All went fairly well until the 26th February, 1771, when the red men again appeared at the premises of the Captain.  They were armed, and their actions seemed to be in keeping with Old Mag’s dream.

Their shrieks, yells and war-whoops were terrible, they acted like demons.  The children hid under the beds and held on to the garments of their parents.  The terrified little ones trembled like leaves in an autumn breeze.  Spirits let loose from the regions of the damned could hardly present a more devilish appearance than did the savages.  They were armed with muskets.  Old Mag, who was crouching in a corner of the kitchen, shook with fear, her teeth were chattering, and she appeared like a person badly affected with fever and ague.

The Redskins, about twenty in number, ran round and round the house roaring like wild beasts thirsting for gore.  Charlie, the Captain’s eldest boy, came rushing into the kitchen screaming out that two of the Indians were making a fire at the store door.  Captain Godfrey ran to the shop, looked out of the window and was horrified to find the side of the building in flames.  A minute after he had left the kitchen two of the red devils broke in the door, Mrs. Godfrey, with Charlie holding on to her skirt, had taken up a position in front of Old Mag, as the charging enemy came toward her, she fired.  There was a yell, as of death.  Captain Godfrey had placed the other musket in Old Mag’s lap, Mrs. Godfrey instantly seized it and quick as a flash again fired and the door way was cleared.

In a few moments the smoke had cleared away.  Two human forms lay across the door sill and one within the kitchen.  These were the bodies of one dead and two dying Indians.  The dead man was completely scalped, the whole top of his head being torn off.  The other two were so terribly mutilated about their faces and necks that they lived but a few minutes.  Forty minutes after Mrs. Godfrey had fired the first shot scarcely a vestige of anything remained on the spot where the house had stood.  As soon as the savages were aware that three of their comrades had fallen in the assault, they beat a hasty retreat.

Let the reader pause for a few moments to consider the situation of Captain Godfrey, his wife and their five children.  There they were alone in the wilderness, thousands of miles from friends and home.  Out in the cold, amid the frost and snow of an Acadian winter, without a house to shelter them, a friend to cheer them, or a fire to warm them; surrounded by demons of the forest, panting and thirsting for their blood.  There was no possible escape by water, the St. John was covered by a thick winding sheet of ice, and the sloop was lying some miles away in an icy bed of a lake.  The history of early colonial life does not and cannot present a more affecting scene than that of the Godfrey family, as they stood alone on the banks of the river St. John in the midnight of a Nova Scotian winter.