When the skirmishing round Fort Henry was over, La Corne, with a body of Indians, occupied the road that led to Fort Edward; and Levis encamped close by, to support him, and check any sortie the English might make from their intrenched camp. Montcalm reconnoitred the position. He had, at first, intended to attack and carry the intrenched camp, but he found that it was too strong to be taken by a rush. He therefore determined to attack the fort, itself, by regular approaches from the western side, while the force of Levis would intercept any succour which might come from Fort Edward, and cut off the retreat of the garrison in that direction. He gave orders that the cannon were to be disembarked at a small cove, about half a mile from the fort, and near this he placed his main camp. He now sent one of his aides-de-camp with a letter to Monro.
"I owe it to humanity," he said, "to summon you to surrender. At present I can restrain the savages, and make them observe the terms of a capitulation, but I might not have the power to do so under other circumstances, and an obstinate defence on your part could only retard the capture of the place a few days, and endanger the unfortunate garrison, which cannot be relieved, in consequence of the dispositions I have made. I demand a decisive answer within an hour."
Monro replied simply that he and his soldiers would defend themselves till the last.
The trenches were opened on the night of the 4th. The work was extremely difficult, the ground being covered with hard stumps of trees and fallen trunks. All night long 800 men toiled at the work, while the guns of the fort kept up a constant fire of round shot and grape; but by daybreak the first parallel was made. The battery on the left was nearly finished, and one on the right begun. The men were now working under shelter, and the guns of the fort could do them little harm.
While the French soldiers worked, the Indians crept up through the fallen trees, close to the fort, and fired at any of the garrison who might, for a moment, expose themselves. Sharpshooters in the fort replied to their fire, and all day the fort was fringed with light puffs of smoke, whilst the cannon thundered unceasingly. The next morning, the French battery on the left opened with eight heavy cannon and a mortar, and on the following morning the battery on the right joined in with eleven other pieces.
The fort only mounted, in all, seventeen cannon, for the most part small, and, as some of them were upon the other faces, the English fire, although kept up with spirit, could reply but weakly to that of the French. The fort was composed of embankments of gravel, surmounted by a rampart of heavy logs, laid in tiers, crossing each other, the interstices filled with earth; and this could ill support the heavy cannonade to which it was exposed. The roar of the distant artillery continuing day after day was plainly audible at Fort Edward; but although Monro had, at the commencement of the attack, sent off several messengers asking for reinforcements, Webb did not move.
On the third day of the siege he had received 2000 men from New York, and, by stripping all the forts below, he could have advanced with 4500 men, but some deserters from the French told him that Montcalm had 12,000 men, and Webb considered the task of advancing, through the intervening forests and defiles between him and Fort Henry, far too dangerous an operation to be attempted. Undoubtedly it would have been a dangerous one, for the Indians pervaded the woods as far as Fort Edward. No messenger could have got through to inform Monro of his coming, and Montcalm could therefore have attacked him, on the march, with the greater part of his force. Still, a brave and determined general would have made the attempt. Webb did not do so, but left Monro to his fate.
He even added to its certainty by sending off a letter to him, telling him that he could do nothing to assist him, and advising him to surrender at once. The messenger was killed by the Indians in the forest, and the note taken to Montcalm, who, learning that Webb did not intend to advance, was able to devote his whole attention to the fort. Montcalm kept the letter for several days, till the English rampart was half battered down, and then sent it in by an officer to Monro, hoping that it would induce the latter to surrender. The old soldier, however, remained firm in his determination to hold out, even though his position was now absolutely hopeless. The trenches had been pushed forward until within 250 yards of the fort, and the Indians crept up almost to the wall on this side.
Two sorties were made--one from the fort, the other from the intrenched camp; but both were repulsed with loss. More than 300 of the defenders had been killed and wounded. Smallpox was raging, and the casemates were crowded with sick. All their large cannon had been burst or disabled, and only seven small pieces were fit for service. The French battery in the foremost trench was almost completed, and, when this was done, the whole of Montcalm's thirty-one cannon and fifteen mortars would open fire, and, as a breach had already been effected in the wall, further resistance would have been madness.
