All hearts were beating high with hope and thankfulness when a piercing cry came from Mrs. Ashbridge.
"Where is Mabel? What has become of Mabel? Oh, where is she?"
Dismay reigned during the minute or two of frenzied search of the interior of the craft. The space was so small that the hunt was quickly over, with the dreadful truth established that little ten-year old Mabel Ashbridge was not on the flatboat.
Missionary Finley announced the fact when he said:
"She has fallen into the hands of the Shawanoes; that was the cause of Simon Kenton leaping ashore."
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE SHAWANOE CAMP.
How it all happened was never clearly established, but it is not to be supposed that in the tumult, the swirl, the confusion, the firing, shouting and dashing to and fro, that the coolest-headed Shawanoe or most self-possessed ranger could any more than keep a general idea of the hurricane rush of events. Special incidents were noted by different persons, as the circumstances favored them, while others saw and knew nothing of what took place under their very eyes.
Mr. and Mrs. Ashbridge hurried down the wooded slope in the gloom, each holding a hand of Mabel between them. At the side of the flatboat, where there were crowding in increased excitement, the parents released the child, and the father turned to help in the defence against the Indians, who immediately attacked them. Mabel entered the boat near the bow, and had crouched there several minutes, in obedience to the order of the missionary, to avoid the bullets that were whistling about, when the idea seized her that there were much better quarters at the stern, where the pushing was less.