men remained, the little force surrendered, and the captives were distributed among the savages. At about this time there occurred an event on Lake Erie which somewhat lightened the gloom occasioned by the American reverses. Commodore Chauncey, in command of the American naval forces on Ontario, had sent Commander Jesse D. Elliott up to Erie to begin the construction of a navy. Elliott was a born fighter and not slow to grasp opportunities that came his way, and when he learned that the British ships _Detroit_ and _Caledonia_ were anchored under Fort Erie, he set out from Black Rock with one hundred and twenty-eight men, ran his boats alongside the two ships, and captured them in a fierce hand-to-hand conflict which began at three o’clock in the morning. The two vessels were at once got under way and the _Caledonia_ was brought within the protection of an American battery near Black Rock. The _Detroit_ was less fortunate and was compelled to haul to within a few hundred yards of a British battery. Elliott refused to abandon her until his ammunition gave out, and even then succeeded in bringing his prize to Squaw Island, where she was within the range of both American and British batteries. No sooner would one side gain possession of her than her captors would be driven off by the guns of the other, and in these attacks and counter-attacks the vessel was destroyed. Elliott, however, had the nucleus for his new fleet in the captured _Caledonia_. At the beginning of the war, it was believed by both British and American officers that at least one of the decisive battles for the mastery of the Lakes would be fought somewhere on the Niagara frontier, and no sooner had Brock arranged civil and military matters in the West after the fall of Detroit than he hastened back to this scene of action. Meanwhile the Americans had been preparing to attack Queenston, near Niagara Falls, and from that point begin their invasion of Canada. The British were strongly entrenched upon the Heights but their force was considerably inferior in number to that of Colonel Van Rensselaer, who was in command of the Americans. On the evening of October 12th, a dozen boats began ferrying the troops across the river, while at the same time, Colonel Chrystie, with three hundred men, and Colonels Stranahan, Mead, and Bloom were marching to Lewiston. Early on the morning of the 13th, the British opened fire, in the face of which the Americans began scaling the Heights, driving the enemy back as they advanced. At the time of the crossing of the Americans, Brock was at Fort George but lost no time in hastening to the field of battle. In a little marshy plot at the foot of the summit on which the final struggle occurred, now marked by a small stone monument and overgrown with long grass and weeds, a bullet struck him through the body and he fell mortally wounded. This was a terrible blow to the British, but, in the face of the calamity, they gallantly mustered their forces for