the guard to the ground by a well-aimed blow from the butt-end of his
musket, and while the enemy lay quivering in his death-agonies the two
companions hastened away. They rejoined their men and finally reached
the camp in safety.

An occurrence like this seemed of small moment at the time, perhaps, and
the ungrateful Rogers is said to have overlooked it entirely in his
report to General Johnson; but the same month (October, 1755) the two
again went out scouting, and another adventure followed which brought
Putnam's heroism into strong relief.

Going down the lake in their bateaux, on the last day of the month, they
landed at night at a point where they had discovered some camp-fires of
the enemy, and in the morning three spies were sent out into the forest.
These spies were Putnam, a man named Fletcher, and Lieutenant Robert
Durkee, who was afterward tortured to death by the Indians. They
accomplished the immediate object of their mission, which was to
ascertain the location of some detached camps of Indians, and one of
them, Captain Fletcher, returned to report. Putnam and Durkee kept on,
in order to reconnoiter the enemy's main camp at the "Ovens," and in
consequence nearly lost their lives.

Night overtook the two brave partizans before they had reached the
vicinity of the enemy, and when they saw the camp-fires gleaming they
incautiously approached, thinking that the French, like the English,
would be found within the circle. But the French pursued an altogether
different system, and probably the safer one, of building their
camp-fires within and themselves sleeping without the lines, protected
by the darkness of the night. Their sentinels were posted still further
from the center of the main body, so when the two spies approached and,
dropping to their hands and knees, crept cautiously toward the fires,
they had not gone far in this manner before they were discovered and
fired upon.

To their amazement, they then found themselves right in the midst of
the enemy, hemmed in on every side. Lieutenant Durkee was slightly
wounded in the thigh, but he and Putnam immediately rose to their feet
and made the best of their way out into the darkness amid a shower of
bullets, and pursued by the awakened enemy. Unable "to see his hand
before his face," Putnam soon fell into a clay-pit, and Durkee, like the
immortal "Jill" in the nursery rhyme, came tumbling after. Knowing that
the enemy were in swift and close pursuit, P