The tide was running fast, so that the rowers could ply their oars with a minimum of disturbance. From both posts upon the cliff their presence was noticed, and the challenge of a sentry rang out clear upon the silent night. On each occasion a Highland officer, who spoke French perfectly, replied that they were a provision convoy, to the satisfaction of the challengers. But the risk was undeniable, and illustrates the hazardous nature of the enterprise. Wolfe's friend, Captain Howe, brother of the popular young nobleman who fell at Ticonderoga, with a small body of picked soldiers, was to lead the ascent, and as the boats touched the narrow beach of the Anse du Foulon he and his volunteers leaped rapidly on shore. Some of the boats accidentally overran the spot, but it made little difference, as the narrow path was, in any case, found to be blocked, and the eager soldiers were forced to throw themselves upon the rough face of the cliff, which was here over two hundred feet high, but fortunately sprinkled thick with stunted bushes. Swiftly and silently Howe and his men scrambled up its steep face. No less eagerly the men behind, as boat after boat discharged its load of red-coats under Wolfe's eye on the narrow shore, followed in their precarious steps.
Day was just beginning to glimmer as the leading files leaped out onto the summit and rushed upon the handful of astonished Frenchmen before them, who fired a futile volley and fled. The shots and cries alarmed other posts at some distance off, yet near enough to fire in the direction of the landing-boats. It was too late, however; the path had now been cleared of obstacles, and the British were swarming onto the plateau. The first sixteen hundred men had been rapidly disembarked, and the boats were already dashing back for Townshend's brigade, who were approaching in the ships, and for the Forty-eighth, awaiting them on the opposite shore.
The scattered French posts along the summit were easily dispersed, while the main army at Beauport, some miles away, on the far side of the city, were as yet unconscious of danger. Bougainville and his force back at Cap Rouge were as far off and as yet no wiser. Quebec had just caught the alarm, but its weak and heterogeneous garrison had no power for combined mobility. By six o'clock Wolfe had his whole force of forty-three hundred men drawn up on the plateau, with their backs to the river and their faces to the north. Leaving the Royal Americans, five hundred forty strong, to guard the landing-place, and with a force thus reduced to under four thousand he now marched toward the city, bringing his left round at the same time in such fashion as to face the western walls, scarcely a mile distant.