it was almost as hard to hit the thin, irregular line of
British batteries as it was to miss the deep, wide target
of overcrowded Louisbourg. The walls were continually
being smashed from without and patched up from within.
The streets were ploughed from end to end. Many houses
were laid in ruins: only one remained intact when the
siege was over. The non-combatants, who now exceeded the
garrison effectives, were half buried in the smothering
casemates underground; and though the fighting men had
light, air, and food enough, and though they were losing
very few in killed and wounded, they too began to feel
that Louisbourg must fall if it was not soon relieved
from outside.

The British, on the contrary, grew more and more confident,
both afloat and ashore, though they had one quite alarming
scare ashore. They knew their navy outmatched the French;
and they saw that, while Warren was being strengthened,
du Chambon was being left as devoid of naval force as
ever. But their still greater confidence ashore was, for
the time being, very rudely shaken when they heard that
Marin, the same French guerilla leader who had been sent
down from Quebec against Annapolis with six or seven
hundred whites and Indians, had been joined by the promised
reinforcements from France and was coming to take the
camp in rear. The truth was that the reinforcements never
arrived, that Marin had failed to take Annapolis, and
that there was no real danger from his own dwindling
force, even if it had tried to relieve Louisbourg in
June. But the rumour ran quickly through the whole camp,