The boats came in, black shapes on the dawn-lit water, and from every point in the woods on the shore came the wildest, most blood-curdling sound Ned had ever heard--a long drawn out unearthly yell--the war-whoop of the Mohawks. At the same time they fired, not in volleys, but each Indian picking out his man. Then Fort Toronto spoke in fire, for the two warships were nearing the entrance to the harbour. They answered instantly with their heavier guns, and a rolling cloud of smoke shut out the sight of the risen sun from Humber Bay, and the roar of the cannonading dulled the noise of the conflict on the shore. A mass of blue-clad men had landed there, to be met by a savage scattering fire from the Indians and a sheet of flame from the ambushed militia. Ned, for the first time, was firing at living men. His nervousness had vanished, he forgot his scruples against war. He fired, loaded, and fired again, in almost mechanical obedience to orders. He stopped firing on command, for out of the fort came a wave of scarlet tipped with steel--the regulars were charging with the bayonet on those blue lines forming on the shore. "My happy grandmother!" ejaculated Archy, "there's something besides starch in those fellows, swinging into battle like that. I just hate to fight out in the open; you see----" Ned never knew what. The order to charge came to them, and he was dashing out of cover at Archy's heels. He gasped as the man beside him fell in a crumpled heap, and the bullets whistled past his ears. Then he forgot himself in that mêleé of battling men. * * * The sun, a fierce red ball, gleamed through the smoke, and by the green woods men in red coats, men in gray coats, and men in no coats at all, flung themselves on the blue lines which wavered, and stumbled backward into the shallows of the lake. Now more boats were coming from the ships, the American general, Pike, standing in the foremost, as he cheered on his men. Ned was parted from his companions in the rush. He sprang over a log, and fired at an American officer who came at him with uplifted sword. The man fell, and all the delirium of battle passed from Ned's brain, as he stared horror-struck at his fallen foe. The American was on his feet again, and the dark blood streaming from his shoulder. He leaned weakly against a tree, and raised his sword. Ned looked round and saw a young Indian, frightful with his naked painted body and a dripping scalp at his girdle, levelling his musket at the wounded man. Instantly Ned was between them--"Stop, Kawque," he cried to the Indian, "the man is wounded. He has surrendered." "I have not," said the American, adding with biting contempt, "I do not surrender to a renegade. I prefer to be shot, rather than massacred as my countrymen were, who surrendered to yours at Detroit."