The women were busily employed scraping lint, preparing bandages and ointments, the virtues of which they had learned from the Indians, or by long experience had found to be efficacious in the case of gun-shot wounds. It was a season of anxious foreboding: none cared to converse, and they plied their labors for the most part in silence. The only exceptions were to be found among the boys, who, confident in the prowess of their fathers and brothers, elated with the idea that they were holding the fort and intrusted with guard-duty, seemed raised far above all perception of danger or possibility of mishaps, and were in a state of most pleasurable excitement.
It increased the sadness of their parents to see them thus, and often the tears sprang to the mother's eyes as she thought of the terrible fate that awaited them, should those who had gone out to engage in such an unequal conflict be overcome.
Under the influence of these depressing anxieties, all that they could do being done, Mrs. Honeywood proposed that they should go into the schoolhouse, and spend a season in prayer.
Upon this Israel Blanchard said to Mr. Seth, who looked pale and anxious,—
"Brother, you had better go with the women."
"You mean, Israel, that I am good for nothing else."
"I did not say that; for, if He who made you has denied courage, he has given you grace. You're a better man than I am, Seth,—better fitted either to live or die. Go with them; for we need divine aid now, if we ever did since we broke ground here."
The settlers had now reached their positions, where they were concealed not merely by trees and underbrush, but by large quantities of drift-wood brought down by the floods, and left on the banks by the falling of the water. Having set their watch, the rest lay down and slept as coolly as though their own lives and the lives of those they held most dear were not at stake.
"Ned," said Holdness to Honeywood, "they pay us a fine compliment, coming a hundred and ten against twenty, for these Delawares know about what our number is."