the time went on, and neither side was yet victorious. Closer and closer
came the lines. Meanwhile dark clouds were piling in a bank in the
southwest. Slow thunder rumbled far away, and the sky was cut at
intervals by lightning. But the combatants did not notice the heralds of
storm. Their attention was only for each other.

It seemed to Henry that emotions and impulses in him had culminated.
Before him were the worst of all their foes, and his pitiless resolve
was not relaxed a particle. The thunder and the lightning, although he
did not notice them, seemed to act upon him as an incitement, and with
low words he continually urged those about him to push the battle.

Drops of rain fell, showing in the moonshine like beads of silver on
boughs and twigs, but by and by the smoke from the rifle fire, pressed
down by the heavy atmosphere, gathered among the trees, and the moon was
partly hidden. But file combat did not relax because of the obscurity.
Wandering Indians, hearing the firing, came to Wyatt's relief, but,
despite their aid, he was compelled to give ground. His were the most
desperate and hardened men, red and white, in all the allied forces, but
they were faced by sharpshooters better than themselves. Many of them
were already killed, others were wounded, and, although Wyatt and
Coleman raged and strove to hold them, they began to give back, and so
hard pressed were they that the Iroquois could not perform the sacred
duty of carrying off their dead. No one sought to carry away the Tories,
who lay with the rain, that had now begun to fall, beating upon them.

So much had the riflemen advanced that they came to the point where
bodies of their enemies lay. Again that fierce joy surged up in Henry's
heart. His friends and he were winning. But he wished to do more than
win. This band, if left alone, would merely flee from the Seneca Castle
before the advance of the army, and would still exist to ravage and slay
elsewhere.

"Keep on, Tom! Keep on!" he cried to Ross and the others. "Never let
them rest!"

"We won't! We ain't dreamin' o' doin' sech a thing," replied the
redoubtable one as he loaded and fired. "Thar, I got another!"

The Iroquois, yielding slowly at first, began now to give way faster.
Some sought to dart away to right or left, and bury themselves in the
forest, but they were caught by the flanking parties of Shif'less Sol
and Heemskerk, and driven back on the center. They could not retreat
except