[L] Three.
[M] Four—six.
[N] The great hawk is at home!
CHAPTER XIII
Stuart seemed utterly vanquished—his spirit gone. In silence he was conducted back to his quarters in Demeré's house at Fort Loudon. And as there he sat in the spare, clean room, in the single chair it contained, with one elbow on the queer, rough little table, constructed according to a primitive scheme by the post carpenter, he stared forward blankly at the inevitable prospect so close before him. He had not now the solace of solitude in which he might have rallied his faculties. On the buffalo rug on the floor Atta-Kulla-Kulla reclined and smoked his long-stemmed pipe and watched him with impenetrable eyes. Once he spoke to him of the preparations making without, selecting the men for the gunners of the expedition. Stuart lifted his head abruptly.
"I will not go!" he cried in sudden passion. "So help me, God! I will die first!—a thousand deaths. So help me, God!" He lifted his clinched right hand in attestation and shook it wildly in the air.
"He stared forward blankly at the inevitable prospect."