brain and died
instantly. Out of eighty-six officers sixty-three were down.
Washington alone seemed to bear a charmed life. Two horses were
killed under him and four bullets pierced his clothing. Braddock
galloped back and forth, cursing and shouting to his men, and showing
undaunted courage. Robert believed that he never really understood
what was happening, that the deadly nature of the surprise and its
appalling completeness left him dazed.

How long Robert stood at the edge of the circle of death and fired
into the bushes he never knew, but it seemed to him that almost an
eternity had passed, when Tayoga seized him by the arm and shouted in
his ear.

"It is finished! Our army has perished! Come, Lennox!"

He wiped the smoke from his eyes, and saw that the mass in red and
blue was much smaller. Braddock was still on his horse, and, at the
insistence of his officers, he was at last giving the command to
retreat. Just as the trumpet sounded that note of defeat he was shot
through the body and fell to the ground where, in his rage and
despair, he begged the men to leave him to die alone. But two of the
Virginia officers lifted him up and bore him toward the rear. Then the
army that had fought so long against an invisible foe broke into a
panic, that is what was left of it, as two thirds of its numbers had
already been killed or wounded. Shouting with horror and ignoring
their officers, they rushed for the river.

Everything was lost, cannon and baggage were abandoned, and often
rifles and muskets were thrown away. Into the water they rushed, and
the Indians, who had followed howling like wolves, stopped, though
they fired at the fleeing men in the stream.

As the retreat began, Robert, Tayoga and Willet, whom some miracle
seemed to preserve from harm, joined the Virginians who covered the
rear, and, as fast as they could reload their rifles, they fired at
the demon horde that pressed closer and closer, and that never ceased
to cut down the fleeing army. It was much like a ghastly dream to
Robert. Nothing was real, except his overwhelming sense of horror. Men
fell around him, and he wondered why he did not fall too, but he was
untouched, and Willet and Tayoga also were unwounded. He saw near him
young Stuart who had lost his horse long since, but who had snatched a
rifle from a fallen soldier, and who was fighting gallantly on foot.

"Who would have thought it?" exclaimed the Virginian. "An army such
as ours, to