were attacking
the stockade.

Righteous shot down one of the Spaniards; but just as he had done so the
Acadian tore up a palisade by the roots, (how he did it I know not to
this hour, there must have been a stump remaining on it,) held it with
the wattles and branches hanging round it like a shield before him,
guarding off a blow I aimed at him, then hurled it against me with such
force that I staggered backwards, and he sprang past me. I thought it
was all over with us. It is true that Righteous, with the butt of his
rifle, split the skull of the first Spaniard who entered, and drove his
hunting-knife into the next; but the Acadian alone was man enough to
give us abundant occupation, now he had got in our rear. Just then there
was a crack of a rifle, the Acadian gave a leap into the air and fell
dead, and at the same moment my son Godsend, a boy of ten years old,
sprang forward, Asa's rifle in his hand still smoking from muzzle and
touchhole. The glorious boy had loaded the piece when he saw that Rachel
did not do it, and in the very nick of time had shot the Acadian through
the heart. This brought me to myself again, and with axe in one hand and
knife in the other, I rushed in among the Spaniards, hacking and hewing
right and left. It was a real butchery, which lasted a good quarter of
an hour; but then the Spaniards got sick of it, and would have done so
sooner had they known that their leader was shot. At last they jumped
off the mound and ran away, such of them as could. Righteous and I put
the palisade in its place again, securing it as well as we could, and
then, telling my boy to keep watch, ran over to the other side, where a
desperate fight was going on.

"Three of our party, assisted by the women, were defending the stockade
against a score of Spaniards, who kept poking their bayonets between the
palisades, till all our people were wounded and bleeding. But Rachel had
now recovered from her first grief at her husband's death, or rather it
had turned to a feeling of revenge, and there she was, like a raging
tigress, seizing the bayonets as they were thrust through the stockade,
and wrenching them off the muskets, and sometimes pulling the muskets
themselves out of the soldiers' hands. But all this struggling had
loosened the palisades, and there were one or two openings in them
through which the thin-bodied Spaniards, pushed on by their comrades,
were able to pass. Just as we came up, two of these copper-colo