nce. The instant the negotiators were seized,
the whole besieging force fired upon them, and the fire was as promptly
returned by the men in the bastion. The powerful savages who had grasped
Boone and Smith, attempted to drag them off as prisoners. The one who
held Smith was compelled to release his grasp by being shot dead.
Colonel Boone was slightly wounded. A second tomahawk, by which his
skull would have been cleft asunder, he evaded, and it partially fell on
Major Smith; but being in a measure spent, it did not inflict a
dangerous wound. The negotiators escaped to the fort without receiving
any other injury. The almost providential escape of Boone and Smith can
only be accounted for by the confusion into which the Indians were
thrown, as soon as these men were seized, and by the prompt fire of the
men concealed in the bastion. Added to this, the two Indians who seized
them were both shot dead, by marksmen who knew how to kill the Indians,
and at the same time spare the whites, in whose grasp they were held.

The firing on both sides now commenced in earnest, and was kept up
without intermission from morning dawn until dark. The garrison, at once
exasperated and cheered by the meditated treachery of the negotiation
and its result, derided the furious Indians, and thanked them for the
stratagem of the negotiation, which had given them time to prepare the
fort for their reception. Goaded to desperation by these taunts, and by
Duquesne, who harangued them to the onset, they often rushed up to the
fort, as if they purposed to storm it. Dropping dead under the cool and
deliberate aim of the besieged, the remainder of the forlorn hope,
raising a yell of fury and despair, fell back. Other infuriated bands
took their place; and these scenes were often repeated, invariably with
the same success, until both parties were incapable of taking aim on
account of the darkness.

They then procured a quantity of combustible matter, set fire to it, and
approached under covert of the darkness, so near the palisades as to
throw the burning materials into the fort. But the inmates had availed
themselves of the two days' consultation, granted them by the
treacherous foe, to procure an ample supply of water; and they had the
means of extinguishing the burning faggots as they fell.

Finding their efforts to fire the fort ineffectual, they returned again
to their arms, and continued to fire upon the station for some days.
Taught a lesson o