ng shot by
one of our people, who, in his excessive alertness, fired upon me
without first giving the challenge--and hastily gathering together the
watering-party led them to the brink of the river and succeeded in
securing a couple of breakers of water, which I considered would be
sufficient to last us for the next twenty-four hours.

Then ensued a long period of tense, incessant, and painful watching for
the enemy, who, I anticipated, might make their appearance at any
moment. But hour after hour dragged laggingly away, the whole force
kept incessantly on the _qui vive_ to guard against the expected attempt
at surprise, the men, wearied out by their excessive exertions of the
previous day, needing a continuous, uninterrupted round of visits from
me to prevent their falling asleep upon their arms.

And thus the long night at length wore itself away; a faint glimmer of
dawn appeared in the eastern sky, rapidly brightening, the fog assumed a
rosy flush, and presently up rose the glorious sun, gleaming like a
white-hot ball through the haze, a faint breeze from the westward sprang
up, the mist rolled away like a curtain, and there lay the noble river
around us, sparkling like a sheet of molten silver under the morning
sunbeams. And there, too, lay the flotilla of canoes, completely
hemming us in on every side, thus fully justifying the caution which had
prevented my attempting to effect an escape down the river during the
preceding night.

It was exasperating now to the last degree to know that our night's rest
had been thrown away for nothing, and that, for all the benefit our
vigilance had been to us, all hands might just as well have lain down
and gone to sleep all night; but repining was of no use; we had
naturally expected an attack and had held ourselves in readiness to meet
it, and the only thing that remained was to snatch what rest we could
during the day. It was a great advantage to be able to once more _see_
our enemies; and as there seemed to be no immediate disposition on their
part to make a move, I gave orders for breakfast to be got under weigh
as speedily as possible, stationing a look-out at each angle of the
battery during the discussion of the meal. We had scarcely settled
ourselves when the alarm was given that the canoes were advancing, and,
leaping to our feet, we found that such was indeed the case, the whole
fleet having tripped their anchors and begun paddling in toward the
island.

We a