BULLETS AND BAYONETS
By the wagoners who had managed to escape the fate which befell their companions Johnson had been warned of the proximity of the French war party, but he somehow formed a very wrong conception of its strength.
Instead of preparing to meet them with his full force his first plan was to send out two detachments of five hundred men each, one going toward Fort Lyman, and the other toward South Bay, with the object of catching the enemy in their retreat.
But Hendrick, the brave and sagacious chief of the Mohawks, expressed his dissent after the dramatic fashion of his race. Picking up a single stick he broke it easily with his hands. Then picking up several, he put them together and showed that they could not be broken thus.
Johnson was shrewd enough to take the hint, and directed that the two detachments be joined in one. Still the old savage shook his head.
"If they are to be killed," said he, "they are too many. If they are to fight, they are too few."
But the commander would make no further change, and the Indian not only ceased his objections, but mounted on a gun carriage and harangued his warriors, exhorting them to fight bravely for their friends, and to show no mercy to their enemies.
The morning was still young when the thousand men, under the command of Ephraim Williams and Colonel Whiting, marched off from the camp in quest of the French, their orders being to intercept their supposed retreat, and if possible find and destroy their canoes.
Seth Allen was with the vanguard, his pulse beating rapidly, and every nerve a-quiver, for he felt it in his bones that there would be plenty of fighting before the day ended.
"I hope the French will wait for us," he said to Elisha Halley, by whom he was walking. "Maybe if they get warning of our advance they will go back to their canoes and we have nothing to follow them with on the water."