The next moment, Murphy and Elerson began to fire, slowly and deliberately; and for a little while these two deadly and unerring rifles were the only pieces that spoke from our knoll.  Then my distant target showed for a moment; I fired, reloaded, waited; fired again; and our little circle of doomed men began to cheer as a brilliantly painted warrior sprang from the thicket below, shouted defiance, and crumpled up as though smitten by lightning when Murphy’s rifle roared out its fatal retort.

Then, for almost every soul that stood there, the end of the world began; for a thousand men swarmed out of the thickets below, completely surrounding us; and like a hurricane shrilling through naked woods swept the death-halloo of five hundred Iroquois in their naked paint.

On every side the knoll was black with them as they came leaping forward, hatchets glittering; while over their heads the leaden hail of Tory musketry pelted us from north and south and east and west.

Down crashed Yoiakim at my side, his rifle exploding in mid-air as he fell dead and rolled over and over down the slope toward the masses of his enemies below.

As a Seneca seized the rolling body, set his foot on the dead shoulders and jerked back the head to scalp him, the Yellow Moth leaped forward, launching his hatchet.  It flew, sparkling, and struck the scalper full in the face.  The next instant the Yellow Moth was among them, snarling, stabbing, raging, almost covered by Senecas who were wounding one another in their eagerness to slay him.

For a moment it seemed to me that there was a chance in this melee for us to cut our way through, and I caught Boyd by the arm and pointed.  A volley into our very backs staggered and almost stupefied us; through the swirling powder gloom, our men began to fall dead all around me.  I saw Sergeant Hungerman drop; privates Harvey, Conrey, Jim McElroy, Jack Miller, Benny Curtin and poor Jack Putnam.

Murphy, clubbing his rifle, was bawling to his comrade, Elerson: 

“To hell wid this, Davey!  Av we don’t pull foot we’re a pair o’ dead ducks!”

“For God’s sake, Boyd!” I shouted.  “Break through there beside the Yellow Moth!”

Boyd, wielding his clubbed rifle, cleared a circle amid the crowding savages; Sergeant Parker ran out into the yelling crush; the two gigantic riflemen, Murphy and Elerson, swinging their terrible weapons like flails, smashed their way forward; behind them, using knife, hatchet, and stock, I led out the last men living on that knoll—­ Ned McDonald, Garrett Putnam, Jack Youse, and a French coureur-de-bois whose name I have never learned.

All around us raged and yelled the maddened Seneca pack, slashing each other again and again in their crazed attempts to reach us.  The Yellow Moth was stabbed through and through a hundred times, yet the ghastly corpse still kept its feet, so terrible was the crushing pressure on every side.