A few minutes after 3 P.M. a white flag at the end of a boarding-pike was lifted above the bulwarks of the _Hunter_. At sight of this the _Chippeway_ and _Little Belt_ crowded all sail and tried to escape, but in less than a quarter of an hour they were captured and brought back by the _Trippe_ and _Scorpion_, under the commands of Lieutenant Thomas Holdup and Sailing-Master Stephen Champlin. With a ringing cheer the word went through the line that the British had surrendered. The sovereignty of Lake Erie belonged to America. The question of supremacy was settled. The events of the day had been most dramatic. This fight amid the wooded shores and extending arms of the bay was viewed from shore by hundreds of anxious Americans. The bright sunlight and calm surface of the lake, the enshrouding fog of smoke that from shore hid all but the spurts of flame and the topmasts and occasionally the flags of the vessels engaged, all had combined to make a drama of the most exciting and awe-inspiring interest. Nor was the last act to be a letting-down. Perry determined to receive the surrender of the defeated enemy nowhere else but on the deck of his old flag-ship that was slowly drifting up into the now intermingled fleets. [Illustration: THE SECOND POSITION IN THE BATTLE] Once more he lowered his broad pennant and rowed out for the crippled _Lawrence_. He was received on board with three feeble cheers, the wounded joining in, and a number of men crawling up from the slaughter-pen of a cockpit, begrimed and bloody.