lone.

The battle waged unevenly for a while, but was finally decided in favor
of the Provincials, and the French and Indians hastily gathered their
prisoners together and fled northward toward Ticonderoga. Putnam's
captor stripped him of his coat and waistcoat, socks and shoes, then
after binding his wrists together he loaded him with as many packs as he
could pile upon his shoulders, and giving him in charge of another
Indian, left him to attend to the wounded.

Poor Putnam was soon in a deplorable condition, with hands swollen
terribly from the tightness of the ligature, and his feet gashed and
bleeding, as he trudged along the trail beneath his enormous burden. He
begged the savages to knock him on the head and end his sufferings; but
he was soon to experience even more horrible sensations, for, arriving
in advance of the main party at the place where they were to camp for
the night, the small body of Indians that had him in charge concluded to
burn him at the stake! He was suffering terribly from the blow on his
jaw, from his swollen hands and mutilated feet, and also from a tomahawk
gash in his cheek, so that he cared little what became of him, provided
the end came quickly. To be burned alive, however, was a fate that
brought a shudder to the frame of even stout-hearted Israel Putnam, and
he looked on in horror while his captors stripped him naked, bound him
to a tree and piled the dry brush they had gathered for fuel around him
in a circle. All the while, as they labored at their fiendish task, they
chanted a funeral dirge, which was almost as depressing to their captive
as their sinister preparations for his immediate immolation.

"Major Putnam soon began to feel the scorching heat," says his
biographer, Colonel Humphreys, who had these details from the chief
actor's own lips. "His hands were so tied that he could move his body,
and he often shifted sides as the fire approached. This sight, at the
very idea of which all but savages must shudder, afforded the highest
diversion to his inhuman tormentors, who demonstrated the delirium of
their joy by yells, dances, and gesticulations. He saw clearly that his
final hour was inevitably come. He summoned all his resolution, and
composed his mind, as far as the circumstances would admit, to bid an
eternal farewell to all he held most dear.... His thought was ultimately
fixed on a happier state of existence, ... the bitterness of death, even
of that death which is ac