“How! how!” chanted the warriors, while Osceola bent down and grasped Bill’s hand.
“Now,” he continued, his thrilling tones chaining the eyes of his audience to him, “what are we going to do? Are we going to sit quietly on our islands, and let these devils incarnate continue to enslave our brothers and other defenseless people? Have we become women now that the number of our braves is small? Have we forgotten the deeds of our heroes in the past? Are we content to stand aside, content to let this scum from the big cities offer insult day by day to our once proud nation? Answer me—are we men—or something more pitiful than the weakest of women?”
“We are men!!” shouted the braves, a hundred hands beating the air while their voices rang resonantly in the stillness. “Lead us, Great Chief. We will follow!”
“Good. Go to your homes now. Come back here on the third day from this. Let every man come armed for battle and let him come with food that will last for a week. Go now my brothers, warriors of the Great Seminole Nation—I have spoken.”
Without a word, the men got to their feet, collected their wives and children, and launched their dugout canoes.
“Now let’s hear your plan of campaign,” suggested Bill, as he and Osceola stood watching the departing flotilla. “That was some speech you made just now, even though you did lay it on a bit thick about me. I’m keen to know exactly what you intend to do, now that you’ve got your little army in back of you.”
[CHAPTER XVI—THE ADVANCE]
“I told those chaps of mine not to come back here until the third day,” said Osceola, “because they will need a couple of days at least to prepare for an expedition of the kind I have in mind.”
“I shouldn’t think it ought to take them that long—what have they got to do?”
“Oh, paint themselves for battle, for one thing. Have a war dance or two, and a lot of the same. You must remember that my people are only semi-civilized. The only way that anyone can control them is to let them go their own way, when it comes to tribal customs, that do no one any harm. Buck that sort of thing—and you are out of luck—good and plenty!”