As the retreat began, Robert, Tayoga and Willet, whom some miracle seemed to preserve from harm, joined the Virginians who covered the rear, and, as fast as they could reload their rifles, they fired at the demon horde that pressed closer and closer, and that never ceased to cut down the fleeing army.  It was much like a ghastly dream to Robert.  Nothing was real, except his overwhelming sense of horror.  Men fell around him, and he wondered why he did not fall too, but he was untouched, and Willet and Tayoga also were unwounded.  He saw near him young Stuart who had lost his horse long since, but who had snatched a rifle from a fallen soldier, and who was fighting gallantly on foot.

“Who would have thought it?” exclaimed the Virginian.  “An army such as ours, to be beaten, nay, to be destroyed, by a swarm of savages!”

“But don’t forget the Frenchmen!” shouted Robert in reply.  “They’re directing!”

“Which is no consolation to us,” cried Stuart.  He said something else, but it was lost in the tremendous firing and yelling of the Indians, who were now only a score of yards away from the devoted rear guard that was doing its best to protect the flying and confused mass of soldiers.

Robert discharged his bullet at a brown face and then, as he walked backward, he tripped and fell over a root.  He sprang up at once, but in an instant a gigantic figure bounded out of the fire and smoke, and Tandakora, uttering a fierce shout of triumph, circled his tomahawk swiftly above his head, preparatory to the mortal blow.  But Tayoga, quick as lightning, hurled his pistol with all his might.  It struck the huge Ojibway on the head with such force that the tomahawk fell from his hand, and he staggered back into the smoke.

“Tayoga, again I thank you!” cried Robert.

“You will do the same for me,” said the Onondaga, and then they too were lost in the smoke, as with the rear guard of Virginians they followed the retreating army.

Robert and his comrades, swept on in the press, crossed the river with the others and gained the farther shore unhurt.  Willet looked back at the woods, which still flamed with the hostile rifles, and shuddered.

“It’s worse than anything of which I ever dreamed,” he said.  “Now the tomahawk and the scalping knife will sweep the border from Canada to Carolina.”

The panic was stopped at last and the broken remnants of the army, covered by the Virginians who understood the forest, began their retreat.  Braddock died the next day, his last words being, “We shall know better how to deal with them another time.”  Washington, Orme, Morris and the others carried the news of the great defeat to Virginia and Pennsylvania, whence it was sent to England, to be received there at first with incredulity, men saying that such a thing was impossible.  But England too was soon to be in mourning, because so many of her bravest had fallen at the hands of an invisible foe in the far American wilderness.