Seth's account of the atrocities perpetrated by the enemy filled those at Fort Edward with horror and indignation; and if the men had been left to themselves, they would have rushed to the scene to avenge their brethren.
But the saner councils of their officers prevailed. They were not in sufficient force to cope with the French and their allies, and, however daring and impetuous their attack might be, it could only result in their own discomfiture. There was nothing to be done but to keep within the fort until the invaders had finished their work of destruction.
During the days that followed cannon were fired at intervals from the fort to guide those who had fled to the woods, whence they came dropping in half dead with hunger; but it was not until more than a week after the surrender that the main body of the garrison appeared under the escort of a strong French guard.
Meanwhile the victors were busy demolishing the English stronghold. First the barracks were torn down, and then the huge pine logs of the ramparts were got together in a heap, upon which were thrown the bodies of the butchered men and women, and the whole was set on fire. "The mighty funereal pyre blazed all night. On the following day the army re-embarked for Canada. The din of ten thousand combatants, the rage, the terror, the agony were gone; and no living thing was left but the wolves that gathered from the mountains to feast upon the dead."
AN ADVENTURE IN NEW YORK
The fall of Fort William Henry, and the horrors that followed it, especially as his friend Reuben Thayer was among the victims, threw Seth into a state of deep depression. His life seemed to have lost its spring, and the impulse was strong upon him to obtain his release from the Rangers, and make his way down to Boston in the hope of securing a berth on an ocean-going ship, where he might forget his grief in the novel experience of a sailor's life.
He did yield to it so far as to go to Albany, where Major Rogers was at the time, and to open his heart to him in the matter, although he much feared that he would get only a good rating from him.
But the veteran warrior showed a side of his nature he had never before revealed. Instead of meeting Seth with harshness or ridicule he showed him surprising sympathy.