“Are you sure?” whispered my father. “George, are you there?”
I replied in a whisper too, and crept to his side.
“Look. Can you make out anything?” he said.
I looked long and intently, and was obliged to answer—
“No.”
“Quick! Try and find that boy,” said my father, angrily now. “He ought to have been here.”
Bang! bang! Then report after report, followed by a volley quite from the other side of the enclosure; and, horrible as it seemed, followed as it was by a burst of yells, I felt my heart leap with satisfaction.
There was a rush being made for the spot whence the firing had come; but my father’s voice rang out, calling upon the men to stand fast, and it was well that his order was promptly obeyed, for almost immediately after there was a whizzing sound that I well knew, accompanied by a sharp series of pats as of arrows striking wood, and we knew that the Indians were attacking on our side too.
Then followed the quick firm command, and the darkness was cut by the flashes of a dozen fire-locks, whose reports went rolling away, to be echoed by the great trees of the forest beyond the clearings.
Then nothing was heard but the quick beating and hissing of the iron ramrods in the guns, while I stood close under the shelter of the fence, listening intently in the terrible silence, and trying to make out whether the Indians were near.