For half an hour the battery had the battle to itself. The blue-coated men dashed forward, crouching behind the cemetery wall to fire a volley through the bushes, then springing across, rushed on the gunners. Now the rest of the army were back in position, and the battle raged. Men fired at men a stone's throw off their musket muzzles, or fought savagely hand to hand with clubbed guns and the deadly bayonet. Sir John was wounded. Half-stunned, he was pulled from under his dead horse, and saw Percy. "How goes it?" he murmured with faint eagerness. "Drummond is back with his twelve hundred, sir. Marched to Fort George and back without stopping; did the last mile on a run too, in this heat. The enemy has brought his guns into action, you can hear them. Our left is smashed up, and General Riall is captured. But I guess we can stick it out. Can I do anything for you? We have no water." "No, I can hear it all going over the Falls," said Sir John, wandering a little. "I would like to know that Bee was safe." Percy left him in the church and went out. There was a lull in the fighting. It was now nine o'clock at night, and the battle had lasted since six. The moon had risen, throwing a pale light on the dead and wounded heaped among the graves and down the hill, and all along the road between the orchards. The heat was terrific, no coolness having come with the night, and neither army had a drop of water. The fighting men, many of whom had been marching all day, suffered intolerably with thirst, and the wounded, torn with the frightful bayonet and scorching in an inferno of heat and pain, soon grew delirious. The moon was hidden by clouds, and in the black darkness out flashed the enemy's guns into the orchards. From both sides came charging crowds of wildly yelling men upon the British centre, where their guns sent back a flaming answer. Men fired wherever they saw fire, then closed into the dark with their foes. All order was lost. Lundy's Lane and the graveyard hill, were covered with men fighting with sword and pistol, stabbing with shortened bayonet, and clenching like wild beasts. The British guns were captured, but the Americans could neither fire nor move them, such was the fury of the mob of men that threw themselves upon them. And above all, the crash of musketry, and the yells and whoops of the fighting men, rose the screaming of the wounded. * * * Almost under the feet of plunging, crazy horses; knocked down more than once by excited men; with bullets whistling round her, Bee stumbled through the dark with a pail of water. Other women were there too, on the same attempt at mercy. The few men who had seen them ordered them back instantly, but being women they did not obey.