"Don't you know me?" he asked, standing in the open door, waiting for her recognition. In the few weeks of exposure and pursuit his hair had turned snow-white.
His friends suggested that he cross to the American frontier dressed as a woman, and the disguise was so perfect, curls of his sister's hair bobbing from beneath his bonnet, that two loyalist soldiers gallantly escorted the lady's sleigh across unsafe places in the ice. Duncombe waited till he was well on the American side, and his escorts on the way back to Sarnia. Then he emitted a yell over the back of the cutter, "Go tell your officers you have just helped Dr. Duncombe across!"
Having lost the fight for a cause which events have since justified, it is not surprising that the patriots on the American frontier now lost their heads. They formed organizations from Detroit to Vermont for the invasion of Canada and the establishment of a republic. These bands were known as "Hunter's Lodges." Rolph and Duncombe repudiated connection with them, but MacKenzie was head and heart for armed invasion from Buffalo. Space forbids the story of these raids. They would fill a book with such thrilling tales as make up the border wars of Scotland.
The tumultuous year of 1837 closed with the burning of the Caroline. MacKenzie had taken up quarters on Navy Island in Niagara River. The Caroline, an American ship, was being employed to convey guns and provisions to the insurgents' camp. On the Canadian side of the river camped Allan McNab with twenty-five hundred loyalist troops. Looking across the river with field glasses, McNab sees the boat landing field guns on Navy Island for MacKenzie.
"I say," exclaims the future Sir Allan, "this won't do! Can't you cut that vessel out, Drew?" addressing a young officer.
"Nothing easier," answers Drew.
"Do it, then," orders McNab.
In spite of the fact "nothing was easier," Drew's men came near disaster on their midnight escapade. The river below Navy Island was three miles wide, and only a mile and a half from the rapids above the Falls, with a current like a mill race. Secretly seven boats, with four men in each, set out at half past eleven, a few friends on the river bank wishing Drew Godspeed. Out from shore Drew draws his boats together, and tells the men the perilous task they have to do: if any one wishes to go back let him do so now. Not a man speaks. Halfway across, firing from the island drives two of the boats back. The rest get under shadow from the bright moonlight and go on. The roar of the Falls now became deafening, and some of the rowers called out they were being drawn down the center of the river astern. Drew fastens his eyes on a light against the American shore to judge of their progress. For a moment, though the men were rowing with all their might, the light ashore and the boats in mid-river seemed to remain absolutely still. Finally the boats gained an oar's length. Then a mighty pull, and all forge ahead. A strip of land hides approach to the Caroline. The Canadian boatmen lie in hiding till the moon goes down, then glide in on the Caroline, when Drew mounts the decks. Three unarmed men are found on the shore side. Drew orders them to land. One fires point-blank; Drew slashes him down with a single saber cut. The rest of the crew are roused from sleep and sent ashore. The Caroline is set on fire in four places. She is moored to the shore ice; axes chop her free. She is adrift; Drew the last to jump from her flaming decks to his place in the small boats. The flames are seen from the Canadian side, and huge bonfires light up the Canadian shore; by their gleam Drew steers back for McNab's army, and is welcomed with cheers that split the welkin. Slowly the flaming vessel drifted down the channel to the Falls. Suddenly the lights went out; the Caroline had either sunk on a reef or gone over the Falls. One man had been killed on the decks. As the vessel was American, and had been raided in American ports, the episode raised an international dispute that might in another mood have caused war.
Lount and Matthews pay for the rebellion on the gallows, upon which the imperial government expressed regret that the Toronto Executive "found such severity necessary." Later, when "the Hunters' Lodges" raid Prescott, and Van Shoultz, the Polish leader, with nine others, is executed at Kingston, a great revulsion of feeling takes place against the family compact. The execution of the patriots did more for their cause than all their efforts of twenty years. The Canadian people had supported the agitators up to the point of armed rebellion. That gave British blood pause, for the Britisher reveres the law next to God; but when the governing ring began to glut its vengeance under cloak of loyalty that was another matter. After the execution of Lount and Matthews the family compact could scarcely count a friend outside its own circle in Upper Canada. It is worth remembering that the young lawyer who defended Van Shoultz in the trial at Kingston was a John A. Macdonald, who later took foremost part in framing a new constitution for Canada.
Affairs had gone faster in Quebec. There the rebellion almost became war. Papineau was leader of the agitators,—Papineau, fiery, impetuous, eloquent, followed by the bold boys in the bonnets blue, marching the streets of Montreal singing revolutionary songs and planting liberty trees. In Lower Canada, too, things have come to the pass where the agitators advocate armed resistance. From the first, in Quebec, the struggle has waged round two questions,—the exclusion of the French from the council, and the right of the colony to spend its own revenues; but boil down the ninety-two resolutions of 1834, and the demands of the agitators in Lower Canada are the same as in Upper Canada, for complete self-government. A dozen clashes of authority lead up to the final outbreak. For instance, the House elects Papineau, the agitator, speaker. The Governor General refuses to recognize him, and Parliament is dissolved.