very next morning with tremendous effect, smashing the
works most exposed to its fire, bringing down houses
about the inhabitants' ears, and sending the terrified
non-combatants scurrying off to underground cover.

Meanwhile the bulk of the New Englanders were establishing
their camp along the brook which fell into Gabarus Bay
beside Flat Point and within two miles of Louisbourg.
Equipment of all kinds was very scarce. Tents were so
few and bad that old sails stretched over ridge-poles
had to be used instead. When sails ran short, brushwood
shelters roofed in with overlapping spruce boughs were
used as substitutes.

Landing the four thousand men had been comparatively easy
work. But landing the stores was very hard indeed; while
landing the guns was not only much harder still, but full
of danger as well. Many a flat-boat was pounded into
pulpwood while unloading the stores, though the men waded
in waist-deep and carried all the heavy bundles on their
heads and shoulders. When it came to the artillery, it
meant a boat lost for every single piece of ordnance
landed. Nor was even this the worst; for, strange as it
may seem, there was, at first, more risk of foundering
ashore than afloat. There were neither roads nor yet the
means to make them. There were no horses, oxen, mules,
or any other means of transport, except the brawny men
themselves, who literally buckled to with anchor-cable
drag-ropes--a hundred pair of straining men for each
great, lumbering gun. Over the sand they went at a romp.