Not until the dead are mustered by the God of hosts--at the last roll-call--will this noble soldier's conception of duty and his sacrifice be truly appraised.
God and the right was carved deep in the heart of Isaac Brock. Though he felt for his men, it was in a compassionate, not a weak way. War without bloodshed was inconceivable. He had been trained in an age and in a school that regarded blood-shedding in the protection of the right as wholly justifiable, as it was inevitable. Is there any change in respect to the application of this doctrine to-day? For himself he had no compassion whatever. His faith in the cause compelled him to fight to a finish. He was not of the potter's common clay of which fatalists are made. How many of these faithful fellows, he wondered, as his alert mind rapidly reviewed the present and recalled the past--Canadian and Celt, Irish and Anglo-Saxon, Protestant and Catholic, whom "neither politics, sect or creed could, in such a crisis, keep apart"--would leave their bodies to bleach on that hill-side? How many of them were destined to yield their lives for honour's sake, to die with their valour unrecorded in the defence--in the case of numbers of them--not of their own, but of their brother's rights?
The next second he was wondering what was doing at St. Peter's Port or London. It would be noon there. Were the good brothers and sister thinking of "Master Isaac" at that moment? Then, swifter than light, he was at Niagara, and the bowed figure of a woman at a porch, with pale, upturned face, who that morning had bade him a silent farewell, rose before him--surely it was years ago--the woman to whom he was betrothed. Then, in a flash, he turned to see some wavering figures around him, some of his own men--not a few wounded--who faltered and shrank from the screaming buckshot, and dropped to the rear.
"This is the first time," he shouted, "I have ever seen the 49th turn their backs! Surely the heroes of Egmont will never tarnish their record!"
The rebuke stung. The panting ranks closed up.
At this moment Colonel Macdonell, excited and eager to participate, reached the foot of the mountain at the head of the supports for which the General had despatched him. These consisted of about thirty of Heward's flank company of militia and thirty of the 49th--almost breathless and much exhausted, having run most of the way. Brock's small force--those actually at his side--were Chisholm's and Cameron's companies of the Toronto and York volunteers--a mere handful of perhaps eighty all told. These, together with Macdonell's men, who were at the foot of the hill on the right, now numbered less than 190 of all ranks.