The cloud of smoke grew heavier, and faces, either from heat or excitement, showed red through it.

The air was filled with bullets, and the Wyoming force was being cut down fast, as the fire of more than a thousand rifles converged upon it.
The five at the fringe of the swamp loaded and fired as fast as they could at the Indian horde, but they saw that it was creeping closer and closer, and that the hail of bullets it sent in was cutting away the whole left flank of the defenders.

They saw the tall figure of Timmendiquas, a very god of war, leading on the Indians, with his fearless Wyandots in a close cluster around him.

Colonel John Durkee, gathering up a force of fifty or sixty, charged straight at the warriors, but he was killed by a withering volley, which drove his men back.
Now occurred a fatal thing, one of those misconceptions which often decide the fate of a battle.

The company of Captain Whittlesey, on the extreme left, which was suffering most severely, was ordered to fall back.