"Well, Menard, they did it, nine hundred of them. And we came on, a quarter of a league after, with sixteen hundred more. We got into the first defile, and through it, with never a sound. Then I was sure of trouble in the second, but long after the advance had had time to get through, everything was still. There was still the third defile, just before you reach the marsh, and my head was spinning, waiting for the first shot and wondering where we were to catch it and how many of us were to get out alive. And then, all at once it came. You see the Senecas, three hundred of them at least, were in the brush up on the right slope of the third defile; and as many more were in the elder thickets and swamp grass ahead and to the left. They let the whole advance get through,--fooled every man of Du Luth's scouts,--and then came at them from all sides. We heard the noise--I never heard a worse--and started up on the run; and then there was the strangest mess I ever got into. They had surprised the advance, right enough,--we could see Du Luth and Tonty running about knocking men down and bellowing out orders to hold their force together,--but you see the Senecas never dreamed that a larger force was coming on behind, and we struck them like a whirlwind. Well, for nearly an hour we didn't know what was going on. Our Indians and the Senecas were so mixed together that we dared not shoot to kill. Our own boys, even the regulars, lost their heads and fell into the tangle. It was all yelling and whooping and banging and running around, with the smoke so thick that you couldn't find the trail or the hills or the swamp. I was crowded up to my arms in water and mud for the last part of the time. Once the smoke lifted a little, and I saw what I thought to be a mission Indian, not five yards away, in the same fix. I called to him to help me, and he turned out to be a Seneca chief. Our muskets were wet,--at least mine was, and I saw that he dropped his when he started for me,--so we had it out with knives." "Did he get at you?" "Once. A rib stopped it--no harm done. Well, I was tired, but I got out and dodged around through the smoke to find out where our boys were, but they were mixed up worse than ever. I was just in time to save a _coureur_ from killing one of our Indians with his own hatchet. Most of the regulars scattered as soon as they lost sight of their officers. And Berthier,--I found him lying under a log all gone to pieces with fright. "I didn't know how it was to come out until at last the firing eased a little, and the smoke thinned out. Then we found that the devils had slipped away, all but a few who had wandered so far into our lines--if you could call them lines--that they couldn't get out. They carried most of their killed, though we picked up a few on the edge of the marsh. It took all the rest of the day to pull things together and find out how we stood." "Heavy loss?"