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Still, the American infantry fought with gallant determination. With unfailing energy they made charge after charge to capture the British guns. General Riall, now second in command, was wounded and captured, and at nine o'clock it seemed as though the Americans would win. Then reinforcements poured in on either side. Though tired from long marches on that hot summer day, they at once rallied to the support of their respective commanders, and lighted only by the faint moonlight and the flash from the rifles, the struggle continued with redoubled fury.
The English gunners stood manfully at their posts and swept with deadly fire the lines of Brown's battalions. The carnage was terrific. White men of the same blood, the same language, the same religion, nay, in the highest ethics of the same race, shot each other down by hundreds, as if life were of no moment, bayonetting each other to death in the light of the silvery moon.
At last, spurred on by the determination to carry the battery at any cost, Colonel Miller, of the Twenty-first, made an impetuous rush, and for a time captured the British guns.
Now began the wildest scene of all—a hand-to-hand and bayonet-to-bayonet struggle for mastery. General Drummond's men rallied on every side, determined to fight to the bitter end, and hour after hour the slaughter continued. Everywhere the fight went on. The shouts of command, the thunder of artillery, the continual flashing of powder, the clashing of steel, mingled with the roar of Niagara and the groans of the dying, made it seem as though the demons of hell had been let loose to ravage the earth.
But six hours of mortal conflict were enough. Seventeen hundred men, Britons and Americans, lay side by side, dead or wounded, on that field of battle. The position of the British was too strong to be taken and held, and the invaders, realizing the futility of further effort, withdrew from the field, returning to Fort Erie, which they had already captured, and where they more adequately intrenched their position.
Left to themselves, the British were not long in making a change. Lights were lit, and at once men were dispatched to examine the field and search for missing comrades.
Colonel Battersby, although he had led his men in the thickest of the fight, had come off unscathed, but he knew that some of his officers had been slain or wounded. To his horror, Captain Morris, the man of his own selection, was missing. Eager to know the truth, accompanied by orderlies, he went carefully over the field. Headless trunks, disembowelled bodies, the dead, the dying, the wounded, were everywhere. Agonizing groans came from the fallen, both English and Americans, while side by side with them, stoic Indians with impassive faces did not utter a sound.
As they passed on, limbs were straightened, a comfortable position given or a wound staunched, while now and then a few drops from a pocket flask were poured between the lips of a life fast ebbing away.
"Colonel, here's a captain's epaulets," ejaculated one of his men at last. A light was thrown upon a body whose face was hidden in the moss beneath an oak shrub. The man, though unconscious, still breathed, as he lay in a pool of blood. Wiping his face, they gently turned it upwards.