Still following up his successes, General Drummond laid siege to Fort Erie and the intrenched camp near it, and while he was doing so, three armed schooners, anchored off the fort, were captured by a body of marines, who pushed off in boats during the night, under Captain Dobbs, of the Royal Navy. General Drummond did not simply sit down before Fort Erie and the entrenchment, he did his best to effect a breach, and with that view kept up a constant fire from the two 24-pounder field guns which had proved more than ordinarily useful at the battle of Chippewa. It was not long indeed before he considered an assault practicable. He made the necessary preparations, and on the fourteenth, three columns, one under Colonel Fischer, consisting of the 8th and DeWatteville's regiment, and the flank companies of the 89th and 100th regiments, with a detachment of artillery, a second under Colonel Drummond, of the 104th regiment, made up of the flank companies of the 41st and 104th regiments, with a few seamen and marines, in charge of Captain Dobbs, and the other under Colonel Scott, consisting of his own regiment, the 103rd, and two companies of the royals. Colonel Fischer's column gained possession of the enemy's batteries at the point assigned for its attack, two hours before daylight, but the other columns were behind time, having got entangled by marching too near the lake, between the rocks and the water, and the enemy being now on the alert, opened a heavy fire upon the leading column of the second division which threw it into confusion. Fischer's column had in the meanwhile almost succeeded in capturing the fort. They had actually crept into the main fort through the embrasures, in spite of every effort to prevent them. Nay, they turned the guns of the fort upon its defenders, who took refuge in a stone building, in the interior, and continued to resist. This desperate work continued for nearly an hour, when a magazine blew up, mangling most horribly nearly all the assailants within the fort. Of course there was a panic. The living, surrounded by the dying and the dead, the victims of accident, believed that they stood upon an infernal machine, to which the match had only to be placed. No effort could rally men impressed with such an idea. There was a rush, as it were, from inevitable death. Persuasion fell on the ears of men who could not hear. Persuasion fell upon the senses of men transfixed with one idea. Persuasion would have been as effectual in moving yonder blackened corpse into healthy life, as in moving to a sense of duty to themselves, men who could see nothing but the deadness around them, and whose minds saw only, under all, the blackness of immediate destruction. Those who were victors, until now, literally rushed from the fort. The reinforcements of the British soon arrived, but the explosion had again given the defenders heart, and they too, having received reinforcements, after some additional straggling, for the