Two hours had elapsed—the General and superior officers had retired—and the Indians, few by few, had repaired to their several encampments, except a party of young warriors, who, wrapped in their blankets and mantles, lay indolently extended on the grass, smoking their pipes, or producing wild sounds from their melancholy flutes. Not far from these, sat, with their legs overhanging the edge of the steep bank, a group of the junior officers of the garrison, who, with that indifference which characterized their years, were occupied in casting pebbles into the river, and watching the bubbles that arose to the surface. Among the number was Henry Grantham, and, at a short distance from him, sat the old but athletic negro, Sambo, who, not having been required to accompany Gerald, to whom he was especially attached, had continued to linger on the bank long after his anxious eye had lost sight of the boat in which the latter had departed. While thus engaged, a new direction was given to the interest of all parties by a peculiar cry, which reached them from a distance over the water, apparently from beyond the near extremity of the island of Bois Blanc. To the officers the sound was unintelligible, for it was the first of the kind they had ever heard; but the young Indians appeared fully to understand its import. Starting from their lethargy, they sprang abruptly to their feet; and giving a sharp, answering yell, stamped upon the green turf, and snuffed the hot air with distended nostrils, like so many wild horses let loose upon the desert. Nor was the excitement confined to these, for, all along the line of encampment the same wild notes were echoed, and forms came bounding again to the front, until the bank was once more peopled with savages.
"What was the meaning of that cry, Sambo, and whence came it?" asked Henry Grantham, who, as well as his companions, had strained his eyes in every direction, but in vain, to discover its cause.
"Dat a calp cry, Massa Henry—see he dere a canoe not bigger than a hick'ry nut," and he pointed with his finger to what in fact had the appearance of being little larger; "I wish," he pursued, with bitterness, "dey bring him calp of dem billains Desborough—Dam him lying tief."
"Bravo!" exclaimed De Courcy, who, in common with his companions, recollecting Gerald's story of the preceding day, was at no loss to understand why the latter epithet had been so emphatically bestowed; "I see (winking to Henry Grantham) you have not forgiven his paddling round the gun-boat the other night, while you and the rest of the crew were asleep, eh, Sambo?"
"So help me hebben, Obbicer, he no sail around a gun-boat, he dam a Yankee. He come along a lake like a dam tief in e night and I tell a Massa Geral—and Massa Geral and me chase him all ober e water—I not asleep. Massa Courcy," pursued the old man, with pique; "I nebber sleep—Massa Geral nebber sleep."
"The devil ye don't," observed De Courcy, quaintly; "then the Lord deliver me from gun-boat service, I say."
"Amen!" responded Villiers.
"Why," asked Middlemore, "do Gerald Grantham and old Frumpy here remind one of a certain Irish festival? Do you give it up? Because they are awake——"
The abuse heaped on the pre-eminently vile attempt was unmeasured—Sambo conceived it a personal affront to himself, and he said, with an air of mortification and wounded dignity, not unmixed with anger:
"Sambo poor black nigger—obbicer berry white man, but him heart all ob a color. He no Frumpy—Massa Geral no like an Irish bestibal. I wonder he no tick up for a broder, Massa Henry." His agitation here was extreme.