"I shall go with you," I said, speaking on impulse, and hardly realizing the meaning of the words.
"You'll do nothing of the kind. Your duty is here, and mine there."
CHAPTER III.
THE VENTURE.
I could not believe Simon Kenton would dare to make the venture of which he had spoken, for of a verity it seemed no less than the killing of one's self.
We knew beyond a peradventure that the Indians secreted in the thicket round about us were keeping sharp watch over the cabin, on the alert for a movement of such a kind, and there was not a single chance in a hundred that one of us could even show his head out of either window or door without being shot down.
That being the case, and there seemed no doubt about it, how might one venture forth so far as where the poor captives were lashed to the trees looking forward with almost certainty to all the terrible tortures which these brutes could devise?
Thinking over the matter after Simon Kenton had declared his purpose, I said to myself that he had spoken out of the fulness of his heart, and not with a belief that he might carry his proposition into execution. I argued, mentally, that his desire to aid the unfortunate creatures had caused him to believe the impossible might be accomplished; but after he should have time to consider the matter thoroughly, he would realize that he could effect nothing more than his own death.