With a dreadful surmise Diane started to run across the courtyard toward the door at the foot of the tower; and even as she started a yell went up from the rear of the fort, followed by a random volley of musketry and a second yell--a true Iroquois war-whoop. In the gateway Captain Muspratt called promptly to his bugler. The first yell had told him what was happening; that the men of the Forty-sixth, sent round for the feint attack, had found the rear wall defenceless and were escalading, in ignorance of the parley at the gate. Quick as thought the bugler sounded the British recall, and its notes were taken up by bugle after bugle down the slope. The Major commanding the feint attack heard, comprehended after a fashion, and checked his men; and the Forty-sixth, as a well-disciplined regiment, dropped off its scaling ladders and came to heel. But he could not check his Indian guides. Once already on their progress down the river they had been baulked of their lust to kill; and this restraint had liked them so little that already three-fourths of Sir William Johnson's Iroquois were marching back to their homes in dudgeon. These dozen braves would not be cheated a second time if they could help it. Disregarding the shouts and the bugle-calls they swarmed up the ladders, dropped within the fort, and swept through the Commandant's quarters into the courtyard. In the doorway at the foot of the flagstaff tower a woman's skirt fluttered for an instant and was gone. They raced after it like a pack of mad dogs, and with them ran one, an Ojibway, whom neither hate nor lust, but a terrible fear, made fleeter than any. Six of them reached the narrow doorway together, snarling and jostling in their rage. The Ojibway broke through first and led the way up the winding stairway, taking it three steps at a time, with death behind him now--though of this he recked nothing--since he had clubbed an Oneida senseless in the doorway, and these Indians, Oneidas all, had from the start resented his joining the party of guides. Never a yard separated him from the musket-butt of the Indian who panted next after him; but above, at the last turning of the stair under a trap-door through which the sunlight poured, he caught again the flutter of a woman's skirt. A ladder led through the hatchway, and--almost grasping her frock--he sprang up after Diane, flung himself on the leads, reached out, and clutching the hatch, slammed it down on the foremost Oneida's head. As he slipped the bolt--thank God it had a bolt!--he heard the man drop from the ladder with a muffled thud. Then, safe for a moment, he ran to the battlements and shouted down at the pitch of his voice. "Forty-sixth! This way, Forty-sixth!" His voice sounded passing strange to him. Nor for two years had it been lifted to pronounce an English word. Having sent down his call he ran back swiftly to the closed hatchway; and as he knelt, pressing upon it with both hands, his eyes met Diane's.