 We waited for half an hour, watching the smoke curling over the house, and then, judging that the Indians had made off for fear of being ambushed, we crossed the clearing.  It took but a glance to read the story.  The women had been washing by the little brook before the cabin, with the children playing about them, when the Indians had come up and with a single volley killed them all except the child we had heard crying.  They had swooped down upon their victims, torn the scalps from their heads, looted the house, and set fire to it.  We dragged out the body of the woman which had been thrown within, in the hope that a spark of life might yet remain, but she was quite dead.  Beneath the warrior Spiltdorph had shot we found the child.  It was a boy of some six or seven years, and so covered with blood that it seemed it must be dead.  But we stripped it and washed it in the brook, and found no wounds upon it except in the head, where it had been struck with a hatchet before its scalp had been stripped off.  The cold water brought it back to life and it began to cry again, whereat Spiltdorph took off his coat and wrapped it tenderly about it. 
Someone has swooped down upon their victims. Who was is?
Meteors