e lighter craft to cross Lake Borgne, some fifteen miles from
the city.

Five American gunboats, commanded by a young officer named Jones,
with less than two hundred men, were guarding the lake. The British
landed twelve hundred marines. There was a sharp hand to hand fight
for an hour, in which over three hundred of the British were {188}
killed or wounded. But it was twelve hundred against two hundred.
Young Jones was severely wounded, and his gunboats were captured.

It was now two days before Christmas. In a little dwelling house in
Royal Street all was hurry and bustle. This was General Jackson's
headquarters. Early in the afternoon, a young French officer, Major
Villere, had galloped to the door, with the word that an outpost on
his father's plantation, twelve miles below New Orleans, had been
surprised that morning by the British.

"The redcoats are marching in full force straight for the city," he
said; "and if they keep on, they will reach here this very night."

"By the Eternal!" exclaimed Jackson. His eyes flashed, his reddish
gray hair began to bristle, and he brought his fist down upon the
table. "They shall not sleep upon our soil this night."

"Gentlemen," he continued to his officers and to the citizens round
him, "the British are below; we must fight them to-night."

[Illustration: On the Eve of the Battle, Spies Inform Jackson of the
Enemy's Position]

The great bell on the old cathedral of St. Louis begins to ring,
cannon are fired three times to signify danger, and messengers ride
to and fro in hot haste, with orders for the troops to take up their
line of march.

The people of New Orleans had heard how the rough Britons dealt with
the cities of Spain, and they knew well enough that the hated
redcoats would treat their own loved city in like manner.

{189} Jackson put every able-bodied man at work. It was a motley
crowd. Creoles, Frenchmen, Spaniards, prison convicts, negroes, and
even Lafitte, the far-famed "Pirate of the Gulf," and his crew of
buccaneers, answered Jackson's call. The people cheerfully submitted
to martial law. The streets resounded with "Yankee Doodle" and with
"The Marseillaise" sung in English, French, and Spanish.

The backwoodsmen once more came to the front, as they had done at
King's Mountain, thirty-five years before. The stern features of "Old
Hickory" relaxed a bit at the sight of Colonel Carroll and his
riflemen from Nashville. They arrived in flatboats on the