s_ was shot
away, and Lawrence stopped firing to learn if she had surrendered; but
the _Caron_ fired another broadside, and the fight went on with renewed
vigor. Soon a shot cut the cable of the _Hermes_, and she floated away
with the current, her head toward the fort, and her decks swept of men
and everything by a raking fire from the fort.

"Then the fort's flag-staff was shot away and her ensign fell, but the
British, instead of following Lawrence's humane example, redoubled their
fire. At the same time, Woodbine, supposing that the fort had
surrendered, hastened toward it with his Indians, but they were driven
back by a storm of grape-shot, and almost immediately the flag was seen
again floating over the fort at the end of the staff to which Major
Lawrence had nailed it."

"And was that the end of the fight, papa?" asked Lulu.

"Very nearly, if not quite," he replied. "Two of the attacking vessels
presently withdrew, leaving the helpless _Hermes_ behind; she finally
grounded upon a sand-bank, when Percy fired and abandoned her. Near
midnight her magazine exploded."

"I should think that was a great victory; was it not, Brother Levis?"
queried Walter.

"I think it was," the captain said. "The result was very mortifying to
the British. It was entirely unexpected, and Percy had said that he
would allow the garrison only twenty minutes to capitulate. It is not
surprising that he expected to take the weak little fort, with its
feeble garrison of one hundred and thirty, when he brought against it
over thirteen hundred men and ninety-two pieces of artillery.

"The Americans lost only eight men, one-half of whom were killed. The
assailants lost two hundred and thirty-two, one hundred and sixty-two of
them killed.

"One result of that fight was that the Indians lost faith in the
invincibility of the British, and many of them deserted, and sought
safety from the anger of Jackson by concealing themselves in the
interior of their broad country."

"Papa," said Grace earnestly, "did not God help our cause because we
were in the right?"

"No doubt of it, daughter," replied the captain; "ours was a righteous
cause, a resistance to intolerable oppression and wrong, as our poor
sailors felt it to be when a British man-of-war would stop our
merchantmen on the high seas and force into their service any man whom
they choose to say was an Englishman.

"But I need not enlarge upon that subject to my present audience, as I
am