ry
bombs whizzing through the dark from Monro's cannon. By day they lie
hidden in the woods with a cordon of sharpshooters encircling the fort,
Montcalm encamped on the west to prevent help from Sir William Johnson
up the Mohawk, Levis on the southeast to cut off aid from Webb. Monro
sends yet one last appeal for help: two thousand men against eight
thousand,--the odds are eloquent of his need! Montcalm's scouts let
the messenger pass through the lines as if unseen, but they make a
point of catching the return messenger and holding Webb's answer that
he cannot come, till their cannon have torn great wounds in the fort
walls. Then Bougainville blindfold carries Webb's answer to Monro and
demands the surrender of the fort. Monro still has a little
ammunition, still hopes against hope that Johnson or Webb or Loudon
will come to the rescue, and he keeps his big guns singing over the
heads of the French in their trenches till all the cannon have burst
but seven, and there are not ten rounds of shells left. Then Colonel
Young, with a foot shot off, rides out on horseback waving a white
flag. Three hundred English have been killed, as many again are
wounded or ill of smallpox, and to the remaining garrison of sixteen
hundred Montcalm promises safe conduct to General Webb at Fort Edward.
Then the English march out. That night--August 9--the vanquished
English camp with Montcalm's forces. The Indians, meanwhile, ramping
through the fort for plunder, {251} have maddened themselves with
traders' rum! Before daybreak they have butchered all the wounded
lying in the hospital and cut to pieces the men ill of smallpox,--a
crime that brought its own punishment in contagion. Next morning, when
the French guard tried to conduct the disarmed English along the trail
to Fort Edward, the Indians snatched at the clothing, the haversacks,
the tent kit of the marchers. With their swords the French beat back
the drunken horde. In answer, the war hatchets were waved over the
heads of the cowering women. The march became a panic; the panic, a
massacre; and for twenty-four hours such bedlam raged as might have put
fiends to shame. The frenzied Indians would listen to no argument but
blows; and when the English prisoners appealed to the French for
protection, the French dared not offend their savage allies by fighting
to protect the English victims. "Take to the woods," they warned the
men, and the women were quickly huddled back to s