At last the sound of distant firing stopped and the smoke of guns ceased to rise from the scene of the conflict. The garrison waited hour after hour in anxious suspense. About two o’clock in the afternoon a friendly Indian slipped through the lines and told of the utter rout of the relieving force. Captain Pouchot refused to believe him, but at four o’clock, after a sharp cannonade from the English had been answered by a similar discharge from the besieged garrison, a trumpet was sounded in the English trenches, and an officer approached the fort with a demand for its surrender. He presented also a paper with the names of the captive French officers. Captain Pouchot still refused to admit to the enemy his belief in the disaster, and sent an officer of his own to see the prisoners. His worst fears were confirmed when the officer returned with the report that under a shelter of boughs near Johnson’s tent were sixteen officers, some of them severely wounded. All hope for the French was gone, and Captain Pouchot could only endeavor to arrange for his garrison honorable terms of surrender. Such terms the English, recognizing the gallant conduct of their enemies, were glad to grant. The French were accorded all the honors of prisoners of war, although they must be sent under guard to New York. Pouchot asked and was granted a special stipulation that they should be protected from their Indian enemies, who might take this occasion to revenge themselves for the massacre at Fort William Henry three years before. He signed the articles of surrender and delivered over to the English the fort with ten officers and four hundred and eighty-six men, besides women and children. The surrender of Niagara broke the line of communication between Montreal and the interior. In the next year, 1760, the Marquis de Vaudreuil signed articles of capitulation by which Canada and all its dependencies passed into the hands of the English, and French supremacy on the Great Lakes was ended. It remained only for the conquerors to take possession of the other French posts on the Great Lakes. CHAPTER X THE CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC