Even with this aid the prospects of the little garrison were dark enough. Every wind seemed to blow them ill news.
One afternoon the guard at the fort heard a weird chant and saw issuing from the distant forest a file of warriors whose naked bodies were smeared with black paint. Every one of them carried a pole over his shoulder, and the horrified watchers knew well enough that from the end of each pole fluttered the scalp of some Englishman. They learned from the Canadians that night that Fort Sandusky had been burned and its garrison murdered.
A little later the Indians offered to exchange some prisoners with the English. The victims thus released by the Indians proved to be from Fort St. Joseph. They told how that fort had been treacherously taken and burned, and all the inmates but themselves slain.
A traveling priest brought word that the plot which had failed at Detroit had succeeded only too well at Michillimackinac. Next came tidings of the massacres at Fort Ouatanon on the Wabash River and at Fort Miamis, on the Maumee.
Nor was the tale of fire and blood yet ended. A fugitive from the camp of Pontiac reached Detroit one afternoon. It proved to be Ensign Christie, the commanding officer at Presqu' Isle, near the eastern end of Lake Erie. His story was a thrilling one. He told how his little garrison of twenty-seven men had fortified themselves in their block house and made a fierce struggle to keep back the Indians and save their stronghold from the flames; how at last the Indians had undermined their fort and threatened to apply the torch above and below at once. Then to escape death by fire the little band had listened to the promises of the Indians and yielded themselves prisoners.
If these reports terrified the English at Detroit, they also strengthened their determination not to surrender. In spite of fatigue, hunger, and discouragement they fought stoutly on, until, at length, there came a turn in the tide of ill fortune that had surged against them.
On the nineteenth of June news reached them that the schooner which had been sent to meet the provisions had returned and was entering the Detroit River. This cheered all, for they knew that the boat had been to Niagara for more supplies and more men. Still, they remembered the fate of the provision boats, and were worried lest mischance should befall the schooner.
Their anxiety increased when they saw the Indians going in large companies down the river and heard from the Canadians that they were planning to attack the schooner. The British at the fort fired two cannon shots to let their countrymen know that they still held Detroit. But several days passed before they heard anything of the boat. At last they saw her sailing safely toward them.
There were waving caps, shouts of joy, and prayers of thanksgiving among the little company of half-starved men who thronged at the gate to welcome the newcomers.
They had heard that eight hundred more Ojibwa Indians were on their way to increase the forces of Pontiac. But what were eight hundred Ojibwas to sixty hardy sons of England and a schooner loaded with supplies and cannon!