he anger of the savages; but at the last moment a heavy shower of rain
burst over the roofless council house where they had gathered to torture
their captive, put out the fire, and drove them to a sheltered part of
the lodge, where they consoled themselves as best they could by beating
him till midnight, and promising him that he should be burned the next
day. He was then carried to the blockhouse and left bound with two
guards, who entertained themselves, but did not amuse Slover, by talking
over his probable behavior under the torture that awaited him. They fell
asleep, worn out, about daybreak, when Slover made a desperate effort to
free himself, and to his own astonishment, succeeded. He stepped across
his snoring guards out into the open air. No one was astir in the
village, and he ran to hide himself in a cornfield, where he nearly fell
over a sleeping squaw and her papooses. On the other side of the field
he found some horses, and making a halter of the buffalo thong that had
bound him, and that still hung upon his arm, he leaped upon one of them
and dashed through the woods. By ten o'clock in the forenoon he had
reached the Scioto fifty miles away.

He allowed his horse to breathe here; then he remounted, crossed the
river, and galloped half as far again. At three o'clock his horse gave
out, and Slover left him and ran forward afoot, spurred on by the yells
of the pursuers close behind him. The moon came up, and knowing that his
trail could be easily followed by her light, he ran till daybreak. The
next night he reached the Muskingum, naked, torn by briers, and covered
with the mosquitoes which swarmed upon his bleeding body. A few wild
raspberries enabled him to break his fast for the first time, but the
next day he feasted upon two crawfish. When he came to the Ohio, just
across from Wheeling, and called to a man whom he saw on the island
there, to bring his canoe and take him over, it is not strange that the
man should have hesitated at the sight of the figure on the Ohio shore.
Not till Slover had given him the names of many men in Crawford's army,
as well as his own name, did the man come to his rescue and ferry him
over to the fort, where he was safe at last.

XI. THE INDIAN WARS AND ST. CLAIR'S DEFEAT.

The Indians and the renegades at Sandusky would not believe their
prisoners when Crawford's men told them that Cornwallis and his army had
surrendered to Washington; but the Revolutionary War had no