General Chandler, with a wise caution thus far seldom displayed, placed a company of artillery at the mouth of the creek, three miles from the road, to cover a landing of boats expected there, with the rest of his forces took a strong position on the high eastern bank of the creek, where the road crosses it, threw out pickets in all directions, gave orders how the line should be formed in case of an attack, and ordered that the artillery horses be kept harnessed. One regiment at first encamped in the low meadows on the western bank, but after nightfall it withdrew to the heights, leaving its camp-fires burning, A picket guard that had been posted at a little chapel a quarter of a mile in advance was left there. The officer in command of the enemy's rear guard had sent word to General Vincent that the Ameri{119}cans were in straggling detachments, and if the first were attacked at once it could easily be defeated before the others came up to its support. The General therefore, as he had little chance of further retreat, planned a night attack. A little before midnight of the 5th he left his camp, at the head of about a thousand men, and marched stealthily back by the road he had come, to surprise his foe. The night was absolutely dark, and the sentinels at the little chapel were suddenly seized and silently bayoneted before they could fire their muskets or make any outcry. The assassination of pickets is one of the sickening incidents of war that seldom find mention in the reports of the general or the pages of the romantic historian, but that cost many a poor fellow his life without even the pitiful compensation of what is called glory. Seeing the camp-fires in the meadow, with no signs of life among them, the British forces imagined that the Americans were all asleep and would fall an easy prey to massacre. They advanced confidently, and as they reached the deserted fires sprang among them with a hideous yell--in which part of the performance they were materially assisted by a few score Indian allies--expecting to see their foes arise from the ground, and rub their eyes open just in time to catch the gleam of the British bayonets and {120}savage tomahawks before they were buried in American flesh. Instead of this, while they stood dazed among the waning camp-fires, looking about in vain for somebody to massacre, the line on the heights blazed out with musketry and artillery, and the shot tore its way through the ranks of the red-coats. But the English soldier has always been good at obeying orders, and as soon as this volley revealed the whereabouts of the Americans, their enemy pressed on in the face of the fire, climbed the bank, entered the lines in the darkness, and captured several guns, the artillerists not being able to distinguish friend from foe.