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l soundly asleep. It was midnight. The flickering fire burned feebly. The night was dark. They were in the midst of an apparently boundless forest. The favorable hour for an attempt to escape had come. But it was full of peril. Failure was certain death, for the Indians deemed it one of the greatest of all crimes for a captive who had been treated with kindness to attempt to escape. A group of fierce savages were sleeping around, each one of whom accustomed to midnight alarms, was supposed to sleep, to use an expressive phrase, "with one eye open." Boone, who had feigned sound slumber, cautiously awoke his companion who was asleep and motioned him to follow. The rustling of a leaf, the crackling of a twig, would instantly cause every savage to grasp his bow and arrow and spring from the ground. Fortunately the Indians had allowed their captives to retain their guns, which had proved so valuable in obtaining game. With step as light as the fall of a feather these men with moccasined feet crept from the encampment. After a few moments of intense solicitude, they found themselves in the impenetrable gloom of the forest, and their captors still undisturbed. With vastly superior native powers to the Indian, and equally accustomed to forest life, Boone was in all respects their superior. With the instinct of the bee, he made a straight line towards the encampment they had left, with the locality of which the Indians were not acquainted. The peril which menaced them added wings to their flight. It was mid-winter, and though not very cold in that climate, fortunately for them, the December nights were long. Six precious hours would pass before the dawn of the morning would struggle through the tree-tops. Till then the bewildered Indians could obtain no clue whatever to the direction of their flight. Carefully guarding against leaving any traces of their footsteps behind them, and watching with an eagle eye lest they should encounter any other band of savages, they pressed forward hour after hour with sinews apparently as tireless as if they had been wrought of iron. When the fugitives reached their camp they found it plundered and deserted. Whether the red men had discovered it and carried off their companions as prisoners, or whether the white men in a panic had destroyed what they could not remove and had attempted a retreat to the settlements, was never known. It is probable that in some way they perished in the wildernes
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