“But one must, if he intends to live and fight.”

Clear and full sang the trumpets of Dieskau once more.  Despite his advice to Grosvenor, Robert peeped over the log and saw the enemy gathering in the forest.  The French regulars were in front, behind them the Canadians, and on the flanks hovered great masses of savages.  Smoke floated over trees and bushes, and the forest was full of acrid odors.  Far to the right he caught another glimpse of St. Luc in his splendid white and silver uniform, marshaling the Indians, a shining mark, but apparently untouched.

“The attack will be fierce,” whispered Tayoga, who lay on his left.  “They consider their check a matter of but a moment, and they think to sweep over us.”

“But we have hundreds and hundreds of good rifles that say them nay.  Is Tododaho still silent, Tayoga?”

The Onondaga looked up at the heavens, where the deep blue, beyond the smoke, was unstained.  There was the corner, where the star, on which his patron saint lived, came out at night, but no light shone from the silky void and no whisper reached his ear.  So he said in reply: 

“The great Onondaga chieftain who went away four hundred years ago is silent today, and we must await the event.”

“We won’t have to wait long, because I hear a single trumpet now, and to me it sounds wonderfully like the call to charge.”

The silver note thrilled through the woods, the French regulars and Canadians uttered a shout, which was followed instantly by the terrible yell of the Indians, and then the thickets crashed beneath the tread of the attacking army.

“Here they come!” shouted Grosvenor, and, laying his rifle across the log, he fired almost at random into the charging mass.  Robert and Tayoga picked their targets, and their bullets sped true.  All along the American line ran the fierce fire, the crest of the whole barricade blazing with red, while the artillery, which the savages always dreaded, opened on them with showers of grape.

The Indians, despite all the bravery and example of St. Luc, wavered, and, as their dead fell around them, they began to give forth laments, instead of triumphant yells.  But the regulars in the center, led by Dieskau, came on as steadily as ever, and the little group behind the log, of which Tayoga and Robert were the leading spirits, turned their rifles upon them.  Robert presently heard a youthful shout of exultation at the far end of the log, and he saw the boy, Joseph Brant, reloading the rifle which he had fired in his first battle.  The French regulars suddenly stopped, and Grosvenor cried: 

“It will be no Duquesne!  No Duquesne again!”