trees, and many an Indian send up his last yell and bite the
dust."

This, however, gave the savages but a momentary check, as he could not
follow it up; there being no one by ready and willing to lend him a
helping hand. The Virginia rangers and other provincial troops, who
had done the only good fighting of the day, were thinned out to
one-fourth their number; and the few that remained were too weary and
faint to hold out longer against such fearful odds. Between the
well-aimed firing of the enemy and the random shooting of the
regulars, the slaughter of the English officers had been frightful:
out of the eighty-six who went into the battle, only twenty-four came
off unhurt. Gen. Braddock had five horses killed under him. By this
time, he had given up all hope of regaining the day; and, galling as
it must have been to his proud spirit, was at last forced to think of
retreating as their only chance of safety. Just as he was on the
point, however, of giving orders to this effect, a bullet--said by
some to have been a random shot from one of his own soldiers--passed
through his arm, and, lodging itself in his lungs, brought him to the
ground, mortally wounded. His officers placed him in a tumbrel, or
pioneer's cart, and bore him from the field, where, in his despair, he
prayed them to leave him to die.

Seeing their leader fall, a fresh panic seized the army. And now
followed a wild and disorderly rout, the like of which was never known
before, and has never since been known, in our border-wars. The
soldiers in front fell back on those in the centre; those in the
centre fell back on those in the rear: till foot and horse, artillery
and baggage, were jammed and jumbled together, making a scene of
dismay and confusion it would be vain for me to attempt to describe.
To add wings to their speed, the Indians, with a long, loud yell of
fiendish triumph, now rushed from their ambush, and, brandishing aloft
their murderous tomahawks, began to press hard on the heels of the
terrified fugitives. The better to elude their savage pursuers, the
regulars threw away their arms, the gunners abandoned their guns, and
the teamsters cut their horses from the traces, and, mounting them,
fled, never halting until they reached Col. Dunbar's camp,--a gallop
of forty miles. A few fell under the tomahawk before the farther bank
of the river could be gained. Here, luckily for the survivors, the
Indians gave over the pursuit, in their