. Private houses were untouched.
Looted provisions which the fleet cannot carry away, Chauncey orders
distributed among the poor. Then, leaving some four hundred prisoners
on parole not to serve again during the war, Chauncey sails away for
Niagara.

It is a month later. Down at Fort George on the Canadian side General
Vincent knows well what has happened at Toronto and is on the lookout
for the enemy's fleet. On the American side of the Niagara River, from
Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, are seven thousand troops eager to wipe out
the stain of last year's defeat. On the Canadian side, from Fort
George to Chippewa and Erie, are twenty-three hundred men, mostly
volunteers from surrounding farms, and powder is scarce and provisions
are scarce, for Chauncey's fleet has cut off help from St. Lawrence and
Kingston way. All the last two weeks of May, heavy hot fog lay on the
lake and on the river between the hostile lines, but there was no
mistaking what Chauncey's fleet was about. Red-hot shot showers on
Fort George in a perfect rain. Standing on the other side of the river
are thousands of spectators, among them one grand old swashbuckler
fellow in a cocked hat, whose fighting days are past, taking snuff
after the fashion of a former generation and wearing an air of grand
patronage to the American troops because _he_ has seen service in
Europe.

{356} "No, sir," says the grand old fighting cock pompously to his
auditors, "can't be done! Have seen it tried on the Continent, and you
can't do it! Lay a wager you can't do it! Can't possibly set fire to
a fort by red-hot shot!"

Then at night time, when the lurid glare of flame lights up the foggy
darkness, the old gentleman is put to his trumps. "See!" they say;
"Fort George _is_ on fire"; and over at Fort George the bucket brigade
works hard as the cannoneers. But the fog is too good a chance to be
missed by Chauncey; rowing out with muffled oars all the nights of May
24 and 25, he has his men sounding . . . sounding . . . sounding in
silence the channel, right within pistol shot of Fort George. The
night of the 26th troops and marines are bidden breakfast at two in the
morning, and be ready for action with a single blanket and rations for
one day. That is all they are told. They embark at four. The waters
are dead calm, the morning of the 27th gray as wool with fog. Sweeps
out Chauncey's fleet, circles up to Fort George with one hundred scows
in tow, carryi