"Nov. 30th, 1755. Quite a time has elapsed since writing. The glorious hopes of our army were shattered in a day by a few hundred savages. I was wounded and left on the field for dead. When I came to myself I saw an Indian face bending o'er me. It was Musqueta, a sub-chief under Shingas, and seeing me able to move and alive he promptly took me prisoner, and with a few others I was taken to the chief's headquarters, the Indian town of Kittanning. They told me the whole army was slain. Incredible fact! I was not able to write on account of my bonds. I learned their language and they had some idea of adopting me into their tribe. Indeed, Musqueta had lost a son, and no doubt it was on account of that that he spared me at the defeat, hoping to adopt me into the tribe as his own son. The thing was detestable to me, and I refused all offers of the kind. Then I was forced to run the gauntlet, but it was my salvation, for, seizing a club and leaping through the weakest part of their grinning line, I escaped by my running powers. The swiftest foot of old Cornwall can outstrip the savage."
"He must have been a swift runner," interjected Hugh.
"He was that, but we must see what happened after his escape. All this I knew before by my conversation with the Shawnese under Tecumseh when I was an Indian agent, but nothing more," said the Major, and turning to the diary he again resumed.
"There was a shout and such a yelling when I escaped that it almost unnerved me, but I distanced my pursuers, and utterly left them in the course of a mile or so. My escape was toward the north along the banks of the river, but I had not gone more than a few miles before I encountered a small detachment of French troops. There was no getting by them at first, but at length I succeeded, after having first slain the French captain, their commander, which, since I could not avoid it, I trust God will forgive me. I accidentally met him in the wood, slew him, and since I could better make my escape in a French uniform, the whole region being French, I exchanged clothes. A commission was in his pocket, in which commission I inserted my own name for greater security."
The old Major paused and wiped the tears of joy from his eyes and murmured, "Thank God for that. Ande, my son, our family name may now stand forth as honourable and upright as any in the British Isles. He was no traitor. Here is the proof. We will depart for England and lay this diary before the authorities and get the signatures of Hugh, here, and the other settlers in testimony." The diary was forgotten for a moment, but the pilot was intensely interested in what followed.
"Read on, Tom, and let's see what happened, and how he got to this region," said he.
Major Trembath resumed reading.
"I arrived the same day at the mouth of a small stream coming from the east, where I found a canoe."
"Must have been the mouth of the Lycamahoning," said the pilot.