Perhaps laborers at a fulling mill now rotting below had once climbed
this rock. Rain had carried the earth from above in small cataracts
down its face, making a thin alluvial coating. A strip of land
separated the rock from the St. Lawrence, which looked wide and gray
in the evening light. Showers raked the far-off opposite hills. Leaves
showing scarlet or orange were dulled by flying mist.

The boy noticed more boats drifting up river on the tide than he had
counted in Quebec Basin.

"Where are all the vessels going?" he asked the nearest soldier.

"Nowhere. They only move back and forth with the tide."

"But they are English ships. Why don't you fire on them?"

"We have no orders. And besides, our own transports have to slip down
among them at night. One is pretty careful not to knock the bottom out
of the dish which carries his meat."

"The English might land down there some dark night."

"They may land; but, unfortunately for themselves, they have no
wings."

The boy did not answer, but he thought, "If my father and General
Levis were posted here, wings would be of no use to the English."