It was a beautiful morning, and Madeline, attended by one of the old men, started out for the river. But before she had advanced very far her quick young eyes caught sight of a band of painted savages approaching the farm. She at once started to run back to the stockade, at the same time shouting a warning to the harvesters in the fields. And she had barely time to get within the shelter of the palisade and close the gates when the Iroquois were upon it. Both the men-servants were old soldiers, and as soon as the gate of the stockade was closed one of them went straight to the powder-magazine, intending to blow up himself and all who were inside the stockade, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the ruthless red men. Death by their own hands would, he was convinced, be preferable to torture and a horrible death at the hands of the savages. But Madeline Verchères thought there was a third alternative, and she checked the old man, and prevented him from blowing up the magazine.
Being herself animated by the loftiest and stanchest courage, she made her little garrison promise to obey her, and then proceeded to give to each a fixed and definite duty to perform. The fort possessed one cannon. This Madeline bade one of the old soldiers discharge at the enemy. The report alarmed them, but did not drive them away.
Almost immediately after this the beleaguered garrison saw a canoe approaching on the river. Madeline at once guessed that the occupants were women friends of her own. As there was no one else to go down to the water's edge to meet them, Madeline determined to go herself, for the two old men could not be spared from the defence of the stockade. The Indians, seeing the young girl going down to the river alone, were afraid to attack her, for they suspected a trap or stratagem of war. Madeline was therefore able to get her friends safely within the stockade.
But though there was no stratagem in this act, there was stratagem in the method of defence which Madeline adopted. She took care to have a relay of sentinels, challenging each other at stated intervals and at stated places; she made signals, which the Indians were able to see, as though issuing orders to a full garrison; she practised every device she could think of to deceive the enemy into the belief that the defenders were a numerous and undaunted band. And for a whole week this brave-hearted girl, with two old men, two little boys, and three or four women, kept a whole band of fierce and remorseless Iroquois successfully at bay. At the end of that time help, summoned by the escaped harvesters of the manor, arrived from Montreal, and the little beleaguered garrison was relieved.