their noise, they fired a volley against the blockhouse.

"Now then!" cried Asa, "are you loaded, Nathan and Righteous? I take the
captain--you, Nathan, the lieutenant--Righteous, the third
officer--James, the sergeant. Mark your men, and waste no powder."

The Spaniards were still some sixty yards off, but we were sure of our
mark at a hundred and sixty, and that if they had been squirrels instead
of men. We fired: the captain and lieutenant, the third officer, two
sergeants, and another man writhed for an instant upon the grass. The
next moment they stretched themselves out--dead.

All was now confusion among the musketeers, who ran in every direction.
Most of them took to the wood, but about a dozen remained and lifted up
their officers to see if there was any spark of life left in them.

"Load again, quick!" said Asa in a low voice. We did so, and six more
Spaniards tumbled over. Those who still kept their legs now ran off as
if the soles of their shoes had been of red-hot iron.

We set to work to pick out our touchholes and clean our rifles, knowing
that we might not have time later, and that a single miss-fire might
cost us all our lives. We then loaded, and began to calculate what the
Spaniards would do next. It is true they had lost their officers; but
there were five Acadians with them, and those were the men we had most
cause to fear. Meantime the vultures and turkey-buzzards had already
begun to assemble, and presently hundreds of them were circling and
hovering over the carcasses, which they as yet, however, feared to
touch.

Just then Righteous, who had the sharpest eye amongst us all, pointed to
the corner of the wood, yonder where it joins the brushwood thicket. I
made a sign to Asa, and we all looked and saw there was something
creeping and moving through the underwood. Presently we distinguished
two Acadians heading a score of Spaniards, and endeavouring, under cover
of the bushes, to steal across the open ground to the east side of the
forest.

"The Acadians for you, Nathan and Righteous, the Spaniards for us," said
Asa. The next moment two Acadians and four Spaniards lay bleeding in the
brushwood. But the bullets were scarce out of our rifles when a third
Acadian, whom we had not seen, started up. "Now's the time," shouted he,
"before they have loaded again. Follow me! we will have their blockhouse
yet." And he sprang across followed by the Spaniards. We gnashed our
teeth with rage at not havin