Chapter 5 A VICTORY AND ITS COST.

While the events just described had been taking place, an important movement was made for the recovery of Queenston Heights. Major-General Sheaffe, with a force of about nine hundred redcoats and militia, made a circuitous march through the village of St. David's, and thus gained the crest of the heights on which the enemy were posted. Here he was re-enforced by the arrival of a company of the 41st grenadiers and a body of militiamen from Chippewa.

With a volley and a gallant British cheer, they attacked, about two o'clock in the afternoon, the American force, which had also been re-enforced to about the same number as the British. Courage the enemy had, but they lacked the confidence and steadiness imparted by the presence of the veteran British troops. Nevertheless, for a time they stoutly stood their ground; but, soon perceiving the hopelessness of resistance, they everywhere gave way, and retreated precipitately down the hill to their place of landing. The Indians, like sleuth hounds that had broken leash, unhappily could not be restrained, and, shrieking their blood- curdling war-whoops, pursued with tomahawk and reeking blade the demoralized fugitives. Many stragglers were cut off from the main body and attempted to escape through the woods. These were intercepted and driven back by the exasperated Indians, burning to avenge the death of Brock, for whom they felt an affection and veneration for which the savage breast would scarce have been deemed capable.

Terrified at the appearance of the enraged warriors, many of the Americans flung themselves wildly over the cliff and endeavoured to scramble down its rugged and precipitous slope. Some were impaled upon the jagged pines, others reached the bottom bruised and bleeding, and others, attempting to swim the rapid stream, were drowned in its whirling eddies. One who reached the opposite shore in a boat made a gesture of defiance and contempt toward his foes across the river, when he fell, transpierced with the bullet of an Indian sharpshooter.

Two brothers of the Canadian militia fought side by side, when, in the moment of victory, a shot pierced the lungs of the younger, a boy of seventeen, with a fair, innocent face. His brother bore him from the field in his arms, and, while the life-tide ebbed from his wound, the dying boy faltered-

"Kiss me, Jim. Tell mother-I was not-afraid to die," and as the blood gushed from his mouth, the brave young spirit departed.

All that day, and on many a foughten field thereafter, the living brother heard those dying words, and in his ear there rang a wild refrain, which nerved his arm and steeled his heart to fight for the country hallowed by his brother's blood.

"O, how the drum beats so loud!

'Close beside me in the fight,

My dying brother says, 'Good night!'

And the cannon's awful breath

Screams the loud halloo of Death!

And the drum,

And the drum

Beats so loud!"

Such were some of the dreadful horrors with which a warfare between two kindred peoples was waged; and such were some of the costly sacrifices with which the liberties of Canada were won. As from the vantage ground of these happier times we look back upon the stern experiences of those iron days, they inspire a blended feeling of pity and regret, not unmingled with a vague remorse, shot through and through our patriotic pride and exultation, like dark threads in a bright woof. Through the long centuries of carnage and strife through which the race has struggled up to freedom, how faint has seemed the echo of the angel's song, "Peace on earth, good will to men."

"I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,

The cries of agony, the endless groan.

Which, through the ages that have gone before us,

In long reverberations reach our own.

"Is it, O man with such discordant noises,

With such accursed instruments as these,

Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,

And jarrest the celestial harmonies.

* * * * *

"Down the dark future, through long generations,

The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;

And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, 'Peace!'

"Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals

The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!

But beautiful as songs of the immortals,

The holy melodies of love arise."

The result of the battle of Queenston Heights was the unconditional surrender of Brigadier Wadsworth and nine hundred and fifty officers and privates as prisoners of war. But this victory, brilliant as it was, was dearly bought with the death of the loved and honored Brock, the brave young Macdonnell, and those of humbler rank, whose fall brought sorrow to many a Canadian home.

"Joy's bursting shout in whelming grief was drowned,

And victory's self unwilling audience found;

On every brow the cloud of sadness hung,-

"The sounds of triumph died on every tongue."

Three days later all that was mortal of General Brock and his gallant aide-de-camp was committed to the earth with mournful pageantry. With arms reversed and muffled drums and the wailing strains of the "Dead March," the sad procession passed, while the half-mast flags and minute guns of both the British and American forts attested the honour and esteem in which the dead soldiers were held by friends and foes alike. Amid the tears of war-bronzed soldiers and even of stoical Indians they were laid in one common grave in a bastion of Fort George. A grateful country has since erected on the scene of the victory-one of the grandest sites on earth-a noble monument to the memory of Brock, and beneath it, side by side, sleeps the dust of the heroic chief and his faithful aide-de-camp-united in their death and not severed in their burial.

As Neville and the squire and Zenas turned away from the solemn pageant of which they had been silent spectators, the latter remarked,

"Captain Villiers said he'd almost give his other arm to be able to be present to-day and lay a wreath on the coffin of his gallant chief. As he couldn't come, he wrote these verses, which he wished me to post to the York Gazette. He said I might read them to you, Mr. Trueman, before I sent them." And the boy, not very fluently, but with a good deal of feeling, read the following lines:-

"Low bending o'er the ragged bier,

The soldier drops the mournful tear,

For life departed, valour driven,

Fresh from the field of death, to Heaven.

"But Time shall fondly trace the name

Of BROCK upon the scrolls of Fame,

And those bright laurels, which should wave

Upon the brow of one so brave,

Shall flourish vernal o'er his grave."

Neville commended the graceful tribute with generous warmth, when

Zenas remarked,

"The Captain will be glad to hear you like them. Leastways, I suppose so. He read them himself to Kate this morning, and seemed pleased because they made her cry."

"He is a brave gentleman," says the squire. "I fear it will be long before he mounts his horse, again."

"O he'll soon be round again," chimed in Zenas. "He said Kate would be his Elaine, to nurse the wounded Lancelot back to life. Who was Lancelot?"

"Some of those moon-struck poetry fellows, I'll be bound," said the squire contemptuously.

"Nay, a very gallant knight," said Neville, who had when a boy, read with delight Sir Thomas Mallory's book of King Arthur; but he did not seem to relish the comparison and led the conversation into a serious vein, as befitting the solemn occasion.