These Knox describes
as a mean-looking set of fellows, of all ages and sizes, and without any
kind of discipline; adding that their officers are sober, modest men,
who, though of confined ideas, talk very clearly and sensibly, and make
a decent appearance in blue, faced with scarlet, though the privates
have no uniform at all.
At last the forty-third set sail, the cannon of the fort saluting them,
and the soldiers cheering lustily, overjoyed to escape from their long
imprisonment. A gale soon began; the transports became separated; Knox's
vessel sheltered herself for a time in Passamaquoddy Bay; then passed
the Grand Menan, and steered southward and eastward along the coast of
Nova Scotia. A calm followed the gale; and they moved so slowly that
Knox beguiled the time by fishing over the stern, and caught a halibut
so large that he was forced to call for help to pull it in. Then they
steered northeastward, now lost in fogs, and now tossed mercilessly on
those boisterous waves; till, on the twenty-fourth of May, they saw a
rocky and surf-lashed shore, with a forest of masts rising to all
appearance out of it. It was the British fleet in the land-locked harbor
of Louisbourg.
On the left, as they sailed through the narrow passage, lay the town,
scarred with shot and shell, the red cross floating over its battered
ramparts; and around in a wide semicircle rose the bristling back of
rugged hills, set thick with dismal evergreens.
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