The fierce cheering of the French merely encouraged them to new attempts.
The battle went on for hours.

It seemed days to Robert.

Mass after mass of British and Colonials continued to charge upon the wooden wall, always to be broken down by the French fire, leaving heaps of their dead among those logs and boughs and on that bristling array of spikes.

At last they advanced no more, twilight came over the field, the terrible fire that had raged since noon died, and the sun set upon the greatest military triumph ever won by France in the New World.
Twilight gathered over the most sanguinary field America had yet seen.
In the east the dark was already at hand, but in the west the light from the sunken sun yet lingered, casting a scarlet glow alike over the fallen and the triumphant faces of the victors.

Within the works where the French had stood fires were lighted, and everything there was brilliant, but outside, where so much valor had been wasted, the shadows that seemed to creep out of the illimitable forest grew thicker and thicker.
The wind moaned incessantly among the leaves, and the persistent smoke that had been so bitter in the throat and nostrils of Robert still hung in great clouds that the wind moved but little.