from the skies, as it were? Did he know, himself? Night fell as though
a blanket had been spread over the tree-tops, and above the dreary
splashing men could be heard calling to one another in the darkness. Nor
was there any supper ahead. For our food was gone, and no game was to be
shot over this watery waste. A cold like that of eternal space settled
in our bones. Even Terence McCann grumbled.

"Begob," said he, "'tis fine weather for fishes, and the birrds are that
comfortable in the threes. 'Tis no place for a baste at all, at all."

Sometime in the night there was a cry. Ray had found the water falling
from an oozy bank, and there we dozed fitfully until we were startled by
a distant boom.

It was Governor Hamilton's morning gun at Fort Sackville, Vincennes.

There was no breakfast. How we made our way, benumbed with hunger and
cold, to the banks of the Wabash, I know not. Captain McCarty's company
was set to making canoes, and the rest of us looked on apathetically as
the huge trees staggered and fell amidst a fountain of spray in the
shallow water. We were but three leagues from Vincennes. A raft was
bound together, and Tom McChesney and three other scouts sent on a
desperate journey across the river in search of boats and provisions,
lest we starve and fall and die on the wet flats. Before he left Tom
came to me, and the remembrance of his gaunt face haunted me for many
years after. He drew something from his bosom and held it out to me, and
I saw that it was a bit of buffalo steak which he had saved. I shook my
head, and the tears came into my eyes.

"Come, Davy," he said, "ye're so little, and I beant hungry."