Thus hemmed in on both sides—­the rifles of the militia and Indians on one hand; the bayonets of the British force on the other—­the Americans had no other alternative than throw down their arms or perish to the last.  Many surrendered at discretion, and those who resisted were driven at the point of the bayonet, to the verge of the terrific precipices which descend abruptly from the Heights of Queenston.  Here their confusion was at the highest—­some threw down their arms and were saved, others precipitated themselves down the abyss, where their bodies were afterwards found, crushed and mangled in a manner to render them scarcely recognizable even as human beings.

It was at the moment when the Americans, driven back by the fire from the wood, were to be seen flying in despair towards the frowning precipices of Queenston, that De Courcy and Grantham, quitting their horses at the brow of the hill, threw themselves in front of the victorious and still leading flank companies.  Carried away by the excitement of his feelings, Grantham was considerably in advance of his companion, and when the Americans, yielding to the panic which had seized them, flew wildly, madly, and almost unconscious of the danger, towards the precipice, he suddenly found himself on the very verge, and amid a group of irregulars, who arriving at the brink and seeing the hell that yawned beneath, had turned to seek a less terrific death at the hands of their pursuers.  Despair, rage, agony, and even terror, were imprinted on the countenances of these, for they fought under an apparent consciousness of disadvantage, and utterly as men without hope.

“Forward! victory!” shouted Henry Grantham, and his sword was plunged deep into the side of his nearest enemy.  The man fell, and writhing in the last agonies of death, rolled onward to the precipice, and disappeared for ever from the view.

The words—­the action had excited the attention of a tall, muscular, ferocious looking rifleman, who, hotly pursued by a couple of Indians, was crossing the open ground at his full speed to gain the main body of his comrades.  A ball struck him just as he had arrived within a few feet of the spot where Henry stood, yet still leaping onward, he made a desparate blow at the head of the officer with the butt end of his rifle.  A quick movement disappointed the American of his aim, yet the blow fell so violently on the shoulder that the stock snapped suddenly asunder at the small of the butt.  Stung with pain, Henry Grantham turned to behold his enemy.  It was Desborough!  The features of the settler expressed the most savage and vindictive passions, as with the barrel of the rifle upraised and clenched in both his iron hands, he was about to repeat his blow.  Ere it could descend Grantham had rushed in upon him, and his sword still reeking with the blood it had so recently spilt, was driven to the very hilt in the body of the settler.  The latter uttered a terrific scream in which all the most infernal of human passions were wildly blended, and casting aside his rifle, seized the young officer in his powerful gripe.  Then ensued a contest the most strange and awful; the settler using every endeavour to gain the edge of the precipice, the other struggling, but in vain, to free himself from his hold.  As if by tacit consent, both parties discontinued the struggle, and became mere spectators of the scene.