Van Rensselaer was confident of victory. He deputed the attack to his cousin, Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer, an officer of the regular army, and to Lieutenant-Colonel Christie, who between them commanded six hundred men, half militia and half regular. The first of these men embarked at three o’clock in the morning, when the landscape was dark and dismal and rain was falling, in a boat from the Lewiston landing. Their oars were muffled, but the sentries upon the heights on the other side detected their approach. They fired into the boat, and the noise brought Captain Dennis and his men at a run. More firing ensued. Colonel Van Rensselaer, who was in the leading boat, was badly wounded. The invasion was checked for the moment, and such Americans as had effected a landing were compelled to hide in the brush overhanging the bank. Lieutenant-Colonel Christie’s boats were less fortunate. A current carried them down stream, and they had to return to Lewiston, to set out again. Under Colonel Fenwick a force of regulars followed the advance party, but their boat was swept below Queenston and beached there. The defenders on the height had it at their mercy and fired, wounding Fenwick and eventually compelling the surrender of the whole boatful. Another boat which landed at Vrooman’s Point met the same fate. The defenders’ guns, while they warned the Canadians also warned those American soldiers still at Lewiston of the opposition to the invading force. The gunners at Lewiston opened fire on Queenston Heights, in an endeavor to cover the landing of the attacking troops, while the Canadian batteries kept on with their grim work of firing volleys into the boats in midstream. Meanwhile Brock at Fort George was uneasy. He had sat up most of the night of October 12th making his plans and writing despatches. He seems to have expected an engagement almost immediately, for he wrote a letter to his brother about it in which he said: “If I should be beaten the province is inevitably gone.” He had hardly gone to sleep on the night of October 12th when the sentry, who had heard the firing at Queenston, aroused him. So it had come! He wasted no time, but was soon galloping, unattended, under darkling skies and pouring rain, to Queenston.