s, and suddenly thirty
of them followed La Mouche, the nephew of the Huron chief, and leaped
over the palisades. The brave Anahotaha fired a pistol shot at his
nephew, but missed him. The Algonquins remained faithful, and died
bravely at their post. The Iroquois learned through these deserters the
real number of those who were resisting them so boldly; they then took
an oath to die to the last man rather than renounce victory, rather than
cast thus an everlasting opprobrium on their nation. The bravest made a
sort of shield with fagots tied together, and, placing themselves in
front of their comrades, hurled themselves upon the palisades,
attempting to tear them up. The supreme moment of the struggle has come;
Dollard is aware of it. While his brothers in arms make frightful gaps
in the ranks of the savages by well-directed shots, he loads with grape
shot a musket which is to explode as it falls, and hurls it with all his
might. Unhappily, the branch of a tree stays the passage of the terrible
engine of destruction, which falls back upon the French and makes a
bloody gap among them. "Surrender!" cries La Mouche to Anahotaha. "I
have given my word to the French, I shall die with them," replies the
bold chief. Already some stakes were torn up, and the Iroquois were
about to rush like an avalanche through this breach, when a new Horatius
Cocles, as brave as the Roman, made his body a shield for his brothers,
and soon the axe which he held in his hand dripped with blood. He fell,
and was at once replaced. The French succumbed one by one; they were
seen brandishing their weapons up to the moment of their last breath,
and, riddled with wounds, they resisted to the last sigh. Drunk with
vengeance, the wild conquerors turned over the bodies to find some still
palpitating, that they might bind them to a stake of torture; three were
in their mortal agony, but they died before being cast on the pyre. A
single one was saved for the stake; he heroically resisted the
refinements of the most barbarous cruelty; he showed no weakness, and
did not cease to pray for his executioners. Everything in this glorious
deed of arms must compel the admiration of the most remote posterity.

The wretched Hurons suffered the fate which they had deserved; they were
burned in the different villages. Five escaped, and it was by their
reports that men learned the details of an exploit which saved the
colony. The Iroquois, in fact, considering what a handf