How we got through God only knows. I heard Murphy bellowing to Elerson:
"We're out! We're out! Pull foot, Davey, or the dirty Scutts will take your hair!"
A Pennsylvania soldier, running heavily down hill ahead of me, was shot, sprang high into the air in one agonized bound, like a stricken hare, and fell forward under my very feet, so that I leaped over him as I ran. The Canadian coureur-de-bois was hit, but the bullet stung him to a speed incredible, and he flew on, screaming with pain, his broken arm flapping.
Behind me I dared not look, but I knew the Seneca warriors were after us at full speed. Bullets whined and whizzed beside us, striking the trees on every side. A long slope of open woods now slanted away below us.
As I ran, far ahead of me, among the trees, I saw men moving, yet dared not change my course. Then, as I drew nearer, I recognized Mr. Lodge, our surveyor, and Thomas Grant with the Jacob-staff, the four chain-bearers with the chain, and Corporal Calhawn, all standing stock still and gazing up the slope toward us.
The next moment Grant dropped his Jacob-staff, turned and ran; the chain-men flung away their implements, and Mr. Lodge and the entire party, being totally unarmed, turned and fled, we on their heels, and behind us a score of yelling Senecas, now driven to frenzy by the sight of so much terrified game in flight.
I saw poor Calhawn fall; I saw Grant run into the swamp below, shouting for help. Mr. Lodge, closely chased by a young warrior, ran toward a distant sentinel, and so eager was the Seneca to slay him that he chased the fleeing surveyor past the sentinel, and was shot in the back by the amazed soldier.
And now, all along the edge of the morass where our pickets were posted, the bang! bang! bang! of musketry began. Murphy and Elerson bounded into safety; Ned McDonald, Garrett Putnam, the coureur-de-bais, and Jack Youse went staggering and reeling into the swamp. I attempted to follow them, but three Senecas cut me out, and, with bursting heart, I sheered off and ran parallel with them, striving to reach our lines, the sentinels firing at my pursuers and running forward to intercept them. Yet, so intent were these Seneca bloodhounds on my destruction that they never swerved under the running fire of musketry; and I was forced out and driven into the woods again to the northwest of our lines.
Farther and farther away sounded the musketry in my ears, until the pounding pulses deadened and finally obliterated the sound. I could no longer carry the shattered and bloody fragment of my rifle, and dropped it. Bullet-pouch, shot-pouch, powder-horn, water-bottle, hatchet I let fall, keeping only my knife, belt, and the thin, flat wallet which contained my letters from Lois and my journal. Even my cap I flung away, moving always forward on a dog-trot, and ever twisting my sweat-drenched head to look behind.
Several times I caught distant glimpses of my pursuers, and saw that they walked sometimes, as though exhausted. Yet, I dared not bear to the South, not knowing how many of them had continued on westward to cut me off from a return; so I jogged on northward, my heart nigh broken with misery and foreboding, sickened to the very soul with the memory of our slaughtered men upon the knoll. For of some thirty-odd riflemen, Indians, line soldiers, and scouts that Boyd had led out the night before, only Elerson, Murphy, McDonald, Youse, the coureur-de-bois, and I remained alive or untaken. Boyd was a prisoner, together with Sergeant Parker; all the others were dead to a man, excepting possibly my three Indians, Mayaro, Grey-Feather, and Tahoontowhee, who Boyd had sent in to report us before we had sighted the Senecas, and who might possibly have escaped the ambuscade.