At this moment a heavy thunder-peal broke from the darkening skies.  Down poured the rain in drenching showers.  Lightning filled the air.  Crash after crash of thunder rolled through the sky.  Checked in their blood-thirst by the fury of the elements, the combatants hastily separated and ran for the shelter of the trees, vanquished by water where fire had failed to overcome their rage.

The affair so far had not been unlike that of Braddock’s defeat, some twenty years before.  But these were American militia, not British regulars, frontiersmen who knew too much of Indian fighting to stand in their ranks and be shot down.  They had long since taken to the trees, and fought the savages in their own way.  To this, perhaps, may be ascribed the difference in result from that of the Braddock fight.

After the rain, the patriots gained better ground and adopted new and useful tactics.  Before, when the Indians noticed a shot from behind a tree, they would rush forward and tomahawk the unlucky provincial before he could reload.  But now two men were placed behind each tree, so that when the whooping savage sprang forward with his tomahawk a second bullet was ready to welcome him.  The fire from the American side now grew so destructive that the Indians began to give way.

A body of Johnson’s Greens came up to their support.  These were mostly loyalist refugees from the Mohawk Valley, to whom the patriot militia bore the bitterest enmity.  Recognizing them, the maddened provincials leaped upon them with tiger-like rage, and a hand-to-hand contest began, in which knives and bayonets took the place of bullets, and the contest grew brutally ferocious.

At this moment a firing was heard in the direction of the fort.  New hope sprung into the hearts of the patriots.  Was aid coming to them from the garrison?  It seemed so, indeed, for soon a body of men in Continental uniform came marching briskly towards them.  It was a ruse on the part of the enemy which might have proved fatal.  These men were Johnson Green’s disguised as Continentals.  A chance revealed their character.  One of the patriots seeing an acquaintance among them, ran up to shake hands with him.  He was seized and dragged into their ranks.  Captain Gardenier, perceiving this, sprang forward, spear in hand, and released his man; but found himself in a moment engaged in a fierce combat, in which he killed two of his antagonists and wounded another, but was himself seriously hurt.

“For God’s sake, captain,” cried some of the militia, “you are killing our own men!”

“They are not our own men, they are Tories!” yelled back the captain.  “Fire away!”

Fire they did, and with such deadly effect that numbers of the disguised Tories fell, and nearly as many Indians.  In an instant the battle was violently raging again, with roar of rifles, clash of steel, yells of combatants, and the wild war-whoops of the savages.