_From an engraving of the picture by Chappel._] For a few moments the hill-top spectators gazed in anxious silence while the smoke of battle drifted from around the ships, revealing by degrees the spars that were still standing. And then some patriot, standing with straining eyes on Cumberland Head, saw that it was the gridiron flag only that fluttered in the smoke-laden breeze, and with a voice that swelled on the air, shouted the news of the Yankee triumph. A hundred throats about him took up the cry. It was echoed by a thousand voices from the hills beyond the bay, and then travelled away across the lake to other thousands on the slopes of the Vermont hills. The troops down in the valley of the Saranac--the Yankee regulars under Macomb, the New York militia under Mooers and Wright and the Green Mountain boys under Strong, took up the shout with such savage cries as were not to be misunderstood by the enemy. They had withstood the onslaught there and now victory was also assured them. Sir George Prevost--the weak and worthless titled commander of the British forces ashore--heard with “extreme mortification” the “shout of victory from the American works.” To his mind the “farther prosecution of the service was become impracticable;” worse yet, though his veteran troops outnumbered the Americans, regulars and militia, by two to one, he grew fearful of his personal safety, and when night came down, dark and thick with an Adirondack storm, he sneaked away, glad to escape. The pillows of the men from Badajos were wet that night with the rainfall of a northeast gale, instead of woman’s tears. As the last flag came down on the British fleet, Macdonough ordered his gun-boats to pursue the British boats that, without an ensign flying, were pulling away around Cumberland Head. “Our galleys were about obeying with alacrity when all the vessels were reported to me to be in a sinking state; it then became necessary to annul the signal to the galleys and order their men to the pumps.” So a number of British galleys escaped--all in fact, but three that were sunk; but the American crews were engaged in the humane work of keeping the ships afloat to save the wounded on both sides, and it did not matter. [Illustration: Macdonough’s Victory on Lake Champlain. _From an engraving by Tanner of the painting by Reinagle._]