The little company had proceeded about a mile and a half when Captain Wells was seen to turn and ride back, swinging his hat in a circle above his head, which, in the sign language of the frontier, meant: “We are surrounded by Indians.” As he came nearer he shouted, “We are surrounded. March up on the sand ridges.” All at once, in the language of Mrs. Heald, who left a graphic report, they saw “Indians’ heads sticking up and down again here and there, like turtles out of water.” As the member of the party most experienced in Indian warfare, Captain Wells was immediately put in command. He led the men in a charge up the bank, and with a volley of shot they broke the line of the Indians. A second time they charged, and again the Indians drew back. But though they were beaten in front, they poured in from all sides, captured the horses and baggage, and began to kill the women and children. For fifteen or twenty minutes the fight went on. Captain Wells was here, there, and everywhere. With two pistols and a gun, which he kept reloading with lightning rapidity, he sighted and brought down the warriors in the midst of their wanton work. Wounded himself and isolated on a mound with a remnant of his men, Captain Heald saw that there was no hope but to surrender. The Indians made signs for him to approach them, and he offered to surrender in the hope of sparing further bloodshed. His own wife was slightly wounded, and Mrs. Helm, the wife of his lieutenant, had only been saved from being tomahawked by the friendly chief, Black Partridge, who seized her from the grasp of her captor, and took her to the water, where he made feint to drown her, but kept her head out until the fight was over. After the surrender Captain Wells rode up, desperately wounded, to send farewell messages to his wife, and was killed on the instant by a group of Indians, who mangled his body horribly. Of the ninety-three in the party but thirty-six were still living. Of the sixty-six fighting men forty-three had been killed, and only seven women and six children survived. Some of the prisoners made their escape, finding their way to safety through a series of hairbreadth adventures; some died in captivity, and others were exchanged at intervals during the next two years. On the spot where the massacre took place,--then out in open prairie, now at the foot of Eighteenth Street in the city of Chicago,--there stands a noble monument to the Fort Dearborn garrison. With Fort Dearborn and Fort Mackinac abandoned, the last American defences on the western lakes were gone. The boundary line of the United States became the Wabash and Maumee rivers, and the surrender of Detroit made it doubtful whether even that line could be maintained. The hold of the United States on the Great Lakes in August, 1812, looked very uncertain. CHAPTER XIV THE CONQUEST OF LAKE ERIE