ome out and battle, and the axes of the Canadians
are too dull to cut down the ironwood pickets, and when at night
Procter's bugles sound retreat, he has lost nearly one hundred men. At
last, in September, the fleets being built for the Canadians at
Amherstburg and for the Americans at Presqu' Isle are completed.
Whichever side commands Lake Erie will control supplies; and though
Captain Barclay, the Canadian, is short of men, Procter cannot afford
to delay the contest for supremacy any longer. He orders Barclay to
sail out and seek Commodore Perry, the American, for decisive battle.

{364} On Barclay's boats are only such old land guns as had been
captured from Detroit. His crews consist of lake sailors and a few
soldiers, in all some three hundred and eighty-four men on six vessels.
September 10, at midday, at Put-in-Bay, Barclay finds Perry's fleet of
seven vessels with six hundred and fifty men. For two hours the
furious cannonading could be heard all the way up to Amherstburg.
Space forbids details of the fight so celebrated in the annals of the
American navy. After broadsides that tore hulls clean of masts and
decks, setting sails in flame and the waters seething in mountainous
waves, the two fleets got within pistol shot of each other, and Perry's
superior numbers won. One third of Barclay's officers were killed and
one third of his men. The Canadian fleet on Lake Erie was literally
exterminated before three in the afternoon.

[Illustration: TWO VIEWS OF THE BATTLE ON LAKE ERIE (From prints
published in 1815)]

Procter's position was now doubly desperate. He was cut off from
supplies. At a council with the Indians, though Tecumseh, the chief,
was for fighting to the bitter death, it was decided to retreat up the
Thames to Vincent's army near modern {365} Hamilton. All the world
knows the bitter end of that retreat. Procter seems to have been so
sure that General Harrison would not follow, that the Canadian forces
did not even pause to destroy bridges behind them; and behind came
Harrison, hot foot, with four thousand fighters from the Kentucky
backwoods. October first the Canadians had retreated far as Chatham,
provisions and baggage coming in boats or sent ahead on wagons.
Procter's first intimation of the foe's nearness was a breathless
messenger with word the Americans just a few miles behind had captured
the provision boats. Sending on his family and the women with a convoy
of two hundred and