Walter R. Nursey

“ To maintain any semblance of formation was impossible. The fire grew hotter. Ball and buckshot and half-ounce bullets down-poured on them from above. "Death crouched behind every rock and lurked in every hollow."
Had Brock's handful of loyalists been able to rush headlong, spurred by lust of conflict, and lock bayonets with the enemy, another tale might have been told. But the effect of the futile struggle for foothold on the hillside, seamed with slippery depressions, in the teeth of a blizzard of lead, soon showed. The bullet-swept ascent was a cruel test for men already fagged and faint. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Having been heavily reinforced, he detached a party of 150 picked regulars, and with these moved out to meet the small band of British led by Brock. A brief exchange of shots took place, and the Americans fell back, firing.
Though the rain had ceased the trees were gemmed with drops that still dripped. The ground was strewn with wet leaves, slippery, and affording treacherous foothold. Progress was slow and laborious. As the hillside grew steeper, a man here and there slid, lurched and fell. ”