Whilst I was unloading, one of my companions fired a shot which so astonished them anew, seeing their chiefs slain, that they lost courage, took to flight, and abandoned the field and their fort, hiding in the depths of the forest, whither pursuing them I killed some others. Our savages also killed several of them and took ten or twelve of them prisoners. The rest carried off the wounded. These were promptly treated. After having gained this victory, our party amused themselves plundering Indian corn and meal from the enemy, and also their arms which they had thrown away the better to run. And having feasted, danced, and sung, we returned three hours afterwards with the prisoners.[17] [Illustration: Champlain.] No victory could have been so costly as this; indeed, one is led to wonder whether any battle in America ever cost more lives than this; for one hundred and fifty years and forty-five days, or until the fall of Quebec and New France, this strongest of Indian nations remembered Champlain, and was the implacable enemy of the French; and, what was of singular ill-fortune, these very Iroquois, in addition to holding the key of the West in their grasp, lay exactly between the French and their English rivals at the point of nearest and most vital contact. After the Ticonderoga victory an Iroquois prisoner, previous to being burned at the stake, chanted a song; wrote the humane Champlain, "the song was sad to hear." For a century and a half sad songs were sung by descendants of those Algonquin and French victors who listened in the wavering light of that cruel fire to the song of the captive from the land of Long Houses below the Lakes! True, the Iroquois and the French were not continually at war through this long series of years; and French blandishments had their effect, sometimes, even on their immemorial foe, especially at the Seneca end of the Long House, nearest Niagara.