“And just as hornets rush out from their hive, so rushed those Indians now on, spreading out, and entirely surrounding the three brave men, shrieking and brandishing their tomahawks.
“My grand-dad said he never understood what put it into Wild Eye’s head to sing out ‘Surrender!’ but he did, and at once there was peace and a parley. The two Britishers would have preferred fighting to the bitter end, and having it over; but as most of the attacking savages had laid down their weapons, they felt in duty bound to cease firing, and submit to the fortune of war—to the inevitable.
“Tom and my grand-dad were bound with withes and tied together. Wild Eye was tied to an Indian, then without further palaver the march westward was commenced.
“My grandfather forgot how long they were on that terrible journey into the fastnesses of the far west. It must have been, he thought, fully a fortnight.
“They were fatigued beyond measure, footsore, heartsick, and weary. If they had entertained any hopes at first of being treated as prisoners of war, and in due time exchanged, every day’s journey served to dispel the illusion.
“Poor Wild Eye fell sick, and was slain. His wig was hung at the girdle of one of his captors, his body left to swelter in the sun, till birds and beasts should eat his flesh and ants pick his bones.
“Grand-dad was sufficiently conversant with the language of this tribe to know what the doom was that he and Tom had to look forward to. They were being hurried away to the wigwam village of their captors, to be tortured at the hands of squaws. The chief of the party even condescended to enliven the last few miles of the journey, by telling his prisoners such tales of the torture, that, brave though they were, made the blood run cold along their spines.
“At last they reached the Indian village, which they entered just as the sun was setting among clouds all fringed with gold and crimson above the western hills.
“What a smiling, peaceful valley it seemed. The purple mist of distance hung like a gauzy veil over the mountain tops, a blue haze half hid the greenery of the woods, there were parks of verdure dotted over with flowering trees and bushes, in which bright-winged birds flitted or sang. Deer roamed quietly about, or stood drowsily chewing the cud, and up through the trees on the banks of a broad, placid river, rose the smoke from the village fires.
“The whole scene was almost home-like in its gentle beauty. Who could have believed that it had been and would be the scene of a torture so refined and terrible that one shudders even to think of it?”