in a moment. The French attack had broken up into a score
of little rough-and-tumble fights--bayonets, butts, and
swords all at it; friend and foe mixed up in wild confusion.
So the first properly formed troops carried all before
them. The knots of struggling combatants separated into
French and British. The French fell back on their defences.
Their friends inside fired on the British; and Wolfe,
having regained his ground, retired in the same good
order on his lines.

A week later Wolfe suddenly dashed forward on the British
left and seized Gallows Hill, within a musket-shot of
the French right bastion. Here his men dug hard all night
long, in spite of the fierce fire kept up on them at
point-blank range. In the morning reliefs marched in,
and the digging still continued. Sappers, miners, and
infantry reliefs, they never stopped till they had burrowed
forward another hundred yards, and the last great breaching
battery had opened its annihilating fire. By the 21st
both sides saw that the end was near, so far as the walls
were concerned.

But it was not only the walls that were failing. For,
that very afternoon of the 21st, a British seaman gunner's
cleverly planted bomb found out a French ship's magazine,
exploded it with shattering force, and set fire to the
ships on either side. All three blazed furiously. The
crews ran to quarters and did their best. But all to no
purpose. Meanwhile the British batteries had turned every
available gun on the conflagration, so as to prevent the