“Did they make much of a fight?” asked Jack.
“They were plucky enough for a while. Our party had a few nasty wounds. They had some advantage in throwing their spears, as they were close, and we could not see them as well as they saw us. Poor old Bob! the spear that killed him was a long slender one. It went nearly through him. They took to the lake at last.”
“And have they never inhabited these miamis since?” asked Maud.
“Never, from that day to this. Blacks are very superstitious. They believe in all kinds of demons and spirits. You ask Wildduck when she comes up.”
They walked over the “dark and bloody ground” when the repast was over. There were the ruined wigwams just as their occupants had fled from them at the first volley of their white foes, nearly a generation since. Marks of haste were apparent. The wooden buckets used for water, and scooped from the bole of a tree, a boomerang or two, a broken spear, mouldered away together.
“The situation,” said Jack, “is not without a tinge of romance. This isn’t particularly like Highland scenery; and blacks always return and carry off their dead, if possible; otherwise Sir Walter’s lines might stand fairly descriptive—
“‘A dreary glen—
Where scattered lay the bones of men,
In some forgotten battle slain,
And bleached by drifting wind and rain.’”