"Your blood be on your own heads," cried I. And, with the feelings of
desperate men, we levelled our guns in the direction in which we had
seen the flashes of the last volley. At that moment--"Halt! What is
here?" shouted a stentorian voice close to us.

"Stop firing, or you are dead men," cried five or six other voices.

"_Sacre! ce sont des Americains_," muttered the Acadians.

"Monsieur Carleton!" cried a voice.

"Here!" replied my friend. A boat shot out of the smoke, between us and
our antagonists. Carleton's servant was in it. The next moment we were
surrounded by a score of Acadians and half-a-dozen Americans.

It appeared that the Acadians, so soon as they perceived the prairie to
be on fire, had got into boat and descended a creek that flowed into the
Chicot creek, on which we now were. The beasts of the forest and
prairie, flying to the water, found themselves inclosed in the angle
formed by the two creeks, and their retreat being cut off by the fire,
they fell an easy prey to the Acadians, wild, half savage fellows, who
slaughtered them in a profusion and with a brutality that excited our
disgust, a feeling which the Americans seemed to share.

"Well, stranger!" said one of the latter, an old man, to Carleton, "do
you go with them Acadians or come with us?"

"Who are you, my friends?"