“But Delouche was sailing into an undifferentiated darkness on our isle of Orleans, a blackness that obscured from him my sentries and our artillery—I knew he saw nothing but a silhouette of spiky night trees rising against the Milky Way.

“An hour before midnight my sentries spied looming shapes drifting toward us blue and violet against sky and river. Lumbering and stacked high with relic cannon and loaded muskets, Catherine-wheels and mortar-bits and cast-iron hollow-shot, they lurched and floated toward us like phantasmagoric monsters.

“Delouche sailed like he danced—confident at first, but when the real intricacy of the music began he faltered, though he would not admit it: instead he blazed ahead, mis-stepping, to his partners’ chagrin, rather than retreating to study the matter further so that he might proceed with any kind of knowledge.

“Now, as before, true courage did not come to him; a false bravado made him give the order to ignite his fuses too early by half an hour, and with that, his men in their nearby fire-ships also lit the works far too soon for their purpose. Fire spilt up their masts and lit their sails in a lurid glow that illumined the banks and painted Montcalm’s tents orange.

“Explosions blew molten holes agape in the fire-ships, and great booms and cracks obliterated the waterfall noise that had at first been so insistent. Grapeshot clattered amongst the birches, staccato like monstrous hailstones, and there was a lightning-bolt followed by thunder that we thought must be the storm returning, but it was a cluster of bombs and grenades catapulting sound and light into the departing clouds. Ribbons of fire lit up the stonework of the fortress and cathedral spires of Quebec so high on its rock I teetered looking at it.

“I tell myself again and again that the main job of a general is to persuade his men to hold fire until we are close enough to finish the enemy. I’m surprised by other men’s inability to remember this, and Delouche had forgotten it now.

“He managed to burn alive his own best men and incinerate his boots: my men saw him leap on a raft to rescue for himself a pair that had fused on the melted leg of one of his sailors.

“By the time his fire-ships came close they’d nearly burnt themselves out. My men easily heaved grappling hooks over them and swung them into the reeds where their flames dwindled to embers. By dawn the ships were frail charcoal sticks tinkling as they leaned and collapsed on themselves, reeking that sad stink of burnt houses. For a ship is, like a house, a sort of dwelling, even if it is a temporary one and even if it floats like a houseboat or like the frail, bright dream of a burning dragon.”

—