“How about Amherstburg and Sandwich, General?” interjected Justice Powell.  “Their safety is essential to your plan.”

“As to Amherstburg,” said Brock, “it is the pivot point, sir, and must be retained as our base.  At Sandwich we already have earthworks completed.  If destroyed by Hull they must be rebuilt, for the batteries there must cover our crossing and cannonade the fort while we advance upon it.  I have already sent, as you know, a few additional men to Procter—­every man I can steal from here.  He should be able to hold his own at Amherstburg for a bit longer.  The conditions, I admit, are far from satisfactory under the present command, but Chambers is on his way with forty of the 41st, one hundred militia with Merritt, and some of Brant’s braves, to put backbone into the garrison.”

“General,” said Justice Powell, the rays from a waning moon flooding the hall-way as the outer door was opened by Brock for the exit of his councillors, “having implicit confidence in your judgment and military ability, I believe you will overthrow Hull.  Assuming that you capture old Fort Lernoult and seize Detroit, what then?”

“What then, sir?” said Brock—­emphasizing his parting words with a gesture of his hand—­“why, Detroit taken, I shall return here, batter Fort Niagara—­providing Prevost consents—­and then by a sudden movement I could sweep the frontier from Buffalo to Fort Niagara and complete the salvation of Canada by the occupation of Sackett’s Harbor.  Good-night, gentlemen. En avant, Detroit!”

CHAPTER XVI.

“EN AVANT, DETROIT!”

Under an August moon Lake Erie shone as a shield of silver.  Brock, with a fleet of small craft, batteaux and boats of every kind given him by the settlers, had pulled out from Long Point with 40 regulars and 260 militia for the relief of Amherstburg, two hundred miles distant.

The news of the fall of Mackinaw and the official declaration of war had only reached him as Parliament rose.  He had proclaimed martial law before leaving York.  He had also heard details of the attack by Hull’s raiders on the Moravian settlement, sixty miles up the Thames.  He knew of the repulse of 300 United States troops in three attempts to cross the Canard River bridge for an attack on Amherstburg, and of their being driven into the open plains, with loss, by Procter’s men.

It was in one of these attacks that the first scalp in the war of 1812 was taken—­not by one of Brock’s terrible Indians, whose expected excesses had been referred to by Hull, but by a captain of Hull’s spies.  This officer—­one hates to describe him as a white man—­wrote his wife, he “had the pleasure of tearing a scalp from the head of a British redskin,” and related at length the brutal details of his methods.  They were those of a wild beast.  “The first stroke of the tomahawk,” Hull had stated in his proclamation, “the first attempt with the scalping-knife, will be the signal of a scene of desolation.”  Yet the first scalp taken in the Detroit campaign was by one of his own officers!