But alas for them, they had foes wily, watchful, lynx-eyed, ever on the watch for some such movement.  Hardly had they got clear of their protecting walls and ditches, when, with a horrid yell, hundreds and thousands of dusky Indians leaped up from the ground and rushed frantically towards them.  The next moment the boom of guns overhead told that the French camp had been alarmed.  The regular soldiers would be upon them in a few minutes, driving them back to the fort, killing and wounding, and leaving the Indians to butcher and scalp at their leisure.  The fearful war whoop was ringing in their ears.  The line wavered—­broke; the men made a frantic rush backwards towards their lines.

“Don’t fly!” cried Roche suddenly to Fritz, at whose side he marched; “let us cut our way through, or die doing it.  It is death whichever way we turn.  Let us die like men, with our faces and not our backs to the foe!”

“Come then!” cried Fritz, upon whom had fallen one of those strange bursts of desperate fury which give a man whilst it lasts the strength of ten.

With a wild bound he sprang forward, bursting through the ranks of Indians like the track of a whirlwind, scattering them right and left, hewing, hacking, cutting!  Roche was just behind or at his side; the two seemed invulnerable, irresistible, possessed of some supernatural strength.  The Indians in amaze gave way right and left, and turned their attention to the flying men, who were easier to deal with than this strange couple.

A shout went up that the devil was abroad, and the Indian, ever superstitious, shrank away from these stalwart figures, believing them to be denizens from some other world; whilst the French soldiers, who might have felt very differently, had not yet so far equipped themselves as to be ready to come out from their lines.

Fritz had marked his line with care.  Only upon one small section between lake and forest was there any possible passage without peril from the French lines, and that was by skirting the head of the lake just where their own intrenched camp, now almost in ruins, gave them shelter.

The woodsman’s and the Ranger’s instinct kept true within him even in the confusion and darkness.  He never deflected from his line.

“This way! this way!” he called to Roche in smothered tones, as they heard the sound of the fight growing fainter behind them.  He took the lad’s hand, and plunged into the marshy hollow.  He knew that none would follow them there; the ground was too treacherous.  But there was a path known to himself which he could find blindfold by day or night.

He pulled his comrade along with a fierce, wild haste, till at a certain point he paused.  There was a little cavernous shelter in the midst of the morass, and here the pair sank down breathless and exhausted.

“We are saved!” gasped Roche, clasping his comrade by the hand.

“For the moment—­yes,” answered Fritz; “but what of afterwards?”