The darkness was still gathering on the water.  He could not see twenty yards from the land, but behind him everything was brightness.  The fires had been replenished, the men lined the stockade and were firing fast.  Cheers replied to whoops.  Smoke of battle overhung the camp, and drifted off into the forest.  Robert looked toward the stockade.  Again it was his impulse to go, and again he stayed.  There was a slight gurgling in the water almost at his feet, and a dark figure rose from the waves, followed in an instant by another, and then by many more.  Robert, his imagination up and leaping, thrilled with horror.  He understood at once.  They were attacked by swimming savages.  While the great shouting and turmoil in their front was going on a line of warriors had reached the lake somewhere in the darkness, and were now in the camp itself.

He was palsied only for a moment.  Then his faculties were alive and he saw the imminent need.  Leaping back, he uttered a piercing shout, and, drawing his pistol, he fired point blank at the first of the warriors.  Wilton, who had felt the same horror at sight of the dark faces, fired also, and there was a rush of feet as men came to their help.

The warriors were armed only with tomahawk and knife, and they had expected a surprise which they might have effected if it had not been for Robert’s keenness, but more of them came continually and they made a formidable attack.  Sending forth yell after yell as a signal to their comrades in front that they had landed, they rushed forward.

Neither Robert nor Wilton ever had any clear idea of that fierce combat in the dark.  The defenders fired their rifles and pistols, if they had time, and then closed in with cold steel.  Meanwhile the attack on the front redoubled.  But here at the water’s edge it was fiercest.  Borderer met warrior, and now and then, locked in the arms of one another, they fell and rolled together into the lake.  Grosvenor came too, and, after firing his pistols, he drew his small sword, plunging into the thick of the combat, thrusting with deadly effect.

The savages were hurled back, but more swimming warriors came to their aid.  Dark heads were continually rising from the lake, and stalwart figures, almost naked, sprang to the shore.  Tomahawks and knives gleamed, and the air echoed with fierce whoop of Indian and shout of borderer.  And on the other side of the camp, too, the attack was now pressed with unrelenting vigor.  The shrill call of a whistle showed that St. Luc himself was near, and Frenchmen, Canadians and Indians, at the edge of the cleared ground and in the first line of stumps, poured a storm of bullets against the breastwork and into the camp.

Many of the defenders were hit, some mortally.  The gallant Colden had his fine three cornered hat, of which he was very proud, shot away, but, bare-headed, calm and resolute, he strode about among his men, handling his forces like the veteran that he had become, strengthening the weak points, applauding the daring and encouraging the faltering.  Willet, who was crouched behind the logs, firing his rifle with deadly effect, glanced at him more than once with approval.