100 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 
he knew not which to choose. So, picking up the 
infant, he told the others all to run on before him 
through the open fields, while he walked his horse and 
kept firing Parthian shots at the Indians. Thus for 
more than a mile they made their way to a fortified 
house, while the prudent redskins, rather than follow 
an armed and desperate man, chose the pleasanter task 
of assailing defenceless women in their homes. The 
_new-born babe they slung against a tree, dashing out 
its brains, and Mrs. Dustin and Mary Neff they 
dragged away into the forest, whither many of their 
friends and neighbours had already been taken. The 
savages, holding a council, proceeded to tomahawk 
many of their prisoners, and the rest they divided 
among one another as prizes to be taken home to 
Canada and tortured to death. Mrs. Dustin and her 
friend were assigned to a party consisting of two war- 
riors, three squaws, and seven young Indians, and with 
them there went an English boy from Worcester who 
had been captured some time before and understood 
the Algonquin language. These bloodthirsty savages 
were devout Catholics, brought into the Christian fold 
by Jesuit eloquence, and daily they counted over their 
rosaries and mumbled their guttural paternosters. To 
the natural delight which the Indian felt in roasting a 
captive, they could add the keener zest which thrilled 
the soul of the follower of Loyola in delivering up a 
heretic unto Satan. But Mrs. Dustin had no mind to 
yield herself to their horrid schemes. One night, 
while the Indians were sound asleep by their camp- 
fire in the depths of the New Hampshire forest, near 
the upper waters of the Merrimac, the two women and 
the boy rose silently and took each a tomahawk, and 
~~ 
