of that warrior himself by his own
terrible and vindictive enemy. The necessity of counteracting that
influence was obvious; and he felt this was only to be done (if at all)
by some marked and extraordinary evidence of the peaceful disposition
of the English. Hence his determination to suffer the faithless chiefs
and their followers to depart unharmed from the fort, even at the
moment when the attitude assumed by the prepared garrison fully proved
to the assailants their designs had been penetrated and their schemes
rendered abortive.

CHAPTER VII.

With the general position of the encampment of the investing Indians,
the reader has been made acquainted through the narrative of Captain de
Haldimar. It was, as has been shown, situate in a sort of oasis close
within the verge of the forest, and (girt by an intervening underwood
which Nature, in her caprice, had fashioned after the manner of a
defensive barrier) embraced a space sufficient to contain the tents of
the fighting men, together with their women and children. This,
however, included only the warriors and inferior chiefs. The tents of
the leaders were without the belt of underwood, and principally
distributed at long intervals on that side of the forest which skirted
the open country towards the river; forming, as it were, a chain of
external defences, and sweeping in a semicircular direction round the
more dense encampment of their followers. At its highest elevation the
forest shot out suddenly into a point, naturally enough rendered an
object of attraction from whatever part it was commanded.

Darkness was already beginning to spread her mantle over the
intervening space, and the night fires of the Indians were kindling
into brightness, glimmering occasionally through the wood with that
pale and lambent light peculiar to the fire-fly, of which they offered
a not inapt representation, when suddenly a lofty tent, the brilliant
whiteness of which was thrown into strong relief by the dark field on
which it reposed, was seen to rise at a few paces from the abrupt point
in the forest just described, and on the extreme summit of a ridge,
beyond which lay only the western horizon in golden perspective.

The opening of this tent looked eastward and towards the fort; and on
its extreme summit floated a dark flag, which at intervals spread
itself before the slight evening breeze, but oftener hung drooping and
heavily over the glittering canvass. One solitary pi