Only a few seconds passed, when the Indians approached and began hunting for him. How they failed to discover the young man passes comprehension, and it was only another of the several wonderful escapes which marked the massacre of Wyoming.
The savages peered here and there, drawing the bushes aside, and looking among the old logs. The poor fellow heard their stealthy footsteps all around him, and caught glimpses of their coppery faces, smeared with paint, as they uttered some exclamation and almost stepped upon him in his concealment.
Once he was sure he was detected, and he held his breath, fearful that the throbbing of his heart would betray him; but the red men moved away, and shortly after returned to Queen Esther's Rock to help in the executions going on there.
Hammond stayed where he was until all was still, when he crept cautiously out, and, swimming the river, made his way to the fort at Wilkesbarre, where, to his amazement, he found his companion in flight.
The escape of this patriot was no less extraordinary than that of Hammond.
He had also swum the river to the bar on the lower point of Monocacy Island, going almost the entire distance under water. Whenever he threw up his head for a breath of fresh air he was fired upon, and he received a bad wound in the shoulder.
Although suffering severely from it, he persevered and soon reached the opposite side, where he found a horse wandering loose and without bridle or saddle.
With little effort Elliott succeeded in catching him, and with a bridle improvised from the bark of a hickory sapling, he rode the animal to Wilkesbarre, where the wound was dressed by a surgeon.
The next morning he went down the river with his wife and child in a canoe managed by a boy, and joined his friends at Catawissa.
Both Hammond and Elliott lived many years afterward, and are still remembered by some of the old settlers in Wyoming Valley.