paragraph 140.]

[Footnote 6: Pittsburg: see map in paragraph 140.]

[Footnote 7: Fort Kaskaskia: see map in paragraph 161.]

163. The march to Fort Kaskaskia; how a dance ended.--It was a hundred
miles to the fort, and half of the way the men had to find their way
through thick woods, full of underbrush, briers, and vines. The
British, thinking the fort perfectly safe from attack, had left it
in the care of a French officer. Clark and his band reached Kaskaskia
at night. They found no one to stop them. The soldiers in the fort
were having a dance, and the Americans could hear the merry music
of a violin and the laughing voices of girls.

Clark left his men just outside the fort, and, finding a door open,
he walked in. He reached the room where the fun was going on, and
stopping there, he stood leaning against the door-post, looking on.
The room was lighted with torches; the light of one of the torches
happened to fall full on Clark's face; an Indian sitting on the floor
caught sight of him; he sprang to his feet and gave a terrific
war-whoop. The dancers stopped as though they had been shot; the
women screamed; the men ran to the door to get their guns. Clark did
not move, but said quietly, "Go on; only remember you are dancing
now under Virginia, and not under Great Britain." The next moment
the Americans rushed in, and Clark and his "Long Knives," as the
Indians called his men, had full possession of the fort.

[Illustration: CLARK LOOKING ON AT THE DANCE.]

164. How Fort Vincennes was taken; how the British got it back again;
what Francis Vigo[8] did.--Clark wanted next to march against Fort
Vincennes, but he had not men enough. There was a French Catholic
priest[9] at Kaskaskia, and Clark's kindness to him had made him our
friend. He said, I will go to Vincennes for you, and I will tell the
French, who hold the fort for the British, that the Americans are
their real friends, and that in this war they are in the right. He
went; the French listened to him, then hauled down the British flag
and ran up the American flag in its place.

The next year the British, led by Colonel Hamilton of Detroit, got
the fort back again. When Clark heard of it he said, "Either I must
take Hamilton, or Hamilton will take me." Just then Francis Vigo,
a trader at St. Louis, came to see Clark at Kaskaskia. Hamilton had
held Vigo as a prisoner, so he knew all about Fort Vincennes. Vigo
said to Clark, "Hamilton has only about ei