Captain Rose made no answer, but turned partially around. His eyes were closed; his jaw fell, and Fernando saw he was sinking. He caught him in his arms; but Captain Rose was dead before he touched the ice.
There was no time to waste with dead friends, and Fernando fled to the wood beyond.
For a long time, the Indians were close at his heels. Once they were so near that he heard a tomahawk as it came fluttering through the air past his head. Then the sounds of pursuit grew less, and at last he found himself alone on a hill. Three Indians were following on his trail, and he concealed himself behind a tree until they were within range of his rifle, and then fired.
One of them fell, and his companions ran away.
Fernando continued his flight until nearly night, when he fell in with four Kentuckians, who had escaped the massacre, and they proceeded to the Maumee Rapids, where General Harrison was building Fort Meigs.
Fernando was in the fort when it was besieged several weeks later by Proctor and Tecumseh with fully two thousand men. General Clay coming to his assistance on the 5th of May, Proctor retreated.
Colonel Dudley made a sortie from Fort Meigs on the same day and was drawn into an ambuscade. He was mortally wounded and lost six hundred and fifty men.
Mr. Madison, who had been re-elected president of the United States, showed a disposition to prosecute the war with great vigor. While the success of the Americans on land was not very encouraging, to the surprise of everybody, their greatest achievements were on water. England's boasted navies seemed to have become second to the American war-vessels. On Lake Erie, Commodore Oliver Perry, in command of an inferior fleet, had won a signal victory over Commodore Barclay after a long and hotly contested battle. There has never been such a remarkable naval victory on fresh water. Perry's famous dispatch to General Harrison, "We have met the enemy and they are ours," has become a proverb.
Shortly after the repulse of Proctor, Fernando, who had taken a place in another company, was sent to Fort Stephenson, then commanded by Major George Croghan, a regular army officer only twenty-one years of age. Proctor's dusky allies marched across the country to assist the British in the siege of the fort; and when, on the afternoon of the 31st, the British transports and gunboats appeared at a turn in the river a mile from the fort, the woods were swarming with Indians.
[Illustration: JAMES MADISON.]