as they were, could find courage to thwart his will.
Meanwhile the boat, impelled by eight active seamen,
urged its way through the silvery current, and in less
than an hour from its departure had disappeared.

Two hours had elapsed--the General and superior officers
had retired; and the Indians, few by few had repaired to
their several encampments, except a party of young
warriors, who, wrapped in their blankets and mantles,
lay indolently extended on the grass, smoking their pipes,
or producing wild sounds from their melancholy flutes.
Not far from these, sat, with their legs overhanging the
edge of the steep bank, a group of the junior officers
of the garrison, who, with that indifference which
characterized their years, were occupied in casting
pebbles into the river, and watching the bubbles that
arose to the surface. Among the number was Henry Grantham,
and, at a short distance from him, sat the old but athletic
negro, Sambo, who, not having been required to accompany
Gerald, to whom he was especially attached, had continued
to linger on the bank long after his anxious eye had lost
sight of the boat in which the latter had departed. While
thus engaged, a new direction was given to the interest
of all parties, by a peculiar cry, which reached them
from a distance over the water, apparently from beyond
the near extremity of the Island of Bois Blanc. To the
officers the sound was unintelligible, for it was the
first of the kind they had ever heard, but the young
Indians appeared fully to understand its import. Starting
from their lethargy, they sprang abruptly to their feet,