It was true. They rode their horses on a dead run, and reining up
at the fort, where the people crowded around them, they leaped to
the ground, and Colonel Butler said--"Our boys have been driven
from the field, and the Tories and Indians are at their heels!"

CHAPTER FOUR: THE EASTERN SHORE

Young Ben Ripley made a good record on that eventful 3rd of July.
He loaded and fired as steadily as a veteran. The smoke of the
guns, the wild whooping of the Iroquois Indians, the sight of his
friends and neighbors continually dropping to the ground, some of
them at his elbow, the deafening discharge of the rifles--all these
and the dreadful swirl and rush of events dazed him at times; but
he kept at it with a steadiness which caused more than one expression
of praise from the officers nearest him.

All at once he found himself mixed up in the confusion caused
by the attempt to wheel a part of the line to face the flanking
assailants, and the mistake of many that it was an order to retreat.

He did not know what it meant, for it seemed to him that a dozen
officers were shouting conflicting orders at the same moment.
A number of men threw down their guns and made a wild rush to get
away, several falling over each other in the frantic scramble;
others bumped together, and above the din of the conflict sounded
the voices of Colonel Butler, as he rode back and forth through
the smoke, begging his troops not to leave him, and victory would
be theirs.

Seeing the hopeless tangle, the Indians swarmed out of the swamp,