At a little distance from the ford the track passed over a wide and bushy ravine. Gage crossed this ravine with his advanced guard, and the main body was just descending to it when Gage's guides and horsemen suddenly fell back, and a man dressed like an Indian, but with an officer's gorget, was seen hurrying along the path. At sight of the British, Beaujeu (for the figure so strangely arrayed seems to have been no other) turned suddenly and waved his hat. The signal was followed by a wild war-whoop from his Indians and by a sharp fire upon the advancing British from the trees in their front. Gage's men at once deployed with great steadiness and returned the fire in a succession of deliberate volleys. They could not see a man of the enemy, so that they shot of necessity at haphazard, but the mere sound of the musketry was sufficient to scare Beaujeu's Canadians, who fled away shamefully to Fort Duquêsne. The third volley laid Beaujeu dead on the ground, and Gage's two field-pieces coming into action speedily drove the Indians away from the British front. Meanwhile the red-coats steadily advanced, the men cheering lustily and shouting "God save the King"; and Captain Dumas, who had succeeded Beaujeu in the command of the French, almost gave up the day for lost. His handful of regular troops, however, stood firm, and he and his brother officers by desperate exertions succeeded in rallying the Indians. The regulars and such few of the Canadians as stood by them held their ground staunchly, and opened a fire of platoons which checked the ardour of Gage's men; while the Indians, yelling like demons but always invisible, streamed away through the forest along both flanks of the British, and there, from every coign of vantage that skilful bushmen could find, poured a deadly fire upon the hapless red-coats. The cheering was silenced, for the men began to fall fast. For a time they kept their ranks and swept the unheeding forest with volley after volley, which touched no enemy through the trees. They could see no foe, and yet the bullets rained continually and pitilessly upon them from front, flank, and rear, like a shower from a cloudless sky. The trial at last was greater than they could bear. They abandoned their guns, they broke their ranks, and huddling themselves together like a herd of fallow-deer they fell back in disorder, a mere helpless mass of terrified men.