Towards this fated spot at the dawn of a December Sabbath the little army of Puritans took their way. The snow was falling fast and the wind dashed it in their faces, but bated not their speed. By one they were in front of the stronghold, and though weary with the long march and faint with hunger they pressed eagerly forward. The only entrance was over the trunk of a tree. The Indian guns and arrows covered every foot of the way. The colonists undaunted rushed on--officers in the van. First to feel the murderous Indian aim was Captain Johnson, of Roxbury. Captain Davenport, of Boston, fell next, but before he fell penetrated the enclosure. More than two hours the battle raged with unabated fury. At one time the English made their way into the fort, but the Indians rallied and forced them back again. But over-confident in the natural strength of their fortress they had neglected to secure with palisades a strip which they had thought sufficiently guarded by a sheet of water. The English discovered it, and crossing took the astonished natives in the rear. At the same time some one shouted, "Fire their wigwams." The fatal flame caught eagerly the light boughs and branches of which the frail tenements were made, and in a few moments the fort was all ablaze. Imagination shrinks appalled from the scene that followed. Night was coming on. The snow storm had set in with fresh violence. A thousand Indian warriors lay dead or wounded within the fort. Five hundred wigwams were burning within the same narrow compass--consuming alike the bodies of the wounded and the dead. The women and children, like their protectors, perished in the flames. Eighty of the English, too, were killed--a hundred and fifty were wounded. Had the wigwams been spared there would have been food and shelter for the victors. But victors and vanquished were driven out into the bleak night, weary and spent with long marching and fasting--the Indian to crouch in an open cedar swamp not far from the fort--the English to return to the spot from whence they had set out in the morning for this dreadful victory--Smith's plantation, near the present village of Wickford. Several of the wounded died by the way.