The rain was gradually ceasing. Shafts of light from an unseen sun tinged the edges of the smoke-coloured clouds with amber and rose. A few spent musket-balls falling about the enclosure aroused Brock's suspicions. He was watching, from behind the earthen parapet, the flight of the shells discharged by the eighteen-pounder, and, seeing that they burst too soon, turned to the gunner.
"Sergeant, you are misjudging your time and distance; we must not waste powder and shot. Your shells are bursting too soon. Try a longer fuse."
The words were barely out of our hero's mouth when there was a rolling crash of musketry, accompanied by wild shouts, and a shower of bullets flew zipping over their heads. Shooting high is the invariable shortcoming of excited marksmen. A moment later the heads of a large force of American riflemen rose from the rocky ambuscade above and behind them. The next instant the enemy was in full charge, evidently bent on capturing both the General and the redan.
Brock saw that resistance would be madness. To save the gun and escape capture must be the "double event." Seizing a ramrod, he ordered an artilleryman to spike the gun, gave the command to retreat, telling the men to "duck their heads," fearing another discharge, and, leading his horse, followed by Macdonell and Glegg and the firing squad of eight artillerymen, rushed down the slope.
For a clearer understanding of the situation--a better conception even than our hero had when, to escape capture and save the lives of his men, he was compelled to abandon the redan--we must visit Van Rensselaer's camp at Lewiston.
After midnight, on the morning of the 11th, the American general, Van Rensselaer, believing, as he wrote, "that Brock, with all his disposable forces, had left for Detroit," launched from the Lewiston landing, under cover of the pitch darkness, thirteen boats capable of carrying 340 armed men.
To Lieutenant Sims, "the man of the greatest skill in the American service," was entrusted the command. Sims entered the leading boat, and vanished in the gloom. Whether he had taken all the oars with him, as reported, or whether the furious storm and the sight of the whirling black waters had frozen the hearts of the troops, must remain a mystery. The other boats did not follow.