fleet of vessels was seen bearing down upon the coast. It was first
noticed in the vicinity of Huron by a woman. No sooner had she seen the
vessels bearing down towards the coast from the westward, than she rushed
into the house, emptied her feather bed and placed the tick on a horse as
a pack-saddle; then catching up one child before her and another behind,
she rode at the top of the animal's speed, thinking torture and death lay
behind her. Whenever she passed a house she raised an alarm, and at two
o'clock in the morning, more dead than alive with terror and fatigue, she
urged her jaded horse into the village of Cleveland, screaming at the top
of her voice, "The British and Indians are coming! The British and Indians
are coming!" Men slept lightly at that time, with their senses attent to
every sound of danger. The shrieks of the woman and the dreaded notice of
the approach of the merciless foe awoke the whole village and curdled the
blood of the villagers with horror. In that brief announcement, "The
British and Indians are coming," were concentrated possibilities of
frightful outrage, carnage and devastation. Wild with the terror of her
long and agonized night ride, the woman reiterated her piercing warning
again and again, filling the air with her shouts. A chorus of voices, from
the childish treble to the deep bass of the men, swelled the volume of
sound and added to the confusion and alarm. In a few minutes every house
was empty, and the entire population of the village swarmed around the
exhausted woman and heard her brief story, broken by gasps for breath and
by hysterical sobs. She insisted that a fleet was bearing down upon the
coast with the purpose of spreading carnage and devastation along the
whole lake frontier, that the vessels were crowded with British troops and
merciless savages, and that before long the musket bail, the torch and the
scalping knife would seek their victims among the inhabitants of
Cleveland.

At once all was hurry; the entire population prepared for speedy flight.