The ranger went to work like a man who comprehends that his life depends upon a second. The chief followed him in every movement. Both charged their guns at the same instant. The Englishman threw his ramrod on the sand; the Indian dropped his.
“Me kill you,” said Paugus, priming his weapon from his powder-horn.
“The chief lies,” retorted the undaunted ranger, striking the breech of his firelock upon the ground with such force that it primed itself. An instant later Paugus fell, shot through the heart.
“I said I should kill you,” muttered the victor, spurning the dead body of his enemy, and plunging into the thickest of the fight.
Darkness closed the conflict, which had continued without cessation since ten in the morning. Little by little the shouts of the enemy grew feebler, and finally ceased. The English stood to their arms until midnight, when, convinced that the savages had abandoned the sanguinary field of battle, they began their retreat toward the fort. Only nine were unhurt. Eleven were badly wounded, but were resolved to march with their comrades, though they died by the way. Three more were alive, but had received their death-wounds. One of these was Lieutenant Robbins, of Chelmsford. Knowing that he must be left behind, he begged his comrades to load his gun, in order that he might sell his life as dearly as possible when the savages returned to wreak their vengeance upon the wounded.
I have said that twenty-three men continued the fight after the bloody repulse in which Lovewell was killed. There were only twenty-two. The other, whose name the reader will excuse me from mentioning, fled from the field and gained the fort, where he spread the report that Lovewell was cut to pieces, himself being the sole survivor. This intelligence, striking terror, decided the little garrison to abandon the fort, which was immediately done, and in haste.
This was the crowning misfortune of the expedition. The rangers now became a band of panic-stricken fugitives. After incredible hardships, less than twenty starving, emaciated, and footsore men, half of them badly wounded, straggled into the nearest English settlements.
The loss of the Indians could only be guessed; but the battle led to the immediate abandonment of their village, from which so many war-parties had formerly harassed the English. Paugus, the savage wolf, the implacable foe of the whites, was dead. His tribe forsook the graves of their fathers, nor rested until they had put many long leagues between them and their pursuers. For them the advance of the English was the Juggernaut under whose wheels their race was doomed to perish from the face of the earth.
V.
NORTH CONWAY.
“Tall spire from which the sound of cheerful bells
Just undulates upon the listening ear,
Groves, heaths, and smoking villages remote.”