Beyond Lexington the troops were attacked by men chiefly from Essex and the lower towns. The fire from the rebels slackened till they approached West Cambridge, where Joseph Warren and William Heath, both of the committee of safety, the latter a provincial general officer, gave for a moment some appearance of organization to the pursuit, and the fight grew sharper and more determined. Here the company from Danvers, which made a breastwork of a pile of shingles, lost eight men, caught between the enemy's flank guard and main body. Here, too, a musket ball grazed the hair of Joseph Warren, whose heart beat to arms, so that he was ever in the place of greatest danger. The British became more and more "exasperated" and indulged themselves in savage cruelty. In one house they found two aged, helpless, unarmed men and butchered them both without mercy, stabbing them, breaking their skulls and dashing out their brains. Hannah Adams, wife of Deacon Joseph Adams, of Cambridge, lay in child-bed with a babe of a week old, but was forced to crawl with her infant in her arms and almost naked to a corn shed, while the soldiers set her house on fire. Of the Americans there were never more than four hundred together at any time; but, as some grew tired or used up their ammunition, others took their places, and though there was not much concert or discipline and no attack with masses, the pursuit never flagged. Below West Cambridge the militia from Dorchester, Roxbury and Brookline came up. Of these, Isaac Gardner, of the latter place, one on whom the colony rested many hopes, fell about a mile west of Harvard College. The field pieces began to lose their terror, so that the Americans pressed upon the rear of the fugitives, whose retreat was as rapid as it possibly could be. A little after sunset the survivors escaped across Charlestown Neck. The troops of Percy had marched thirty miles in ten hours; the party of Smith in six hours had retreated twenty miles; the guns of the ship-of-war and the menace to burn the town of Charlestown saved them from annoyance during the rest on Bunker Hill and while they were ferried across Charles River. On that day forty-nine Americans were killed, thirty-four wounded and five missing. The loss of the British in killed, wounded and missing was two hundred and seventy-three. Among the wounded were many officers; Smith was hurt severely. Many more were disabled by fatigue. "The night preceding the outrages at Lexington there were not fifty people in the whole colony that ever expected any blood would be shed in the contest"; the night after, the king's governor and the king's army found themselves closely beleaguered in Boston.