Fort Loyal was a palisade work with eight cannon, standing on rising ground by the shore of the bay, at what is now the foot of India Street in the city of Portland. Not far distant were four blockhouses and a village which they were designed to protect. These with the fort were occupied by about a hundred men, chiefly settlers of the neighborhood, under Captain Sylvanus Davis, a prominent trader. Around lay rough and broken fields stretching to the skirts of the forest half a mile distant. Some of Portneuf's scouts met a straggling Scotchman, and could not resist the temptation of killing him. Their scalp-yells alarmed the garrison, and thus the advantage of surprise was lost. Davis resolved to keep his men within their defences, and to stand on his guard; but there was little or no discipline in the yeoman garrison, and thirty young volunteers under Lieutenant Thaddeus Clark sallied out to find the enemy. They were too successful; for, as they approached the top of a hill near the woods, they observed a number of cattle staring with a scared look at some object on the farther side of a fence; and, rightly judging that those they sought were hidden there, they raised a cheer, and ran to the spot. They were met by a fire so close and deadly that half their number were shot down. A crowd of Indians leaped the fence and rushed upon the survivors, who ran for the fort; but only four, all of whom were wounded, succeeded in reaching it. [17] [17] Relation de Monseignat; La Potherie, III. 79.