discipline they had and were becoming distrustful both of their leaders and of themselves; while Brock’s men were gaining discipline, zeal, and inspiring confidence with every hour.  Besides, the British were all effectives; while Hull had over five hundred absent from Detroit and as many more ineffective on the spot; which left him only fifteen hundred actual combatants.  He also had a thousand non-combatants—­men, women, and children—­all cowering for shelter from the dangers of battle, and half dead with the far more terrifying apprehension of an Indian massacre.

Brock’s five-gun battery made excellent practice during the afternoon without suffering any material damage in return.  One chance shell produced a most dismaying effect in Detroit by killing Hanks, the late commandant of Mackinaw, and three other officers with him.  At twilight the firing ceased on both sides.

Immediately after dark Tecumseh led six hundred eager followers down to their canoes a little way below Sandwich.  These Indians were told off by tribes, as battalions are by companies.  There, in silent, dusky groups, moving soft-foot on their moccasins through the gloom, were Shawnees and Miamis from Tecumseh’s own lost home beside the Wabash, Foxes and Sacs from the Iowan valley, Ottawas and Wyandots, Chippewas and Potawatomis, some braves from the middle prairies between the Illinois and the Mississippi, and even Winnebagoes and Dakotahs from the far North-West.  The flotilla of crowded canoes moved stealthily across the river, with no louder noise than the rippling current made.  As secretly, the Indians crept ashore, stole inland through the quiet night, and, circling north, cut off Hull’s army from the woods.  Little did Hull’s anxious sentries think that some of the familiar cries of night-birds round the fort were signals being passed along from scout to scout.

As the beautiful summer dawn began to break at four o’clock that fateful Sunday morning, the British force fell in, only seven hundred strong, and more than half militia.  The thirty gunners who had served the Sandwich battery so well the day before also fell in, with five little field-pieces, in case Brock could force a battle in the open.  Their places in the battery were ably filled by every man of the Provincial Marine whom Captain Hall could spare from the Queen Charlotte, the flagship of the tiny Canadian flotilla.  Brock’s men and his light artillery were soon afloat and making for Spring Wells, more than three miles below Detroit.  Then, as the Queen Charlotte ran up her sunrise flag, she and the Sandwich battery roared out a challenge to which the Americans replied with random aim.  Brock leaped ashore, formed front towards Hull, got into touch with Tecumseh’s Indians on his left, and saw that the British land and water batteries were protecting his right, as prearranged with Captain Hall.