“You would but hamper my movements,” he said, “and probably come to grief. I know every inch of the mountain, but you do not; you run less risk in keeping together; and if I can get round in time I may muster a band and come to your help. I wonder what has become of Philips?”
Alas! like many others, the brave young lieutenant had been cruelly murdered.
Moving in and out of the forest, dodging the Indians in every possible way, the little party at last reached the foot of the mountain, grey and bare, its summit rising to the clouds.
Suddenly, with a shout, Roger was seen scaling it. To follow him was the natural instinct of the savages. He let them for a time; then suddenly he turned round and fired down upon them. Several fell, but, nothing daunted, they responded. Gradually, as the ascent grew more and more precipitous, they dropped off, and the last they saw of Roger was standing on the edge of what they knew to be a fathomless precipice. They saw him throw himself forward and disappear from their sight. Half-way up the mountain they discovered his bearskin, which he must have thrown off, and they carried it back in triumph. Its owner was doubtless lying dashed to pieces in the abyss.
His companions had followed his advice, and most of them managed in the course of two or three days to reach Lake St. George, and from thence Fort Edward. The young lieutenants Pringle and Roche fared the worst. Separated from their party, they got hopelessly lost in the woods. In the brushwood, among the low branches of the trees, their clothes were soon reduced to rags. They had no food except a small portion of dried sausage and a little ginger. After two days’ and two nights’ wandering they had nothing to subsist upon but juniper berries and the inner bark of trees. They fell in with Roger’s own servant, William Smith, by whose help they made snowshoes of forked branches, twigs, and leather strings; for their feet were torn to pieces and half-frozen. The three struggled on together, wandering over nameless mountains, climbing over fallen trees, until on the sixth day they discovered that they had circled round to their starting-point! But at least now they knew their bearings, and they reached the bank of Lake St. George. Here suddenly a heavy snowstorm arose. They dared not stop; so, bending their heads to the storm, they fought their way forward into the valley of Ticonderoga, not eight miles distant from the French fort. In the struggle Pringle had lost his gun, and almost his life; they determined therefore to surrender. Night found them once more in the forest. Here, utterly exhausted, William Smith became delirious, laid down, and died. To keep their blood in motion, and fearful lest if they moved backwards or forwards they should once more lose themselves in the depths of the forest, the two officers walked all night round and round a tree! In the morning, half-dead, they made for the French fort. When they came in sight of it, they hoisted a white handkerchief. Instantly two or three French officers dashed forward and saved them from the Indians, who had almost laid hands upon them.
They were conducted to the fort as prisoners of war, and kindly treated and tended. Later on they were exchanged.
Note.—Pringle died in 1800, senior Major-General of the British army.
CHAPTER XVI
FRIENDSHIPS
“There’s a man asking for you, sir!” said a servant to Lord Howe, as he sat in the verandah of his friend Colonel Schuyler’s house in Albany.
It was a lovely day at the end of May. Winter had given place to a sudden burst of spring, or rather early summer. The woods were rich with green foliage; sunshine bathed the land, giving promise of a rich harvest of grains and fruit, which in this climate ripen almost as quickly as they spring forth from mother earth.