Midnight came; but neither side could keep its hold on Battle Rise.  By this time Drummond was wounded; and Riall was both wounded and a prisoner.  Among the Americans Brown and Winfield Scott were also wounded, while their men were worn out after being under arms for nearly eighteen hours.  A pause of sheer exhaustion followed.  Then, slowly and sullenly, as if they knew the one more charge they could not make must carry home, the foiled Americans turned back and felt their way to Chippawa.

The British ranks lay down in the same order as that in which they fought; and a deep hush fell over the whole, black-shrouded battlefield.  The immemorial voice of those dread Falls to which no combatant gave heed for six long hours of mortal strife was heard once more.  But near at hand there was no other sound than that which came from the whispered queries of a few tired officers on duty; from the busy orderlies and surgeons at their work of mercy; and from the wounded moaning in their pain.  So passed the quiet half of that short, momentous, summer night.  Within four hours the sun shone down on the living and the dead—­on that silent battery whose gunners had fallen to a man—­on the unconquered Rise.

The tide of war along the Niagara frontier favoured neither side for some time after Lundy’s Lane, though the Americans twice appeared to be regaining the initiative.  On August 15 there was a well-earned American victory at Fort Erie, where Drummond’s assault was beaten off with great loss to the British.  A month later an American sortie was repulsed.  On September 21 Drummond retired beaten; and on October 13 he found himself again on the defensive at Chippawa, with little more than three thousand men, while Izard, who had come with American reinforcements from Lake Champlain and Sackett’s Harbour, was facing him with twice as many.  But Yeo’s fleet had now come up to the mouth of the Niagara, while Chauncey’s had remained at Sackett’s Harbour.  Thus the British had the priceless advantage of a movable naval base at hand, while the Americans had none at all within supporting distance.  Every step towards Lake Ontario hampered Izard more and more, while it added corresponding strength to Drummond.  An American attempt to work round Drummond’s flank, twelve miles inland, was also foiled by a heavy skirmish on October 19 at Cook’s Mills; and Izard’s definite abandonment of the invasion was announced on November 5 by his blowing up Fort Erie and retiring into winter quarters.  This ended the war along the whole Niagara.

The campaign on Lake Ontario was very different.  It opened two months earlier.  The naval competition consisted rather in building than in fighting.  The British built ships in Kingston, the Americans in Sackett’s Harbour; and reports of progress soon travelled across the intervening space of less than forty miles.  The initiative of combined operations by land and water was undertaken by the British instead of by the Americans.  Yeo and