purpose of massacring the Hurons, invited their chiefs into the Huron camp and brained them for their treachery. Dollard's band made answer to the flag hoisted above the Iroquois pickets by rushing out, securing the head of the Seneca chief, and elevating it on a pike above their fort. But as the fight went on, the whites had to have water, and a few rushed for the river to fill kettles. This rejoiced the hearts of the Iroquois. They could guess if the whites were short of water, it only required more warriors to surround the barricade completely and compel surrender. Scouts had meanwhile gone for the Iroquois at Richelieu; and on the fifth day of the siege a roar, gathering volume as it approached, told Dollard that the seven hundred warriors were coming through the forest. Among the newcomers were Huron renegades, who approached within speaking distance of the fort and called out for the Hurons to save themselves from death by surrender. Death was plainly inevitable, and all the Hurons but the chief deserted. This reduced Dollard's band, from sixty to twenty. The whites were now weak from lack of food and sleep; but for three more days and nights the marksmen and musketoon plied such deadly aim at the assailants that the Iroquois actually held a council whether they should retire. The Iroquois chiefs argued that it would disgrace the nation forever if one thousand of their warriors were to retire before a handful of beardless white boys. {110} Solemnly the bundle of war sticks was thrown on the ground. Then each warrior willing to go on with the siege picked up a stick. The chiefs chose first and the rest were shamed into doing likewise. Inside the fort, Dollard's men were at the last extremities. Blistered and blackened with powder smoke, the fevered men were half delirious from lack of sleep and water. Some fell to their knees and prayed. Others staggered with sleep where they stood. Others had not strength to stand and sank, muttering prayers, to their knees. The Iroquois were adopting new tactics. They could not reach the palisades in the face of the withering fire from the musketoon, so they constructed a movable palisade of trees, behind which marched the entire band of warriors. In vain Dollard's marksmen aimed their bullets at the front carriers. Where one fell another stepped in his place. Desperate, Dollard resolved on a last expedient. Some accounts say he took a barrel of powder; others, that he wrapped powder in a huge bole of birch bark. Putting a light to this, he threw it with all his might; but his strength had failed; the dangerous projectile fell back inside the barricade, exploding; marksmen were driven from their places. A moment later the Iroquois were inside the barricade screeching like demons. They found only three Frenchmen alive; and so great was the Mohawk rage to be foiled of victims that they fell on the Huron renegades in their own ranks and put them to death on the spot.