“Surely, captain, your eyesight is failing you, for according to my estimate of the enemy’s force, you have exaggerated their number in the ratio of about ten to one.”
“Your eyes deceive you, Mr. Earnshaw,” returned the stern old warrior; “long experience in just such matters has enabled me to tell the number of the enemy, or a body of men, at sight.”
“Excitement sometimes, captain, multiplies the amount of danger in the mind’s eye, as I think it has in your case; for, come down to the fact of the matter, I don’t believe that it is a war-party at all.”
“Man! man!” exclaimed Storms, “do not let the thoughts of a battle—of danger, destroy thy throne of reason. Better go down into the block-house.”
Father Earnshaw could not help laughing at the old captain’s wild excitement.
“Look there, captain!” he finally exclaimed; “as I live Old Tumult and Town. Farnesworth and Clara Bryant are at the head of your war-party of three hundred.”
The captain looked long and closely at the approaching party, rubbed his eyes, chafed his bald crown—glanced at Earnshaw, then at the party again, moved uneasily, and at last, burst into a roar of laughter, which, of itself, was sufficient to show his perplexity and embarrassment.
“I thought, Mr. Earnshaw—”
But Mr. Earnshaw was gone. He had slipped away from the captain, who was a little hard of hearing as well as defective in seeing, and descending from the block-house, he approached the men and told them of the captain’s scare, and the real nature of the approaching party of savages.
The gate of the stockade was at once thrown open, and Old Tumult, Town. and Clara, and the Indian escort of about a score in number, admitted amid ringing shouts of joy and welcome.