les and drifted on the captured ship downstream.
The fur ship was worked safely over to the American side, where it was
welcomed with wild cheers. The brig was set on fire and abandoned.

Van Rensselaer decided to take advantage of the elated spirit among the
troops and invade Canada at once.

Over on the Canadian side, Brock, at Fort George, wanted to offer an
exchange of Detroit prisoners for the voyageurs on the captured fur
ship, and Evans was ordered to paddle across to Lewiston with the
offer, white handkerchief fluttering as a flag of truce. Evans could
not mistake the signs as he landed on the American shore. Sentries
dashed down to stop his advance at bayonet point. He was denied speech
with Van Rensselaer and refused admittance to the American camp; and
the reason was plain. A score of boats, capable of holding thirty men
each, lay moored at the Lewiston shore. Along the rain-soaked road
behind the shore floundered and marched troops, fresh troops joining
Van Rensselaer's camp. It was dark before Evans returned to Queenston
Heights and close on midnight when he reached Major General Brock at
Fort George. Brock thought Evans over anxious, and both went to bed,
or at least threw themselves down on a mattress to sleep. At two
o'clock they were awakened by a sound which could not be mistaken,--the
thunderous booming of a furious cannonade from Queenston Heights.
Brock realized that the two hundred Canadians on the cliff must be
repelling an invasion, but he was suspicious that the attack from
Lewiston was a feint to draw off attention from Fort Niagara opposite
Fort George, and he did not at once order troops to the aid of
Queenston Heights.

[Illustration: GENERAL BROCK]

Evans' predictions of invasion were only too true. After one attempt
to cross the gorge, which was balked by storm, Van {345} Rensselaer
finally got his troops down to the water's edge about midnight of
October 12-13. The night was dark, moonless, rainy,--a wind which
mingled with the roar of the river drowning all sound of marching
troops. Three hundred men embarked on the first passage of the boats
across the swift river, the poor old pilot literally groaning aloud in
terror. Three of the boats were carried beyond the landing on the
Canadian side, and had to come back through the dark to get their
bearings; but the rest, led by Van Rensselaer, had safely landed on the
Canadian side, when the batteries of Queenston Heights flas