“The time was midnight, and the scene being lighted up by a large fire burning near, this Queen Esther appeared like a very fury from Hades while performing her bloody work. With the death of each victim her fury increased, and her song rose louder and clearer upon the midnight air. Leddeus Hammond and Joseph Eliot, seeing there was no hope, shook off the Indians who held them, and, with a desperate spring, fled to the thicket amid rifle-bullets and tomahawks that were sent after them, and escaped. This was not the only scene of a similar kind that could have been witnessed between the ruins of Wintermoot’s and the walls of Forty Fort.” Daniel told us that the only ray of light in this dreadful time to our people of the valley was just after sunset, when Captain John Franklin arrived at Forty Fort with a company of thirty-five men from Hunterdon and Salem, and before the sun had risen again, Colonel Zebulon Butler, with those who had taken refuge in Wilkesbarre Fort, joined the people, who were now beginning to hope. Therefore it was that in all the valley, the only stockade remaining in the hands of our friends was this same Forty Fort. The stockades at Pittstown had long since been abandoned. On the following morning, which was the day before Daniel had crossed the river on his scout, John Butler sent a messenger demanding the surrender of Forty Fort, and particularly of Colonel Zebulon Butler, with such of the Continental troops as he had with him, threatening in event of a refusal to comply, that an immediate attack would be made, and every one, including women and children, should be put to torture when taken. Now it appears that there were only fifteen men belonging to the Continental army left alive, and knowing John Butler would, however many promises he might make, put to death all the soldiers that fell into his hands, Colonel Zebulon proposed that he and his followers should immediately leave the valley before there was time for John Butler to set out in pursuit. Therefore, taking his wife behind him on a horse, the colonel rode through the woods that same day, intending to sleep at Conyngham in the Nescopeck Valley, twenty miles away. The soldiers followed on foot as best they might. Then there remained only Colonel Dennison with some of the men from Hunterdon, the cripples and old men, the women and children, which had escaped the massacre, to be surrendered. And so he returned word to John Butler, understanding that there was no hope of making a successful resistance, and taking the chances that the Tory, who was more of a savage than the most benighted of his followers, would hold to the word which he should be called upon to give in writing. These terms, which Colonel Dennison himself drew up, were much as follows: