Such is her fright as she ensconces the children in the chief’s canoe, that she faints and falls backward, upsetting the boatload, which Peguis rescues like so many drowned ducklings, but Lajimoniere’s family hides in the Pagan tent while the storm breaks.
On the evening of June 19th, the boy on watch in the gate tower calls out, “the Half-breeds are coming.” Semple goes up to the watchtower with a spyglass. So do Heden, the blacksmith; and Wilkinson, the secretary; and White, the doctor; and Holte, the young lieutenant of the Swedish Marines; and John Pritchard, who has left the Nor’Westers and joined the colony; and Bourke, the storekeeper.
“Those certainly are Half-breeds,” says Pritchard, pointing to a line of seventy or a hundred horsemen coming from the west across the swamps of Frog Plain beyond Fort Douglas toward the colony.
“Let twenty men instantly follow me,” commands Semple. “We’ll go out and see what those people want.”
Bayonets, pistols, swords are picked up in confusion, and out sallies a little band of twenty-seven men on foot.
The Half-breeds are not approaching Fort Douglas. They are advancing toward the colony. Half a mile out, Semple meets the colonists rushing for the fort in a wild panic. Alex McBeth, a colonist who had been a soldier, calls out, “Keep your back to the river, Governor! They are painted! Don’t let them surround you.”
“There is no occasion for alarm! I am only going to speak to them,” answers Semple, marching on, knee-deep through the hay fields. All the same, he sends a boy back with word for Bourke, the storekeeper, and McLean, the farmer, to hitch horses and drag out the cannon. As the Half-breeds approach Semple sees for himself they are daubed in war paint and galloping forward in a semi-circle. Young Holte of the Marines becomes so flustered that he lets his gun off by mistake, which gives the Governor a start.
“Mind yourself,” Semple orders. “I want no firing at all.”
“My God, Governor! We are all lost men,” mutters Heden, the blacksmith; and Kilkenny, a fighting Irishman, begs, “Give me leave, Governor! Let me shoot; or we shall all be shot. There’s Grant, the leader. Let me pick off Grant!”