his lips, "My fall must not
be noticed to stop the victory." Major Macdonnell led in the charge up
the hill, but the next moment his horse plunged frantically, and he
reeled from the saddle fatally wounded. For a second time the British
were repulsed, and the Americans had won the Heights, if not the day.

[Illustration: BROCK MONUMENT, QUEENSTON HEIGHTS]

The invaders were resting on their arms, snatching a breakfast of
biscuit and cheese about midday, when General Sheaffe arrived from Fort
George with troops breathless from running. A heart-shattering huzza
from the village warned the Americans {347} that help had come, and
they were to arms in a second; but Sheaffe had swept round the Heights,
Indians on one side of the hill, soldiers on the other, and came on the
surprised Americans as from the rear. There was a wild whoop, a dash
up the hill, a pause to fire, when the air was splinted by nine hundred
instantaneous shots. Then through the smoke the British rushed the
Heights at bayonet point. For three hours the contest raged in full
sight of Lewiston, a hand-to-hand butchery between Sheaffe's fresh
fighters and the Americans, who had been on their feet since midnight.
Indian tomahawk played its part, but it is a question if the scalping
knife did as deadly work as the grenadier's long bayonets. Cooped up
between the enemy and the precipice, the American sharpshooters waited
for the help that never came. In vain Van Rensselaer's officers prayed
and swore and pleaded with the volunteer troops on the Lewiston side.
The men flatly refused to cross; for boat loads of mangled bodies were
brought back at each passage. Discipline fell to pieces. It was the
old story of volunteers, brave enough at a spurt, going to pieces in
panic under hard and continued strain. Driven from Queenston Heights,
the invaders fought their way down the cliff path by inches to the
water side, and there . . . there were no boats! Pulling off his white
necktie, an officer held it up on the point of his sword as signal of
surrender. It was one of the most {348} gallant fights on both sides
in Canadian history, though officers over on the Lewiston shore were
crying like boys at the sight of nine hundred Americans surrendering.

Truce was then arranged for the burial of the dead. The bodies of
Brock and Macdonnell were laid on a gun wagon and conveyed between
lines of sorrowing soldiers, with arms reversed, to the burial place
outsid