The whole island of four acres, houses, palisades, and
hedge, was but a glowing furnace of roaring, crackling flame. The
houses were so exceedingly combustible that in an hour they were
consumed to ashes. The English, unprotected upon the island, were thus
exposed to every shot from the vanquished foe, who were skulking
behind the trees in the swamp.

Night was now darkening over this dismal scene, a cold, stormy
winter's night. The flames of the blazing palisades and hedge enabled
the savages, who were filling the forest with their howlings of rage,
to take a surer aim, while they themselves were concealed in
impenetrable darkness. It was greatly feared that the Indians, still
much more numerous than their exhausted assailants, might, in the
night, make another onset to regain their lost ground. Indeed, the
bullets were still falling thickly around them as the Indians,
prowling from hummock to hummock, kept up a deadly fire, and it was
necessary, at all hazards, to escape from so perilous a position. It
was another conquest of Moscow. In the hour of the most exultant
victory, the conquerors saw before them but a vista of terrible
disaster. After a few moments' consultation, a precipitate retreat
from the swamp was decided to be absolutely necessary.

The colonists had marched in the morning, breakfastless, eighteen
miles, over the frozen, snow-covered ground. Without any dinner, they
had entered upon one of the most toilsome and deadly of conflicts, and
had continued to struggle against intrenched and outnumbering foes for
four hours. And now, cold, exhausted, and starving, in the darkness of
a stormy night, they were to retreat through an almost pathless
swamp, bearing in their arms one hundred and fifty of their bleeding
and dying companions. There was no place of safety for them until they
should arrive at their head-quarters of the preceding night, upon the
shores of Narraganset Bay, eighteen miles distant.

The horrors of that midnight retreat can never be told; they are
hardly surpassed by the tragedy at Borodino. The wind blew fiercely
through the tree-tops, and swept the bleak and drifted plains as the
troops toiled painfully along, breasting the storm, and stumbling in
exhaustion over the concealed inequalities of the ground. Most
fortunately for them, the savages made no pursuit. Many of the wounded
died by the way. Others, tortured by the freezing of their unbandaged
wounds, and by the grating of their s