About noon
But `` aut agere aut mori , '' was his motto , and of the appropriateness of this his actions have formed the most striking illustration . The day on which the Council relative to the proposed expedition to the Miami was held , was characterized by one of those sudden outbursts of elemental war , so common to the Canadas in early summer -- and , which , in awful grandeur of desolation , are frequently scarcely interior to the hurricanes of the tropics . The morning had been oppressively sultry , and there was that general and heavy lethargy of nature that usually precedes a violent reaction . About noon , a small dark speck was visible in the hitherto cloudless horizon , and this presently grew in size until the whole western sky was one dense mass of threatening black , which eventually spread itself over the entire surface of the heavens , leaving not a hand 's breadth any where visible . Presently , amid the sultry stillness that prevailed , there came a slight breeze over the face of the waters , and then , as if some vast battering train had suddenly opened its hundred mouths of terror , vomiting forth showers of grape and other missiles , came astounding thunder-claps , and forked lightnings , and rain , and hail , and whistling wind -- all in such terrible union , yet such fearful disorder , that man , the last to take warning , or feel awed by the anger of the common parent , Nature , bent his head in lowliness and silence to her voice , and awaited tremblingly the passing away of her wrath . Henry Grantham , whose turn of duty had again brought him to Amherstburg , was in the mess-room of the garrison when the storm was at the fiercest . Notwithstanding the excitement of the Council scene , at which he had been present , he had experienced an unusual depression throughout the day , originating partly in the languid state of the atmosphere , but infinitely more in the anxiety under which he labored in regard to his brother , of whom no other intelligence had been received , since his departure with his prisoners for Buffalo , than what vague rumour , coupled with the fact of the continued absence of the schooner , afforded .