Then a shout from the Canadian side split the very welkin. Hercules Scott had arrived with his twelve hundred men on a run, breathless and tired from a march and countermarch of twenty miles. The Americans took up the yell; for fresh reserves had joined them, too, and Lundy's Lane became a bedlam of ear-shattering sounds,--heavy artillery wagons forcing up the hill at a gallop over dead and dying, bombs from the Canadian guns exploding in the darkness, horses taking fright and bolting from their riders, carrying American guns clear across the lines among the Canadians. A wild yell of triumph told that the Americans had captured the hill. For the next two hours it was a hand-to-hand fight in pitchy darkness. Drummond, the Englishman, could be heard right in the midst of the {375} American lines, shouting, "Stick to them, men! stick to them! Don't give up! Don't turn! Stick to them! You 'll have it!" And American officers were found amidst Canadian battalions, shouting stentorian command: "Level low! Fire at their flashes! Watch the flash, and fire at their flashes!" [Illustration: MONUMENT AT LUNDY'S LANE] The Americans have captured the Canadian guns, but in the darkness they cannot carry them off. Each side thinks the other beaten, and neither will retreat. In the confusion it is impossible to rally the battalions, and men are attacking their own side by mistake. Both sides claim victory, and each is afraid to await what daylight may reveal; for it is no exaggeration to say that at the battle of Lundy's Lane the blood of one third of each side dyed the field. The Canadians as defenders of their own homes, fighting in the last ditch, dare not retire. The Americans, having more to risk in numbers, withdraw their troops at two in the morning. Of her twenty-eight hundred men Canada had lost nine hundred; and the American loss is as great. Too exhausted to retire, Drummond's men flung themselves on the ground and slept lying among the dead, heedless alike of the drenching rain that follows artillery fire, of the roaring cataract, of the groans from the wounded. Men awakened in the gray dawn to find themselves unrecognizable from blood and powder smoke, to find, {376} in some cases, that the comrade whose coat they had shared as pillow lay cold in death by morning. While Drummond's men bury the dead in heaps and carry the wounded to Toronto, the invaders have retreated with their wounded to Fort Erie.