There was a tremendous explosion. Yells and screams rent the air, and in an instant a dark line of water, twenty feet wide, stretched across the mouth of the cove.
In this were pieces of floating ice and numbers of Indians struggling and yelling. Some made only a faint struggle before they sank, while others struck out for the side furthest from the island.
The main body of the Indians, appalled by the explosion, checked themselves in their course and at once took to flight; some, unable to check their impetus, fell into the water upon the wounded wretches who were struggling there. Those who had crossed stood irresolute, and then, turning, leaped into the water. As they struggled to get out on the opposite side the defenders maintained a deadly fire upon them, but, in two or three minutes, the last survivor had scrambled out, and all were in full flight toward the shore.
"I think we've seen the last of the attacks," Peter said, as they came down from their breastwork and joined Harold in the cove. "That was a first-rate notion of yours, lad. Ef it hadn't been for that we should have been rubbed out, sure enough; another minute and we'd have gone down. They were in arnest and no mistake; they'd got steam up and was determined to finish with us at once, whatever it cost 'em."
The instant the attack had ceased Cameron had hastened to the hut where the girls were lying, to assure them that all danger was over and that the Indians were entirely defeated. In an hour a fresh skim of ice had formed across the streak of water, but, as through its clear surface many of the bodies of the Indians could be seen, the men threw snow over it, to spare the girls the unpleasantness of such a sight every time they went out from the cove. The bodies of all the Indians who had fallen near the island were also covered with snow. Those nearer the shore were carried off by the Iroquois in their retreat.
"I suppose, Peter," Harold said as they sat round the fire that evening, "you have been in quite as awkward scrapes as this before and have got out all right?"
"Why, this business aint nothing to that affair we had by Lake Champlain. That were as bad a business, when we was surrounded in that log hut, as ever I went through—and I've been through a good many. Pearson and me nigh got our har raised more nor once in that business of Pontiac's. He were a great chief and managed to get up the biggest confederation agin us that's ever been known. It were well for us that that business didn't begin a few years earlier when we was fighting the French; but you see, so long as we and they was at war the Indians hoped as we might pretty well exterminate each other, and then they intended to come in and finish off whoever got the best of it. Waal, the English they drove the French back and finally a treaty was made in Europe by which the French agreed to clear out.
"It was jest about this time as Pontiac worked upon the tribes to lay aside their own quarrels and jine the French in fighting agin us. He got the Senecas, and the Delawares, and the Shawnees, the Wyandots, and a lot of other tribes from the lakes and the hull country between the Niagara River and the Mississippi.
"Jack Pearson and me, we happened to be with the Miamis when the bloody belt which Pontiac were sending round as a signal for war arrived at the fort there. Jack and me knew the redskins pretty well, and saw by their manner as something unusual had happened. I went to the commandant of the fort and told him as much. He didn't think much of my news. The soldier chaps always despises the redskins till they see 'em come yelling along with their tomahawks, and then as often as not it's jest the other way. Howsumdever, he agreed at last to pay any amount of trade goods I might promise to the Miamis if the news turned out worth finding out. I discovered that a great palaver was to be held that evening at the chief's village, which was a mile away from the fort.
"I'd seen a good deal of the Miamis and had fought with 'em against the Shawnees, so I could do as much with 'em as most. Off Pearson and I goes to the chief; and I says to him, 'Look ye here, chief, I've good reasons to believe you've got a message from Pontiac and that it means trouble. Now don't you go and let yourself be led away by him. I've heard rumors that he's getting up a great confederation agin the English. But I tell you, chief, if all the redskins on this continent was to jine together, they couldn't do nothing agin the English. I don't say as you mightn't wipe out a number of little border forts, for no doubt you might; but what would come of it? England would send out as many men as there are leaves in the forest, who would scorch up the redskin nations as a fire on the prairie scorches up the grass. I tell yer, chief, no good can come on it. Don't build yer hopes on the French; they've acknowledged that they're beaten and are all going out of the country. It'd be best for you and your people to stick to the English. They can reward their friends handsomely, and ef you jine with Pontiac, sooner or later trouble and ruin will come upon you. Now I can promise you, in the name of the officer of the fort, a good English rifle for yerself and fifty guns for your braves and ten bales of blankets ef yer'll make a clean breast of it, and first tell us what deviltry Pontiac is up to and next jine us freely—or anyway hold aloof altogether from this conspiracy till yer see how things is going.'