swords. Then bombs began to ricochet over the ice. If
the range of the Ogdensburg cannon had been longer, the whole Canadian
force might have been sunk in mid-river; but the men were already
dashing up the American shore whooping like fiends incarnate. First a
grapeshot caught Jenkins' left arm, and it hung in bloody splinters.
Then a second shot took off his right arm. Still he dashed forward,
cheering his men, till he dropped in his tracks, faint from loss of
blood. No answer came back to the summons to surrender, and, taking
possession of an outer battery, the Canadians turned its cannon full on
the village. Under cover of the battery fire, and their own cannon now
in position, the whole force of Canadians immediately rushed the town
at bayonet point. Now the bayonet in a solid phalanx of five hundred
men is not a pleasant weapon to stand up against. As the drill
sergeants order, you not only stick the bayonet _into_ your enemy, but
you turn it round "to let the air in" so he will die; and before the
furious onslaught of bayonets, the defenders of Ogdensburg broke, and
fled for the woods. Within an hour the {351} Canadians had burnt the
barracks, set fire to two schooners iced up, and come off with loot of
a dozen cannon, stores of all sorts, and with prisoners to the number
of seventy-four.

[Illustration: YORK (TORONTO) HARBOR]

The ice had left Lake Ontario early this year, and by mid-April
Commander Chauncey slipped out of Sackett's Harbor with sixteen
vessels, having on board seventeen hundred troops, besides the crews.
It will be remembered that the capital of Ontario had been moved from
Niagara (Newark) to York (Toronto) on the north side of Lake Ontario,
then a thriving village of one thousand souls on the inner shore of
Humber Bay. On the sand reef known as the Island, in front of the
harbor, had been constructed a battery with cannon. The main village
lay east of the present city hall. Westward less than a mile was
Government House, on the site of the present residence. Between
Government House and the village was not a house of any sort, only a
wood road flanking the lake, and badly cut up by ravines. Just west of
Government House, and close to the water, was a blockhouse or tower
used as powder magazine, mounted with cannon to command the landing
from the lake. Some accounts speak of yet another little outer battery
or earthwork farther {352} westward. North of the Government House
roa