About midnight they were called out.  There was again a sound on the lake.  The cannon at once opened, and, as before, all was silent again.

“Look, Walsham, look!” Edwards exclaimed.  “They have set fire to the sloops.”

As he spoke, a tongue of flame started up from one of the two vessels lying in the ice, close to the shore, and, almost simultaneously, flames shot up from among the boats drawn up on the beach.

“That’s redskin work,” Nat exclaimed.

“Come, lads,” James cried, leaping down from the low earthwork into the ditch.  “Let us save the boats, if we can.”

The scouts followed him and ran down to the shore; but the Indians had done their work well.  The two sloops, and many of the boats, were well alight, and it was evident at once that, long before a hole could be broken through the ice, and buckets brought down from the fort, they would be beyond all hopes of saving them.

The French, too, opened fire from the woods bordering the lake, and, as the light of the flames exposed his men to the enemy’s marksmen, James at once called them back to the fort, and the sloops and boats burned themselves out.

At noon, next day, the French filed out from the woods on to the ice, at a distance of over a mile.

“What now?” Edwards exclaimed.  “They surely don’t mean to be fools enough to march across the ice to attack us in broad daylight.”

“It looks to me,” James replied, “as if they wanted to make a full show of their force.  See, there is a white flag, and a party are coming forward.”

An officer and several men advanced towards the fort, and Major Eyre sent out one of his officers, with an equal number of men, to meet them.  There was a short parley when the parties came together, and then the French officer advanced towards the fort with the English, his followers remaining on the ice.

On nearing the fort, the French officer, Le Mercier, chief of the Canadian artillery, was blindfolded, and led to the room where Major Eyre, with all the British officers, was awaiting him.  The handkerchief was then removed from his eyes, and he announced to the commandant that he was the bearer of a message from the officer commanding the French force, who, being desirous of avoiding an effusion of blood, begged the English commander to abstain from resistance, which, against a force so superior to his own, could but be useless.  He offered the most favourable terms, if he would surrender the place peaceably, but said that if he were driven to make an assault, his Indian allies would unquestionably massacre the whole garrison.

Major Eyre quietly replied that he intended to defend himself to the utmost.

The envoy was again blindfolded.  When he rejoined the French force, the latter at once advanced as if to attack the place, but soon halted, and, leaving the ice, opened a fusillade from the border of the woods, which they kept up for some hours, the garrison contemptuously abstaining from any reply.