t that the Indians
should not get his scalp if he could help it. Creeping along the sandy
edge of the pond, he chanced to find a stranded canoe, pushed it afloat,
rolled himself into it, and drifted away before the wind.

Soon after sunset the Indians drew off and left the field to their
enemies, living and dead, not even stopping to scalp the fallen,--a
remarkable proof of the completeness of their discomfiture. Exhausted
with fatigue and hunger,--for, having lost their packs in the morning,
they had no food,--the surviving white men explored the scene of the
fight. Jacob Farrar lay gasping his last by the edge of the water.
Robert Usher and Lieutenant Robbins were unable to move. Of the
thirty-four men, nine had escaped without serious injury, eleven were
badly wounded, and the rest were dead or dying, except the coward who
had run off.

About midnight, an hour or more before the setting of the moon, such as
had strength to walk left the ground. Robbins, as he lay helpless, asked
one of them to load his gun, saying, "The Indians will come in the
morning to scalp me, and I'll kill another of 'em if I can." They loaded
the gun and left him.

To make one's way even by daylight through the snares and pitfalls of a
New England forest is often a difficult task; to do so in the darkness
of night and overshadowing boughs, among the fallen trees and the snarl
of underbrush, was wellnigh impossible. Any but the most skilful
woodsmen would have lost their way. The Indians, sick of fighting, did
not molest the party. After struggling on for a mile or more, Farwell,
Frye, and two other wounded men, Josiah Jones and Eleazer Davis, could
go no farther, and, with their consent, the others left them, with a
promise to send them help as soon as they should reach the fort. In the
morning the men divided into several small bands, the better to elude
pursuit. One of these parties was tracked for some time by the Indians,
and Elias Barron, becoming separated from his companions, was never
again heard of, though the case of his gun was afterwards found by the
bank of the river Ossipee.

Eleven of the number at length reached the fort, and to their amazement
found nobody there. The runaway, Hassell, had arrived many hours before
them, and to excuse his flight told so frightful a story of the fate of
his comrades that his hearers were seized with a panic, shamefully
abandoned their post, and set out for the settlements, leaving a
writing