the game,
and seemingly without design, to approach the drawbridge of the fort.
This precaution taken, the players were to approach and throw over
their ball, permission to regain which they presumed would not be
denied. On approaching the drawbridge they were with fierce yells to
make a general rush, and, securing the arms concealed by the women, to
massacre the unprepared garrison.

The day was fixed; the game commenced, and was proceeded with in the
manner previously arranged. The ball was dexterously hurled into the
fort, and permission asked to recover it. It was granted. The
drawbridge was lowered, and the Indians dashed forward for the
accomplishment of their work of blood. How different the results in the
two garrisons! At Detroit, Ponteac and his warriors had scarcely
crossed the drawbridge when, to their astonishment and disappointment,
they beheld the guns of the ramparts depressed--the artillerymen with
lighted matches at their posts and covering the little garrison,
composed of a few companies of the 42nd Highlanders, who were also
under arms, and so distributed as to take the enemy most at an
advantage. Suddenly they withdrew and without other indication of their
purpose than what had been expressed in their manner, and carried off
the missing ball. Their design had been discovered and made known by
means of significant warnings to the Governor by an Indian woman who
owed a debt of gratitude to his family, and was resolved, at all
hazards, to save them.

On the same day the same artifice was resorted to at Michilimackinac,
and with the most complete success. There was no guardian angel there
to warn them of danger, and all fell beneath the rifle, the tomahawk,
the war-club, and the knife, one or two of the traders--a Mr. Henry
among the rest--alone excepted.

It was not long after this event when the head of the military
authorities in the Colony, apprised of the fate of these captured
posts, and made acquainted with the perilous condition of Fort Detroit,
which was then reduced to the last extremity, sought an officer who
would volunteer the charge of supplies from Albany to Buffalo, and
thence across the lake to Detroit, which, if possible, he was to
relieve. That volunteer was promptly found in my maternal grandfather,
Mr. Erskine, from Strabane, in the North of Ireland, then an officer in
the Commissariat Department. The difficulty of the undertaking will be
obvious to those who understand the dan