Proctor’s round shot, grape and bombs not only cut and tore the forest trees to the terror of the savages, but did terrible execution. In many places within the enemy’s line the bloody proofs of the terrific and destructive power of the shell fire were afterwards amply evident. Brant, their mighty leader, found it was all he could do to hold his painted warriors together. Suddenly, rather to their relief, than otherwise, runners from the hilltop came to inform their chief that the enemy had made an attack in force on their left flank, driven in the party of watchers, and were moving forward on the main body. Glad to escape the terrific missiles of the artillery, and to give his braves congenial occupation and one more suitable to Indian warfare, Brant led off a large party, possibly the majority of his warriors, to repel this new danger. Turning now to the hilltop on the right and to the flanking operations, we behold the most startling episode of the battle, when for a moment it looked as if a cloud of red men was about to overwhelm this one isolated body of their foes. The second New Hampshire regiment under Colonel Reid, separated from the others in the brigade, suddenly found themselves partly surrounded by a semi-circle of rifles and hatchets. Their thin scattered line of riflemen, sent out to scour the woods as skirmishers, and at this time only a few yards in front of them, was quickly driven back before a whirlwind of fire. With unloaded muskets, the destruction of Reid’s regiment seemed certain. Nevertheless the salvation of the Americans was in the Indians firing too high. They were too certain of victory to keep cool and take sure aim. This was the situation--Dearborn’s Third New Hampshire, Alden’s Sixth Massachusetts, Cilley’s First New Hampshire, and Du Bois’s two hundred and fifty picked New Yorkers, on the extreme right flank, and far to the northwest of the main body, made up, with the Second New Hampshire, the brigade. These regiments moving in the woods, in a country which no white man had ever penetrated, had become quite separated from each other. Poor, the commander, hoping to completely outflank the enemy, was far ahead on the right, too distant to be heard from. Clinton’s brigade, consisting of the Third New York under Gansevoort, the Fifth New York commanded by Du Bois, the Fourth New York led by Livingston, and the Second New York on the right under Van Cortlandt, formed the reserve, but they were still far below in the rear. The regiments were all small, numbering each about three hundred men. The great and imminent danger was that Brant’s seven hundred warriors might wholly overwhelm the men of one regiment before help could reach them from their comrades.