tored with a great abundance of corn, and crowded with women
and children. An awful scene of carnage now ensued. Though the savages
fought with the utmost fury, they could oppose no successful
resistance to the disciplined courage of the English. Flying from
wigwam to wigwam, men, women, and children were struck down without
mercy. The exasperated colonists regarded the children but as young
serpents of a venomous brood, and they were pitilessly knocked in the
head. The women they shot as readily as they would the dam of the wolf
or the bear. It was a day of vengeance, and awfully did retribution
fall. The shrieks of women and children blended fearfully with the
rattle of musketry and the cry of onset. For four hours the terrible
battle raged. The snow which covered the ground was now crimsoned
with blood, and strewed with the bodies of the slain.

The battle was so fierce, and the defense so determined and prolonged,
the Indians flying from wigwam to wigwam, and taking deadly aim at the
English from innumerable places of concealment, that at length the
assailants were driven to the necessity of setting fire to the houses.
They resorted to this measure with great reluctance, since they needed
the shelter of the houses after the battle for their own refreshment
in their utterly exhausted state, and since there were large
quantities of corn stored in the houses in hollow trees, cut off about
the length of a barrel, which would be entirely consumed by the
conflagration. But there was no alternative; the torch was applied,
and in a few moments five hundred buildings were in flames.

No language can describe the scene which now ensued. The awful tragedy
of the Pequot fort was here renewed upon a scale of still more
terrific grandeur. Old men, women, and children, no one can tell how
many, perished miserably in the wasting conflagration. The surviving
warriors, utterly discomfited, leaped the flaming palisades and fled
into the swamp. But even here they kept up an incessant and deadly
fire upon the victors, many of whom were shot after they had gained
entire possession of the fort. The terrible conflict had now lasted
four hours. Eighty of the colonists had been killed outright, and one
hundred and fifty wounded, many of whom subsequently died. Seven
hundred Indian warriors were slain, and many hundred wounded, of whom
three hundred soon died.

The English were now complete masters of the fort, but it was a fort
no longer.