Lieutenant Phillips and a few men were sent by Rogers to
oppose the movement; but they quickly found themselves surrounded, and
after a brave defence surrendered on a pledge of good treatment. Rogers
now advised the volunteers, Pringle and Roche, to escape while there was
time, and offered them a sergeant as guide; but they gallantly resolved
to stand by him. Eight officers and more than a hundred rangers lay dead
and wounded in the snow. Evening was near and the forest was darkening
fast, when the few survivors broke and fled. Rogers with about twenty
followers escaped up the mountain; and gathering others about him, made
a running fight against the Indian pursuers, reached Lake George, not
without fresh losses, and after two days of misery regained Fort Edward
with the remnant of his band. The enemy on their part suffered heavily,
the chief loss falling on the Indians; who, to revenge themselves,
murdered all the wounded and nearly all the prisoners, and tying
Lieutenant Phillips and his men to trees, hacked them to pieces.
Captain Pringle and Lieutenant Roche had become separated from the other
fugitives; and, ignorant of woodcraft, they wandered by moonlight amid
the desolation of rocks and snow, till early in the night they met a man
whom they knew as a servant of Rogers, and who said that he could guide
them to Fort Edward. One of them had lost his snow-shoes in the fight;
and, crouching over a miserable fire of broken sticks, they worked till
morning to make a kind of substitute with forked branches, twigs, and a
few leather strings.
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