arked their sense of the importance of
the intelligence; and many of them hastily dispersed themselves in
pursuit. This was the critical moment for action: for, as the anxious
officer had rather wished than expected, those Indians who had been
immediately in front, and whose proximity he most dreaded, were among
the number of those who dashed into the heart of the forest--Captain de
Haldimar now stood alone, and full twenty paces in front of the nearest
of the savages. For a moment he played with his mocassined foot to
satisfy himself, of the power and flexibility of its muscles, and then
committing himself to his God, dashed the blanket suddenly from his
shoulders, and, with eye and heart fixed on the distant soldiery,
darted down the declivity with a speed of which he had never yet
believed himself capable. Scarcely, however, had his fleeing form
appeared in the opening, when a tremendous and deafening yell rent the
air, and a dozen wild and naked warriors followed instantly in pursuit.
Attracted by that yell, the terrible Wacousta, who had been seeking his
victim in a different quarter, bounded forward to the front with an eye
flashing fire, and a brow compressed into the fiercest hate; and so
stupendous were his efforts, so extraordinary was his speed, that had
it not been for the young Ottawa chief, who was one of the pursuing
party, and who, under the pretence of assisting in the recapture of the
prisoner, sought every opportunity of throwing himself before, and
embarrassing the movements of his enemy, it is highly probable the
latter would have succeeded. Despite of these obstacles, however, the
fierce Wacousta, who had been the last to follow, soon left the
foremost of his companions far behind him; and but for his sudden fall,
while in the very act of seizing the arm of his prisoner, his gigantic
efforts must have been crowned with the fullest success. But the reader
has already seen how miraculously Captain de Haldimar, reduced to the
last stage of debility, as much from inanition as from the unnatural
efforts of his flight, finally accomplished his return to the
detachment.

CHAPTER X.

At the western extremity of the lake Huron, and almost washed by the
waters of that pigmy ocean, stands the fort of Michilimackinac.
Constructed on a smaller scale, and garrisoned by a less numerical
force, the defences of this post, although less formidable than those
of the Detroit, were nearly similar, at the period