itish or the British taking him, and that, if he waited for spring, he
would have no chance at all; so he gathered together the pick of his
men, one hundred and seventy all told, and early in February, 1779, set
out for Vincennes. The task before him was to capture a force nearly
equal to his own, protected by a strong fort well supplied for a siege.

At first the journey was easy enough, for they passed across the snowy
Illinois prairies, broken occasionally by great stretches of woodland,
but when they reached the drowned lands of the Wabash, the march became
almost incredibly difficult. The ice had just broken up and everything
was flooded; heavy rains set in, and when the men were not wading
through icy water, they were struggling through mud nearly knee-deep.
After twelve days of this, they came to the bank of the Embarass river,
only to find the country all under water, save one little hillock, where
they spent the night without food or fire. For four days they waited
there for the flood to retire, with practically nothing to eat; but the
rain continued and the flood increased, and Clark, finally, in
desperation, plunged into the water and called to his men to follow. All
day they waded, and toward evening reached a small patch of dry ground,
where they spent a miserable night. At sunrise Clark started on again,
through icy water waist-deep, this time with the stern command to shoot
the first laggard. Some of the men failed and sank beneath the waves, to
be rescued by the stronger ones, and by the middle of the afternoon they
had all got safe to land. By good fortune, they captured some Indian
squaws with a canoe-load of food, and had their first meal in two days.
Soon afterwards the sun came out, and they saw before them the walls of
the fort they had come to capture.

The British had no suspicion of their danger, and they thought the first
patter of bullets against the palisades the usual friendly salute from
an Indian hunting party. But they were soon undeceived, and answered the
rifles with ineffective fire from their two small cannon. All night the
fight continued, and at dawn an Indian war-party, which had been
ravaging the Kentucky settlements, entered the town, ignorant that the
Americans had captured it. Marching up to the fort, they suddenly found
themselves surrounded and seized. In their belts they carried the scalps
of the settlers--men, women and children--they had slain, and,
infuriated at the sight