lled the woods in front with a
swarm of Indian scouts. The crisis was near. He formed his men in
column, and ordered every officer to his place.

Washington's men had had a full day at Fort Necessity; but they spent it
less in resting from their fatigue than in strengthening their rampart
with logs. The fort was a simple square enclosure, with a trench said by
a French writer to be only knee deep. On the south, and partly on the
west, there was an exterior embankment, which seems to have been made,
like a rifle-pit, with the ditch inside. The Virginians had but little
ammunition, and no bread whatever, living chiefly on fresh beef. They
knew the approach of the French, who were reported to Washington as nine
hundred strong, besides Indians. Towards eleven o'clock a wounded
sentinel came in with news that they were close at hand; and they
presently appeared at the edge of the woods, yelling, and firing from
such a distance that their shot fell harmless. Washington drew up his
men on the meadow before the fort, thinking, he says, that the enemy,
being greatly superior in force, would attack at once; and choosing for
some reason to meet them on the open plain. But Villiers had other
views. "We approached the English," he writes, "as near as possible,
without uselessly exposing the lives of the King's subjects;" and he and
his followers made their way through the forest till they came opposite
the fort, where they stationed themselves on two densely wooded hills,
adjacent, though separated by a small brook. One of these was about a
hundred paces from the English, and the other about sixty. Their
position was such that the French and Indians, well sheltered by trees
and bushes, and with the advantage of higher ground, could cross their
fire upon the fort and enfilade a part of it. Washington had meanwhile
drawn his followers within the entrenchment; and the firing now began on
both sides. Rain fell all day. The raw earth of the embankment was
turned to soft mud, and the men in the ditch of the outwork stood to the
knee in water. The swivels brought back from the camp at Gist's farm
were mounted on the rampart; but the gunners were so ill protected that
the pieces were almost silenced by the French musketry. The fight lasted
nine hours. At times the fire on both sides was nearly quenched by the
showers, and the bedrenched combatants could do little but gaze at each
other through a gray veil of mist and rain. Towards night, how