“When this fort is taken,” said Croghan on hearing the message, “there will be nobody left in it to kill.”

British gunboats drawn up on the Sandusky river, and a howitzer on the shore, opened fire, and cannonaded all day with the poor execution of long range artillery.  The northwestern angle of the fort was their target.  Croghan foresaw that the enemy’s intention was to make a breach and enter there.  When night came again, his one six-pounder was moved with much labor from that angle into the southwest blockhouse, as noiselessly as possible.  He masked the embrasure and had the piece loaded with a double charge of slugs and grape shot and half a charge of powder.  Perhaps the British thought him unprovided with any heavy artillery.

They were busy themselves, bringing three of the ineffectual six-pounders and the howitzer, under darkness, within two hundred and fifty yards of the fort; giving a background of woods to their battery.  About dawn we saw what they had been doing.  They concentrated on the northwest angle; and still Croghan replied only with muskets, waiting for them to storm.

So it went on all day, the gun-proof blockhouse enduring its bombardment, and smoke thickening until it filled the stockade as water fills a well, and settled like fog between us and the enemy.  An attack was made on the southern angle where the cannon was masked.

“This is nothing but a feint,” Croghan said to the younger officers.

While that corner replied with musketry, he kept a sharp lookout for the safety of the northwest blockhouse.

One soldier was brought down the ladder and carried through the murky pall to the surgeon, who could do nothing for him.  Another turned from a loophole with blood upon him, laughing at his mishap.  For the grotesqueness and inconvenience of a wound are sometimes more swiftly felt than its pain.  He came back presently with his shoulder bandaged and resumed his place at the loophole.

The exhilaration of that powder atmosphere and its heat made soldiers throw off their coats, as if the expanding human body was not to be confined in wrappings.

In such twilight of war the twilight of Nature overtook us.  Another feint was made to draw attention from a heavy force of assailants creeping within twenty paces, under cover of smoke, to surprise the northwest blockhouse.

Musketry was directed against them:  they hesitated.  The commander led a charge, and himself sprang first into the ditch.  We saw the fine fellows leaping to carry the blockhouse, every man determined to be first in making a breach.  They filled the ditch.

This was the instant for which Croghan had waited.  He opened the porthole and unmasked his exactly trained cannon.  It enfiladed the assailants, sweeping them at a distance of thirty feet; slugs and grapeshot hissed, spreading fan rays of death!  By the flash of the re-loaded six-pounder, we saw the trench filled with dead and wounded.