On the night of the 8th, it was known in the fort that a council of war would be held in the morning, and that, undoubtedly, the fort would surrender.
James, with his company, had, after escorting the cattle to the fort, crossed the marsh to the intrenched camp, as the fort was already crowded with troops. The company therefore avoided the horrors of the siege. When the report circulated that a surrender would probably be made the next morning, Nat went to James.
"What are you going to do, captain?"
"Do, Nat? Why, I have nothing to do. If Monro and his council decide to surrender, there is an end of it. You don't propose that our company is to fight Montcalm's army alone, do you?"
"No, I don't," Nat said, testily; "there has been a deal too much fighting already. I understand holding out till the last, when there's a hope of somebody coming to relieve you; but what's the use of fighting, and getting a lot of your men killed, and raising the blood of those redskin devils to boiling point? If the colonel had given up the place at once, we should have saved a loss of 300 men, and Montcalm would have been glad enough to let us march off to Fort Edward."
"But probably he will agree to let us do that now," James said.
"He may agree," Nat said, contemptuously; "but how about the redskins? Do you think that, after losing a lot of their braves, they are going to see us march quietly away, and go home without a scalp? I tell you, captain, I know redskin nature, and, as sure as the sun rises tomorrow, there will be a massacre; and I, for one, ain't going to lay down my rifle, and let the first redskin, as takes a fancy to my scalp, tomahawk me."
"Well, but what do you propose, Nat?"
"Well, captain, I have heard you say yours is an independent command, and that you can act with the company wherever you like. While you are here, I know you are under the orders of the colonel; but if you had chosen to march away on any expedition of your own, you could have done it."
"That is so, Nat; but now the siege is once begun, I don't know that I should be justified in marching away, even if I could."
"But they are going to surrender, I tell you," Nat insisted. "I don't see as how it can be your duty to hand over your company to the French, if you can get them clear away, so as to fight for the king again."
"What do you say, Edwards?" James asked his lieutenant.
"I don't see why we shouldn't march away, if we could," Edwards said. "Now that the game is quite lost here, I don't think anyone could blame you for saving the company, if possible, and I agree with Nat that Montcalm will find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep his Indians in hand. The French have never troubled much on that score."
"Well, Nat, what is your plan?" James asked, after a pause.
"The plan is simple enough," Nat said. "There ain't no plan at all. All we have got to do is to march quietly down to the lake, to take some of the canoes that are hauled up at the mouth of the swamp, and to paddle quietly off, keeping under the trees on the right-hand side. There ain't many redskins in the woods that way, and the night is as dark as pitch. We can land eight or ten miles down the lake, and then march away to the right, so as to get clean round the redskins altogether."
"Very well, Nat, I will do it," James said. "It's a chance, but I think it's a better chance than staying here, and if I should get into a row about it, I can't help it. I am doing it for the best."
The corps were quietly mustered, and marched out through the gate of the intrenchments, on the side of the lake. No questions were asked, for the corps had several times gone out on its own account, and driven back the Indians and French pickets. The men had, from their first arrival at the fort, laid aside their heavy boots, and taken to moccasins as being better fitted for silent movement in the forest. Therefore not a sound was heard as, under Nat's guidance, they made their way down the slope into the swamp.
Here they were halted, for the moment, and told to move with the greatest care and silence, and to avoid snapping a bough or twig. This, however, was the less important, as the cannon on both sides were still firing, and a constant rattle of musketry was going on round the fort.
Presently, they reached the point where the canoes were hauled up, and were told off, three to a canoe.
"Follow my canoe in single file," James said. "Not a word is to be spoken, and remember that a single splash of a paddle will bring the redskins down upon us. Likely enough there may be canoes out upon the lake--there are sure to be Indians in the wood."
