He might as profitably have addressed the stones. He ran in among the fighters, dealing blows with the flat of his sword, and pointing through the shadows to the fierce conflict upon the edge of the valley.
"There!" he shouted, trying to recall some scattered words of the language. "There, where the sun rises!"
At length he made himself clear, and a section of the fighters, more cool-headed than the remainder, professed themselves willing to follow, and some of the hot-headed chiefs, perceiving method in the Englishman's madness, turned also calling back their men.
Twice had the Mohawks broken through the front line and been repulsed before reaching the cannon, which spouted its hail down the valley. A barrier of French dead piled the space beside the artillery. Roussilac strode to and fro, withdrawing men from points where they could ill be spared that he might throw them upon the side where the lines wavered. Here the flower of the fighting-men struggled. Laroche fought here like the brave man he undoubtedly was, swearing fearfully, but never ceasing from the skilful sword-play which freed many a brown warrior from the burden of the fight. A charm seemed to protect his great body, the arrows leaving him unscathed, the blows of the tomahawks seeming to deflect as they descended, until the soldiers fought for the pride of place at the side of the priest, whom they believed to be under the special protection of the saints.
"Infidels, unbelieving and unbaptised! Down, down!" shouted Laroche, blinking the sweat from his eyes.
Repeatedly the Iroquois turned the line at the weak spot which Nature had overlooked in her plan of fortification, but Roussilac was prepared always with a band waiting to stem the rush. This could not last. His soldiers were thinning, and there seemed to be no limit to the numbers of the Indians. They pressed up in horde upon horde, their shouts cleaving the moist wind, their arrows inexhaustible, their courage undiminished. Then the word came that the Cayugas and Senacas were giving way upon the west with the manifest intention of strengthening their allies.
"Let them come," cried Roussilac loudly, for his men's benefit. "Only send me as many soldiers as can be spared from that position." But to himself he muttered: "The game is up," and he wrung his brain for a ruse de guerre.
"Send me a dozen men with a cannon yonder to work round and attack these savages in the rear," he said to one of his captains, who had been put out of the fight by a wound in the arm. "If they can but raise sufficient noise they may appear as a relieving force. It disheartens even a brute to fight between two foes."
"We cannot spare the men, Excellency."
"They must be spared," replied Roussilac.