Accordingly, on the third of May, the troops turned out with scaling ladders; the fire-ship came up the river under easy sail, and arrived near the shipping before it was discovered. It was fired into. The crew applied a slow match to the train and pulled off. The ship was soon in a blaze, but the flames caught and consumed the sails; her way was checked, and she drifted off harmlessly with the ebbing tide. The rest of the plan was, of course, abandoned. Nothing now remained but to retreat before the enemy should be reinforced. Preparations were made in all haste, to embark the sick and the military stores. While this was taking place, five ships made their way into the harbor, on the 6th of May, and began to land troops. Thus reinforced, General Carleton sallied forth, with eight hundred or a thousand men. We quote his own letter for an account of his sortie. “As soon as part of the 29th regiment with the marines, in all about two hundred, were landed, they, with the greatest part of the garrison, by this time much improved, and in high spirits, marched out of the ports of St. Louis and St. Johns, to see what these mighty boasters were about. They were found very busy in their preparations for a retreat. A few shots being exchanged, the line marched forward, and the place was soon cleared of these plunderers.” By his own account, however, these “mighty boasters” had held him and his garrison closely invested for five months; had burnt the suburbs; battered the walls; thrown red-hot shot among the shipping; made repeated and daring attempts to carry the place by assault and stratagem, and rendered it necessary for soldiers, sailors, marines, and even judges and other civil officers to mount guard.[65] One officer declares, in a letter, that for eighty successive nights he slept in his clothes, to be ready in case of alarm. All this, too, was effected by a handful of men, exposed in open encampments to the rigors of a Canadian winter. If in truth they were boasters, it must be allowed their deeds were equal to their words. The Americans were in no condition to withstand Carleton’s unlooked-for attack. They had no intrenchments, and could not muster three hundred men at any point. A precipitate retreat was the consequence, in which baggage, artillery, every thing was abandoned. Even the sick were left behind; many of whom crawled away from the camp hospitals, and took refuge in the woods, or among the Canadian peasantry. General Carleton did not think it prudent to engage in a pursuit with his newly-landed troops. He treated the prisoners with great humanity, and caused the sick to be sought out in their hiding-places, and brought to the general hospitals; with assurances, that, when healed, they should have liberty to return to their homes.