Upon the rapids appeared a wonderful sight. Bounding down the broken and tumultuous water came the Iroquois in canoes which seemed unnumbered. They flung themselves ashore and at the fort like a wave, and like a wave they were sent trickling back from the shock of their reception.
Massawippa sat down by Claire in the small inclosure during this first brush with the enemy.
There was no time for either Frenchmen or Indians to look with astonished eyes at these girls, so soon were all united in common peril and bonds of endurance. Men purified by the devotion of such an undertaking could accept the voluntary presence of women as they might accept the unscared alighting of birds in the midst of them.
The Iroquois next tried to parley, in order to take the allies unawares. But all their efforts were met with volleys of ammunition. So they drew off from the palisade and began to cut small trees and build a fort for themselves within the shelter of the woods, this being the Iroquois plan of besieging an enemy.
Dollard had stored all his supplies and tools within his palisade. He now set to work with his men to strengthen the position. They drove stakes inside the inclosure and filled the space between outer and inner pickets with earth and stones as high as their heads, leaving twenty loop-holes. Three men were appointed to each loop-hole.
Before the French had finished intrenching themselves the Iroquois broke up all their canoes, lighted pieces at the fires, and ran to pile them against the palisade, but were again driven back. How many attacks were made Claire did not know, for volley followed volley until the crack of muskets seemed continuous, but the Iroquois attained to a focus of howling when the principal chief of the Senecas, one of the Five Nations, fell among their dead.
Morning and noon passed in this tumult of musketry and human outcry. In the unsullied May weather such gunpowder clouds must have been strange sights to nesting birds and other shy creatures of the woods.
Claire and Massawippa looked into the supplies of the fort and set out food, but the water was soon exhausted. Dusk came. Starlight came. The first rough day of this continuous battle was over, but not the battle. For the Iroquois gave the allies no rest, harassing them through that and every succeeding night.
It was after 12 o’clock before Dollard could take Claire’s hands and talk with her a few unoccupied minutes. When women intrude upon men’s great labors they risk destroying their own tender ideals, but this daughter of a hundred soldiers had watched her husband all day in raptures of pride. To be near him in the little arena of his sacrifice was worth her heart-chilling vigil, worth her toilsome journey, fully worth the supreme price she must yet pay.