Here was a splendid chance for the men on the Saratoga. They poured their broadsides into the stern of the Confiance and raked her from end to end, while her position was a helpless one. The men fled from the guns. The ship was being torn into splinters. No hope for her was left. She could not fire a gun. Her captain was dead, but her lieutenant saw that all was over, and down came her flag.
Then the Saratoga turned on the brig Linnet and served her in the same fashion.
That ended the battle. The two sloops had surrendered before, the gunboats were driven away by the Ticonderoga, and the hard fight was done. Once more the Americans were victors. Perry had won one lake. MacDonough had won another.
And that was not the whole of it. For as soon as the American soldiers saw the British flag down and the Stars and Stripes still afloat, they set up a shout that rang back from the Vermont hills.
Sir George Prevost, though he had an army of veterans twice as strong as the American army of militia, broke camp and sneaked away under cover of a storm.