"They've hit him," said Mount, reloading hastily; "look! He's down! He's done for! God! They've got him!"
I turned my head aside; when I looked for the poor fellow again, I could only see a white patch lying in the field, and an Indian slinking away from it, shaking something at the fort, while the soldiers shot at him and cursed bitterly at every shot.
"It's Nathan Giles's brother," said a soldier, driving his cartridge down viciously. "Can't some o' you riflemen reach him with old Brown Bess?"
The report of Mount's rifle answered; the Indian staggered, turned to run, reeled off sideways, and fell across a manure-heap. After a moment he rose again and crawled behind it.
And now, house after house burst into black smoke and spouts of flame. Through the spreading haze we caught fleeting glimpses of dark figures running, and our firelocks banged out briskly, but could neither hinder nor stay the doom of those poor, rough homes. Fire leaped like lightning along the pine walls, twisting in an instant into a column of pitchy smoke tufted with tongues of flame. Over the whirling cinders distracted pigeons circled; fowls fluttered out of burning barns and ran headlong into the woods. Somewhere a frightened cow bellowed.
Under cover of the haze and smoke, unseen, the Indians had advanced near enough to send arrows into the parade below us, where the women and children and the cattle were packed together. One arrow struck a little girl in the head, killing her instantly; another buried itself in the neck of a bull, and a terrible panic followed, women and children fleeing to the casemates, while the maddened bull dashed about, knocking down horses, goring sheep and oxen, trampling through bundles of household goods until a rifleman shot him through the eye and cut his throat.
Soldiers and farmers were now hastening to the parapets, carrying buckets and jars of water, for Cresap feared the sparks from the burning village might fall even here. But there was worse danger than that: an arrow, tipped with blazing birch-bark, fell on the parapet between me and Mount, and, ere I could pick it up, another whizzed into the epaulement, setting fire to the logs. Faster and faster fell the flaming arrows; a farmer and three soldiers were wounded; a little boy was pierced in his mother's arms. No sooner did we soak out the fire in one spot than down rushed another arrow whistling with flames, and we all ran to extinguish the sparks which the breeze instantly blew into a glow.