That same afternoon our hero, moving up with his entire command to Sandwich, occupied the mansion of Colonel Baby, the great fur-trader, just evacuated by Hull.  In the spacious hall hooks were nailed to the rafters, from which were suspended great steel-yards, by which the beaver packs were weighed.  Scattered on the hewn floor in much profusion were soldiers’ accoutrements, service and pack-saddles, iron-bound chests mixed up with bear-traps and paddles, rolls of birch-bark, leather hunting shirts, and the greasy blankets of voyageur and redskin.  The room on the right became Brock’s headquarters, and in this room he penned his first demand upon General Hull.

“My force,” so he wrote, “warrants my demanding the immediate surrender of Fort Detroit.”  Anxious to prevent bloodshed, and knowing Hull’s dread of the Indians, he also played upon his fears.  “The Indians,” he added, “might get beyond my control.”  This summons was carried by Colonel Macdonell and Major Glegg, under a flag of truce, across the river.

The batteries at Sandwich consisted of one eighteen-pounder, two twelve-pounders, and two 51/2-inch howitzers.  Back of these artificial breastworks extended both a wilderness and the garden of Canada.  Beyond the meadows, aflame with autumn wild-flowers, beyond the cultivated clearings, rose a forest of walnut, oak, basswood, birch and poplar trees, seared with age, of immense height and girth, festooned with wild honeysuckle and other creepers.  In the open were broad orchards bending under their harvest of red and yellow fruit—­apples and plums, peaches, nectarines and cherries—­and extensive vineyards.  Huge sugar maples challenged giant pear trees, whose gnarled trunks had resisted the storms of a century.  To the north the floor of the forest was interlaced with trails, which, with the intention of deceiving Hull’s spies as to the strength of Brock’s forces, had been crossed and recrossed, and countermarched and doubled over, by the soldiers and Tecumseh’s half-naked braves.

The air was filled with the fragrance of orchard and forest.  Facing our hero, flowed the river, broad, swift and deep; tufted wolf-willow, waving rushes and gray hazel fringing the banks.  Across and beyond this almost mile-wide ribbon of water, the imposing walls of Fort Detroit confronted him.  Approaching him at a rapid gait he at last espied his two despatch bearers, their scarlet tunics vivid against the green background.  They reported that, after waiting upon Hull for two hours without being granted an interview, they were handed the following reply: 

“General Hull is prepared to meet any force brought against him, and accept any consequences.”

Brock instructed his gunners to acknowledge the receipt of this challenge with the thunder of their batteries, and from then, far into the night, shells and round-shot shrieked their way across the river, the answering missiles from Hull’s seven twenty-four-pounders breaking in a sheet of flame from the very dust created by the British cannon-balls that exploded on the enemy’s breastworks.  Through the irony of fate, the first shot fired under Brock’s personal orders in the cause of Canadian freedom killed a United States officer, an intimate friend of the British artilleryman who had trained the gun.  Such are the arguments of war.