"Pardon me, Captain, the French are loyal to you and to the flag yonder. They have sworn it. Time will prove it. But in the present desperate dilemma we must choose the safer horn."
Saying this Father Beret turned about and went his way. He was chuckling heartily as he passed out of the gate.
"He is right," said Beverley after a few moments of reflection, during which he was wholly occupied with Alice, whose terrified face in his anticipation appealed to him from the midst of howling savages, smoking cabins and mangled victims of lust and massacre. His imagination painted the scene with a merciless realism that chilled his blood. All the sweet romance fell away from Vincennes.
"Well, sir, right or wrong, your, duty is to obey orders," said Helm with brutal severity.
"We had better not quarrel, Captain," Beverley replied. "I have not signified any unwillingness to obey your commands. Give them, and you will have no cause to grumble."
"Forgive me, old fellow," cried the impulsive commander. "I know you are true as steel. I s'pose I'm wound up too tight to be polite. But the time is come to do something. Here we are with but five or six men—"
He was interrupted by the arrival of two more half-breed scouts.
Only three miles away was a large flotilla of boats and canoes with cannon, a force of Indians on land and the British flag flying,—that was the report.
"They are moving rapidly," said the spokesman, "and will be here very soon. They are at least six hundred strong, all well armed."
"Push that gun to the gate, and load it to the muzzle, Lieutenant Beverley," Helm ordered with admirable firmness, the purple flush in his face giving way to a grayish pallor. "We are going to die right here, or have the honors of war."