ns, but in the darkness they
cannot carry them off. Each side thinks the other beaten, and neither
will retreat. In the confusion it is impossible to rally the
battalions, and men are attacking their own side by mistake. Both
sides claim victory, and each is afraid to await what daylight may
reveal; for it is no exaggeration to say that at the battle of Lundy's
Lane the blood of one third of each side dyed the field. The Canadians
as defenders of their own homes, fighting in the last ditch, dare not
retire. The Americans, having more to risk in numbers, withdraw their
troops at two in the morning. Of her twenty-eight hundred men Canada
had lost nine hundred; and the American loss is as great. Too
exhausted to retire, Drummond's men flung themselves on the ground and
slept lying among the dead, heedless alike of the drenching rain that
follows artillery fire, of the roaring cataract, of the groans from the
wounded. Men awakened in the gray dawn to find themselves
unrecognizable from blood and powder smoke, to find, {376} in some
cases, that the comrade whose coat they had shared as pillow lay cold
in death by morning. While Drummond's men bury the dead in heaps and
carry the wounded to Toronto, the invaders have retreated with their
wounded to Fort Erie.

It now became the dauntless Drummond's aim to expel the enemy from Fort
Erie. Five days after the battle of Lundy's Lane he had moved his camp
halfway between Chippewa and Fort Erie; but in addition to its garrison
of two thousand, Fort Erie is guarded by three armed schooners lying at
anchor on the lake front. Captain Dobbs of Drummond's forces makes the
first move. At the head of seventy-five men, he deploys far to the
rear of the fort through the woods, carrying five flatboats over the
forest trail eight miles, and on the night of the 12th of August slips
out through the water mist towards the American schooners.

"Who goes?" challenges the ships' watchman.

"Provision boats from Buffalo," calls back the Canadian oarsman; and
the rowboats pass round within the shadow of the schooner. A moment
later the American ships are boarded. A trampling on deck calls the
sailors aloft; but Dobbs has mastered two vessels before the fort wakes
to life with a rush to the rescue.

Delay means almost inevitable loss to Drummond; for Prevost will send
no more reenforcements, and the Americans are daily strengthening Fort
Erie. Bastions of stone have been built. O