"I don't think there's much fear, captain," Nat whispered. "There's no tiring a redskin when he's out on the scout on his own account, but when he's acting with the whites he's just as lazy as a hog, and, as they must be sure the fort can't hold out many hours longer, they will be too busy feasting, and counting the scalps they mean to take, to think much about scouting tonight."
"We shall go very slowly. Let every man stop paddling the instant the canoe ahead of him stops," were James's last instructions, as he stepped into the stern of a canoe, while Nat and Jonathan took the paddles. Edwards was to take his place in the last canoe in the line.
Without the slightest sound, the canoes paddled out into the lake, and then made for the east shore. They were soon close to the trees, and, slowly and noiselessly, they kept their way just outside the screen afforded by the boughs drooping down, almost into the water. Only now and then the slightest splash was to be heard along the line, and this might well have been taken for the spring of a tiny fish feeding.
Several times, when he thought he heard a slight sound in the forest on his right, Nat ceased paddling, and lay for some minutes motionless, the canoes behind doing the same. So dark was it, that they could scarce see the trees close beside them, while the bright flashes from the guns from fort and batteries only seemed to make the darkness more intense. It was upwards of an hour before James felt, from the greater speed with which the canoe was travelling, that Nat believed that he had got beyond the spot where any Indians were likely to be watching in the forest.
Faster and faster the boat glided along, but the scouts were still far from rowing their hardest. For, although the whole of the men were accustomed to the use of the paddle, the other boats would be unable to keep up with that driven by the practised arms of the leaders of the file. After paddling for another hour and a half, the scout stopped.
"We are far enough away now," Nat said. "There ain't no chance in the world of any redskins being in the woods, so far out as this. The hope of scalps will have taken them all down close to the fort. We can land safely, now."
The word was passed down the line of canoes, the boats glided through the screen of foliage, and the men landed.
"Better pull the canoes ashore, captain. If we left them in the water, one might break adrift and float out beyond the trees. Some redskin or other would make it out, and we should have a troop of them on our trail, before an hour had passed."
"There's no marching through the forest now, Nat," James said. "I can't see my own hand close to my face."
"That's so, captain, and we'd best halt till daylight. I could make my way along, easy enough, but some of these fellows would be pitching over stumps, or catching their feet in a creeper, and, like enough, letting off their pieces as they went down. We may just as well stay where we are. They ain't likely to miss us, even in the camp, and sartin the redskins can't have known we have gone. So there's no chance whatever of pursuit, and there ain't nothing to be gained by making haste."
James gave the order. The men felt about, till each found a space of ground, sufficiently large to lie down upon, and soon all were asleep except the two scouts, who said, at once, that they would watch by turns till daylight.
As soon as it was sufficiently light to see in the forest, the band were again in motion. They made due east, until they crossed the trail leading from the head of Lake Champlain to Fort Edward; kept on for another hour, and then, turning to the south, made in the direction of Albany, for it would have been dangerous to approach Fort Edward, round which the Indians were sure to be scattered thickly.
For the first two hours after starting, the distant roar of the guns had gone on unceasingly, then it suddenly stopped.
"They have hoisted the white flag," Edwards said. "It is all over. Thank God, we are well out of it! I don't mind fighting, Walsham, but to be massacred by those Indians is a hideous idea."
"I am glad we are out of it too," James agreed; "but I cannot think that Montcalm, with so large a force of French regulars at his command, will allow those fiendish Indians to massacre the prisoners."
"I hope not," Edwards said. "It will be a disgrace indeed to him and his officers if he does; but you know what the Indians are, better than I do, and you have heard Nat's opinion. You see, if Montcalm were to use force against the Indians, the whole of them would go off, and then there would be an end to any hope of the French beating the colonists in the long run. Montcalm daren't break with them. It's a horrible position for an officer and a gentleman to be placed in. Montcalm did manage to prevent the redskins from massacring the garrison of Oswego, but it was as much as he could do, and it will be ten times as difficult, now th............