How the movement fared the defenders could ill judge, because of the tumult of their own rapidly delivered volleys--all firing to the word, the "fencibles" adopting the tactics of the garrison in which they had been so well drilled--and the regular reverberations of the rapidly served cannon. They only knew when the ineffectual fire of the assailants slackened, then ceased; the crash of riving timber, and now and again a hideous yell from the forest, told of the grim deed wrought beyond the range of the firelock by the far-reaching great guns. It was soon over, and although the garrison stood ready at their posts for an hour or more afterward, till the night was wearing into dawn, no further demonstration was made. "Vastly fine! They will not return to the attack,--the fun's over," Captain Stuart cried hilariously;--his face and hands were as black with powder "as if he had been rubbing noses with the cannon," Corporal O'Flynn said, having crawled out of the hospital on his hands and knees to participate in the fight in some wise, if only as spectator. "They have had a lesson," said Demeré, with grim triumph, "how severe, we can't judge till we see the ground." This satisfaction, however, was to be denied them, for the corporal of the guard presently brought the report of a sentinel whose sharp eyes had descried, in the first faint gray siftings of the dawn through the black night, parties of Indians, chiefly women, carrying off the dead and disabled, and now and then a wild, shuddering groan or a half-smothered cry of the wounded attested their errand of mercy. "They ought to show a white flag," said Demeré, exactingly, like the martinet he was. "And they ought to wear top-boots on their feet, and Steinkirks around their gullets, and say their prayers, but they don't," retorted Stuart in high good humor, for his rigorous discipline and persistent formality were exerted only on his own forces; he cared not to require such punctiliousness of the enemy since it did not serve his interest. "Let them take the carrion away. We don't want to play scavenger for them--from an ambuscade they could make it mighty hot for us! And we should be compelled to do it for sanitary reasons--too close to the fort to let the bodies lie there and rot."