fort,--Fort William Henry,--with gates fast shut and two thousand bushfighters behind the walls, weak from an epidemic of smallpox, and, as usual, so short of provisions that siege means starvation. {250} Twenty miles southeastward is another English fort,--Fort Edward,--where General Webb with sixteen hundred men is keeping the road barred against advance to Albany. Soon as scouts bring word to Fort William Henry of the advancing French, Lieutenant Monro sends frantic appeal to Webb for more men; but Webb has already sent all the men he can spare. If he leaves Fort Edward, the French by a flank movement through the woods can march on Albany, so Monro unplugs his seventeen cannon, locks his gates, and bides his fate. Montcalm follows the same tactics as at Oswego,--brings heavy artillery against slab walls. For the first week of August, eight hundred of his men are digging trenches by night to avoid giving target for the fiery bombs whizzing through the dark from Monro's cannon. By day they lie hidden in the woods with a cordon of sharpshooters encircling the fort, Montcalm encamped on the west to prevent help from Sir William Johnson up the Mohawk, Lévis on the southeast to cut off aid from Webb. Monro sends yet one last appeal for help: two thousand men against eight thousand,--the odds are eloquent of his need! Montcalm's scouts let the messenger pass through the lines as if unseen, but they make a point of catching the return messenger and holding Webb's answer that he cannot come, till their cannon have torn great wounds in the fort walls. Then Bougainville blindfold carries Webb's answer to Monro and demands the surrender of the fort. Monro still has a little ammunition, still hopes against hope that Johnson or Webb or Loudon will come to the rescue, and he keeps his big guns singing over the heads of the French in their trenches till all the cannon have burst but seven, and there are not ten rounds of shells left. Then Colonel Young, with a foot shot off, rides out on horseback waving a white flag. Three hundred English have been killed, as many again are wounded or ill of smallpox, and to the remaining garrison of sixteen hundred Montcalm promises safe conduct to General Webb at Fort Edward. Then the English march out. That night--August 9--the vanquished English camp with Montcalm's forces. The Indians, meanwhile, ramping through the fort for plunder, {251} have maddened themselves with traders' rum! Before daybreak they have butchered all the wounded lying in the hospital and cut to pieces the men ill of smallpox,--a crime that brought its own punishment in contagion. Next morning, when the French guard tried to conduct the disarmed English along the trail to Fort Edward, the Indians snatched at the clothing, the haversacks, the tent kit of the marchers. With their swords the French beat back the drunken horde. In answer, the war hatchets were waved over the heads of the cowering women.