move, save for a small attempt--repulsed--by a handful of men to examine
the landing. The next morning, however, the attack began. Twelve
hundred men were landed at Beauport, in the mud and low water, under one
Major Walley. With him was Gering, keen for action--he had persuaded
Phips to allow him to fight on land.

To meet the English, Iberville, Sainte-Helene, and Perrot issued forth
with three hundred sharpshooters and a band of Huron Indians. In the
skirmish that followed, Iberville and Perrot pressed with a handful of
men forward very close to the ranks of the English. In the charge which
the New Englander ordered, Iberville and Perrot saw Gering, and they
tried hard to reach him. But the movement between made it impossible
without running too great risk. For hours the fierce skirmishing went
on, but in the evening the French withdrew and the New Englanders made
their way towards the St. Charles, where vessels were to meet them, and
protect them as they crossed the river and attacked the town in the rear
--help that never came. For Phips, impatient, spent his day in a
terrible cannonading, which did no great damage to the town--or the
cliff. It was a game of thunder, nothing worse, and Walley and Gering
with their men were neglected.

The fight with the ships began again at daybreak. Iberville, seeing
that Walley would not attack, joined Sainte-Helene and Maricourt at the
battery, and one of Iberville's shots brought down the admiral's
flagstaff, with its cross of St. George. It drifted towards the shore,
and Maurice Joval went out in a canoe under a galling fire and brought it
up to Frontenac.

Iberville and Sainte-Helene concentrated themselves on the Six Friends--
the admiral's ship. In vain Phips's gunners tried to dislodge them and