s boat. Oars were splintered in the rowers'
hands by musket-balls, and the men themselves covered with spray from
the roundshot and grape that smote the water on every side. But they
passed safely through the iron storm, and at last reached the deck of
the Niagara, where they were welcomed with thundering cheers. Lieutenant
Elliot of the Niagara, leaving his own ship, took command of the Somers,
and brought up the smaller vessels of the fleet, which had as yet been
little in the action. Perry ran up his signal for close action, and from
vessel to vessel the answering signals went up in the sunlight and the
cheers rang over the water. All together now bore down upon the enemy
and, passing through his line, opened a raking crossfire. So close and
terrible was that fire that the crew of the Lady Prevost ran below,
leaving the wounded and stunned commander alone on the deck. Shrieks and
groans rose from every side. In fifteen minutes from the time the signal
was made Captain Barclay, the British commander, flung out the white
flag. The firing then ceased; the smoke slowly cleared away, revealing
the two fleets commingled, shattered, and torn, and the decks strewn
with dead. The loss on each side was the same, one hundred and
thirty-five killed and wounded. The combat had lasted about three hours.
When Perry saw that victory was secure he wrote with a pencil on the
back of an old letter, resting it on his navy cap, the despatch to
General Harrison: 'We have met the enemy, and they are ours: two ships,
two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.'

"It was a great victory," concluded the eloquent narrator. "The young
conqueror did not sleep a wink that night. Until the morning light he
was on the quarter-deck of the Lawrence, doing what he could to relieve
his suffering comrades, while the stifled groans of the wounded men
echoed from ship to ship. The next day the dead, both the British and
the American, were buried in a wild and solitary spot on the shore. And
there they sleep the sleep of the brave, with the sullen waves to sing
their perpetual requiem."

We sat in silence a long time after; no one was disposed to speak. It
came to us with power there on the moonlit lake, a realization of the
hard-fought battle, the gallant bearing of the young commander, his
daring passage in an open boat through the enemy's fire to the Niagara,
the motto on his flag, the manner in which he carried his vessel alone
through the enemy's line, a