e placed in the lower store-room with a few women to
watch them, while the others were told off to attend to the fire
buckets, and to reload the muskets. The men had been paraded, fifty-two
of them in all, and they were divided into parties now for the defence
of each part of the stockade. On one side it had been built up to
within a few yards of the river, which not only relieved them from the
defence of that face, but enabled them to get fresh water by throwing a
bucket at the end of a rope from the stockade. The boats and canoes of
Sainte Marie were drawn up on the bank just under the wall, and were
precious now as offering a last means of escape should all else fail.
The next fort, St. Louis, was but a few leagues up the river, and De la
Noue had already sent a swift messenger to them with news of the danger.
At least it would be a point on which they might retreat should the
worst come to the worst. And that the worst might come to the worst was
very evident to so experienced a woodsman as Amos Green. He had left
Ephraim Savage snoring in a deep sleep upon the floor, and was now
walking round the defences with his pipe in his mouth, examining with a
critical eye every detail in connection with them. The stockade was
very strong, nine feet high and closely built of oak stakes which were
thick enough to turn a bullet. Half-way up it was loop-holed in long
narrow slits for the fire of the defenders. But on the other hand the
trees grew up to within a hundred yards of it, and formed a screen for
the attack, while the garrison was so scanty that it could not spare
more than twenty men at the utmost for each face. Amos knew how daring
and dashing were the Iroquois warriors, how cunning and fertile of
resource, and his face darkened as he thought of the young wife who had
come so far in their safe-keeping, and of the women and children whom he
had seen crowding into the fort.

"Would it not be better if you could send them up the river?" he
suggested to the seigneur.

"I should very gladly do so, monsieur, and perhaps if we are all alive
we may manage it to-night if the weather should be cloudy. But I cannot
spare the men to guard them, and I cannot send them without a guard when
we know that Iroquois canoes are on the river and their scouts are
swarming on the banks."

"You are right. It would be madness."

"I have stationed you on this eastern face with your friends and with
fifteen men. Monsieur de Cati