The gathering place was at Albany, and here in the month of July were assembled several thousand provincials ready for the fray. Hither also came a swarm of Johnson's Mohawks, warriors, squaws, and children. They made things very lively. They adorned the General's face with war-paint, and he joined them in the war dance, and then with his sword cut the first slice from the ox that had been roasted whole for their entertainment.
"I shall be glad," remarked a New England surgeon surveying the somewhat riotous goings-on with a touch of complacent contempt, "if they fight as eagerly as they ate their ox, and drank their wine."
Among the spectators of these rude festivities stood a youth whose otherwise pleasing countenance was so clouded that one seeing it could hardly fail to wonder what troubled him thus deeply.
Although still in his teens he had reached the stature of a man, and his well-knit figure gave evidence of no common share of strength and activity. He was dressed in a suit of tanned buckskin that became him particularly well, and with his double-barrelled smoothbore, carved powder-horn, keen-edged tomahawk, and long-bladed hunting knife was fully equipped to meet the foe.
The son of a pioneer settler upon the northern border of Massachusetts, Seth Allen had already drunk to its depths the cup of sorrow, for at one fell swoop the dusky allies of the French had rendered him a homeless orphan. With his own eyes he had beheld his parents tomahawked and scalped, the farmhouse burned, and the stock slaughtered while he had been carried off for torture in the Indian camp.
Escaping by a happy chance he made his way back to New England, and at once volunteered for active service against the French. Henceforward he had but one purpose in life—to serve his country in the field, and in view of what he had suffered it is easy to understand with what impatience he awaited the advance of the English against Crown Point, and how he chafed at the delay which seemed to him inexcusable.
Now above all things this expedition needed to act promptly, and yet preparations went on with exasperating slowness. The troops and supplies were contributed by five different legislatures, and they each wanted their own way about something. Indeed at one time there was a regular deadlock because they could not agree as to their respective quotas of artillery and stores.
"The expedition goes on very much as a snail runs," grumbled Surgeon Williams. "It seems we may possibly see Crown Point this time twelve months."
Seth Allen, burning with eagerness to forget in the excitement of action the horrors which haunted his memory, could not understand why there should be all this useless dawdling, and one day ventured to address a group of men whom he knew to be among the leaders.
"Can you tell me, good sirs," he said, doffing his cap respectfully, "how much longer we are to be here doing nothing?"