a quarter of an hour. Yet nearly half of the thousand
men they started with were lying dead or wounded on that
fatal ground.

Wolfe now saw that he was hopelessly beaten and that
there was not a minute to lose in getting away. The boats
could take only Monckton's men; and the rising tide would
soon cut off Townshend's and Murray's from their camp
beyond the mouth of the Montmorency. The two stranded
transports, from which he had hoped so much that morning,
were set on fire; and, under cover of their smoke and of
the curtain of torrential rain, Monckton's crestfallen
men got into their boats once more. Townshend's and
Murray's brigades, enraged at not being brought into
action, turned to march back by the way they had come so
eagerly only an hour before. They moved off in perfect
order; but, as they left the battlefield, they waved their
hats in defiance at the jeering Frenchmen, challenging them
to come down and fight it out with bayonets hand to hand.

Many gallant deeds were done that afternoon; but none
more gallant than those of Captain Ochterloney and
Lieutenant Peyton, both grenadier officers in the Royal
Americans. Ochterloney had just been wounded in a duel;
but he said his country's honour came before his own,
and, sick and wounded as he was, he spent those panting
hours in the boats without a murmur and did all he could
to form his men up under fire. In the second charge he
fell, shot through the lungs, with Peyton beside him,
shot through the leg. When Wolfe called the grenadiers