"'If a victory is to be won I will win it,' he said to the lieutenant. He tore down his flag with its glorious motto,--'Don't give up the ship,'--and leaping into a boat with half a dozen others, told the sailors to give way with a will. The Niagara was half a mile distant to the windward, and the enemy, as soon as they observed his movement, directed their fire upon his boat. Oars were splintered in the rowers' hands by musket-balls, and the men themselves covered with spray from the roundshot and grape that smote the water on every side. But they passed safely through the iron storm, and at last reached the deck of the Niagara, where they were welcomed with thundering cheers. Lieutenant Elliot of the Niagara, leaving his own ship, took command of the Somers, and brought up the smaller vessels of the fleet, which had as yet been little in the action. Perry ran up his signal for close action, and from vessel to vessel the answering signals went up in the sunlight and the cheers rang over the water. All together now bore down upon the enemy and, passing through his line, opened a raking crossfire. So close and terrible was that fire that the crew of the Lady Prevost ran below, leaving the wounded and stunned commander alone on the deck. Shrieks and groans rose from every side. In fifteen minutes from the time the signal was made Captain Barclay, the British commander, flung out the white flag. The firing then ceased; the smoke slowly cleared away, revealing the two fleets commingled, shattered, and torn, and the decks strewn with dead. The loss on each side was the same, one hundred and thirty-five killed and wounded. The combat had lasted about three hours. When Perry saw that victory was secure he wrote with a pencil on the back of an old letter, resting it on his navy cap, the despatch to General Harrison: 'We have met the enemy, and they are ours: two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.' "It was a great victory," concluded the eloquent narrator. "The young conqueror did not sleep a wink that night. Until the morning light he was on the quarter-deck of the Lawrence, doing what he could to relieve his suffering comrades, while the stifled groans of the wounded men echoed from ship to ship. The next day the dead, both the British and the American, were buried in a wild and solitary spot on the shore. And there they sleep the sleep of the brave, with the sullen waves to sing their perpetual requiem."