tailed Washington to return to Winchester, with an escort of eight men, to convoy an iron chest containing four thousand pounds in money to pay off the soldiers.

The aide referred to the courage of his escort in the following terms: "Which eight men were two days assembling, but I believe they would not have been more than as many seconds dispersing if I had been attacked."

After bringing up the "sinews of war" in the treasure chest, Washington suffered much from Braddock's painful deliberation in working his way toward Fort Duquesne.

"I found," he wrote a friend, "that instead of pushing on with vigor, without regarding a little rough road, they were halting to level every mole-hill, and to erect bridges over every brook, by which means we were four days in getting twelve miles."

The aide's impatience, combined with other conditions, threw him into a raging fever. Unable to ride, he had to be carried over the rough forest roads in a lumbering covered wagon. He became so ill that he was left

behind with a doctor and several attendants.

This was a painful ordeal for Washington. Before he was pronounced well enough to ride he made his escape from the hospital tent, mounted his horse, and dashed furiously after the army.

He caught up just in time, as the troops were fording the Monongahela, and about to attack the fort. The splendid appearance of the troops, in their scarlet uniforms, and glittering arms and equipments, filled him with enthusiasm.

Suddenly there was firing in front and bloodcurdling war-whoops resounded on all sides. The van of Braddock's army fell back and threw the even ranks into disorder. They had fallen into an ambush.

Once more Washington implored the general to order the soldiers into the woods, to shield themselves from the deadly fire which was pouring in upon them from all sides.

But the young aide again pleaded in vain. Braddock obstinately decreed that the soldiers must fight in platoons or not at all. They did not fight at all. They could not. The men stood in one another's way, dazed and horror-stricken. They huddled together in terror, for they had

12-Washington.

not been prepared for the devilish din of Indian warfare. The savages, dancing around them like fiends, slaughtered them as they would cattle. The British regulars broke and fled in a wild panic.

The stubborn general paid for his obstinacy with his life. Seven hundred English soldiers and sixty-two out of eighty-six officers were killed, by only two hundred Frenchmen and six hundred Indians.

When Braddock was mortally wounded Washington took command. He rode up and down, all reckless of the closeness of the Indians and French, fighting like a demon, and striving to rally the "cowardly regulars," as he afterward called the routed British soldiers.

The only fighting worthy of the name, on the English side, was done by the men Braddock had sneered at as "raw American militia." They were at last permitted to fight the Indians in their own way, and though they were nearly all killed they sold their lives dearly and saved the day-or, rather, the night, for the retreat was all that was left to save.

As for Washington, he dashed hither and thither, trying to bring up the artillery, and