We were in good position for the enemy to mow us down with bullets, and in such close formation that only those in the outermost ranks could use their weapons to advantage.
"It is all over," I said to myself, realizing that within a very few moments we must be killed or disabled under such a fire as Thayendanega's scoundrels were pouring upon us. Then from our rear I heard ringing cheers, the trampling of many feet, and realized that assistance had come at the most critical moment.
Sixty seconds later we had all been slain like sheep in the shambles!
"Give way, give way, lads in front!" I heard Colonel Gansevoort shout, and, hardly understanding the words, instinctively we surged either side of the passage, having hardly done so before a shower of grape-shot came hurtling between our ranks, dealing death to scores of the feather-bedecked wretches.
"Stand to your muskets, you Minute Boys!" Sergeant Corney shouted, and the sound of his voice stiffened my courage wonderfully. "Now is the time to pay back some of our old scores, and every bullet should cut short a life from among those who would harry us of the valley."
He had hardly more than ceased speaking when a great uproar could be heard from the distance, and, without turning my head, I understood that the British regulars and the Johnson Greens were pressing the attack on the west and the front, in order to hold our men at the walls that we might not be able to regain possession of the stockade.
Now the fight was on in good earnest, and a bloodier one or a more desperate struggle I hope never to see again.
After the single cannon which Colonel Gansevoort had caused to be brought in was discharged, the reinforcements betook themselves to their muskets, for our frontiersmen were more accustomed to the use of small arms than big guns, and the tide surged this way and that, with the fate of the fort trembling more than once in the balance, until I had before my eyes only great billows of feathered forms, which rose and fell, advanced and were forced back, until I was well-nigh bewildered.
Before this portion of the fighting had come to an end, fully half the garrison was engaged in repelling the attack of Thayendanega's forces, and during such time the white portion of the enemy's army might have made a successful assault upon the walls, I verily believe, but for the cowardice displayed by the Tories.
How long we struggled there hand to hand, stumbling now over the lifeless forms of our comrades, and again finding our way checked by the dead bodies of the savages, I cannot say; but certain it is that we finally drove the last of the hated foe over the stockade, and gave Thayendanega's boasting braves such a lesson as they would not need to have repeated for many days.