Capt. Mackay and his company of Independents had, at Washington's request, come up a little while before, and now joined in the retreat. But they joined in nothing else; for, pluming themselves upon their greater respectability as soldiers of his Britannic majesty, they lent not a helping hand in this hour of pressing need, although the danger that lurked behind threatened all alike. They marched along, these coxcombs, daintily picking their way over the smoothest roads, and too genteel to be burdened with any thing but their clean muskets and tidy knapsacks. This ill-timed and insolent behavior served only to aggravate the trials of the other poor fellows all the more; and when, at last, they had managed to drag the cannon and the wagons and themselves to Fort Necessity, they were so overcome with fatigue and hunger, and so moved with indignation at the conduct of the Independents, that they threw down their ropes and packs, and flatly refused to be marched further. Seeing their pitiful plight, and that it would be impossible to reach the settlements, Col. Washington, as their last chance of safety, turned aside, and once more took shelter in his little fort. As Capt. Mackay and his company of gentlemen fighters had done nothing towards strengthening the works during his absence, Washington ordered a few trees to be felled in the woods hard by, as a still further barrier to the approach of the enemy. Just as the last tree went crashing down, the French and their Indian allies, nine hundred strong, came in sight, and opened a scattering fire upon the fort, but from so great a distance as made it little more than an idle waste of powder and lead. Suspecting this to be but a feint of the crafty foe to decoy them into an ambuscade, Washington ordered his men to keep within the shelter of the fort, there to lie close, and only to shoot when they could plainly see where their bullets were to be sent. A light skirmishing was kept up all day, and until a late hour in the night; the Indians keeping the while within the shelter of the woods, which at no point came within sixty yards of the palisades. Whenever an Indian scalp-lock or a French cap showed itself from among the trees or bushes, it that instant became the mark of a dozen sharpshooters watching at the rifle-holes of the fort. All that day, and all the night too, the rain poured down from one black cloud, as only a summer ruin can pour, till the ditches were filled with water, and the breastworks nothing but a bank of miry clay; till the men were drenched to the skin, and the guns of many so dampened as to be unfit for use.