standing over me.

But that brief respite from the strain had revived me; a bucket of cold
water stood near the fire, and I thrust my burning face into it,
drinking my fill, while the renegade in scarlet bawled at me and fumed
and cursed, demanding my attention to what he was saying.

"You damned impudent rebel!" he yelled; "am I to stand around here
awaiting your pleasure while you swill your skin full?"

I wiped my lips with my torn hands, and got to my feet painfully, a
trifle dizzy for a moment, but perfectly able to stand and to
comprehend.

"I'm asking you," he snarled, "why we can't send a flag to your people
without their firing on it?"

"I don't know what you mean," I said.

"I do," said Sir George, blandly.

"Oh, you do, eh?" growled the renegade, turning on him with a scowl.
"Then tell me why our flag of truce is not respected, if you can."

"Nobody respects a flag from outlaws," said Sir George, coolly.

The fellow's face hardened and his eyes blazed. He started to speak,
then shut his mouth with a snap, turned on his heel, and strode across
the treeless glade to where his noisy riders were saddling up,
tightening girths, buckling straps, and examining the unshod feet of
their horses or smoothing out the burrs from mane and tail. The red sun
glittered on their spurs, rifles, and the flat buckles of their
cross-belts. Their uniform was scarlet and green, but some wore beaded
shirts of scarlet holland, belted in with Mohawk wampum, and some were
partly clothed like Cayuga Indians and painted with Seneca
war-symbols--a grewsome sight.

There were savages moving about the fire--or I took them for savages,
until one half-naked lout, lounging near, taunted me with a Scotch burr
in his throat, and I saw, in his horribly painted face, a pair of
flashing eyes fixed on me. And the eyes were blue.

There was something in that ghastly masquerade so horrible, so
unspeakably revolting, that a shiver of pure fear touched me in every
nerve. Except for the voice and the eyes, he looked the counterpart of
the Senecas moving about near us; his skin, bare to the waist, was
stained a reddish copper hue; his black hair was shaved except for the
knot; war-paint smeared visage and chest, and two crimson quills rose
from behind his left ear, tied to the scalp-lock.

"Let him alone; don't answer him; he's worse than the Indians,"
whispered Sir George.

Among the savages I saw two others with light eyes, and a third I