On the 4th of February the little galley slid out with Rogers and his men.
"Now who will go with me?" inquired Clark, turning to his comrades. "It will be a desperate service. I must call for volunteers."
Stirred by the daring of the deed, one hundred and thirty young men swore to follow him to the death. All the remaining inhabitants were detailed to garrison Kaskaskia and Cahokia. The fickle weather-vanes of old Kaskaskia veered and whirled, the winds blew hot and cold, then came fair weather for the starting.
It was February 5, 1779, when George Rogers Clark set out with his one hundred and thirty men to cross the Illinois. Vigo pointed out the fur-trader's trail to Vincennes and Detroit. Father Gibault blessed them as they marched away. The Creole girls put flags in the hands of their sweethearts, and begged them to stand by "le Colonel."
"O Mother of God, sweet Virgin, preserve my beloved," prayed the Donna de Leyba in the Government House at St. Louis.
Over all the prairies the snows were melting, the rains were falling, the rivers were flooding.
Hamilton sat at Vincennes planning his murders.
"Next year," he exulted, "there will be the greatest number of savages on the frontier that has ever been known. The Six Nations have received war belts from all their allies."
But Clark and his men were coming in the rain. Eleven days after leaving Kaskaskia they heard the morning guns of the fort. Deep and deeper grew the creeks and sloughs as they neared the drowned lands of the Wabash. Still they waded on, through water three feet deep; sometimes they were swimming. Between the two Wabashes the water spread, a solid sheet five miles from shore to shore. The men looked out, amazed, as on a rolling sea. But Clark, ever ahead, cheering his men, grasped a handful of gunpowder, and with a whoop, the well-known peal of border war, blackened his face and dashed into the water. The men's hearts leaped to meet his daring, and with "death or victory" humming in their brains, they plunged in after.
On and on they staggered, buffeting the icy water, stumbling in the wake of their undaunted leader. Seated on the shoulders of a tall Shenandoah sergeant, little Isham Floyd, the fourteen-year-old drummer boy, beat a charge. Deep and deeper grew the tide; waist deep, breast high, over their shoulders it played; and above, the leaden sky looked down upon this unparalleled feat of human endeavour. Never had the world seen such a march.