ready for any emergency.

Presently, the cavalcade from Fort Edward appeared, and Heyward,
addressing Hawk-eye, asked for information as to their whereabouts,
explaining that they had trusted to an Indian, who had lost his way.

"An Indian lost in the woods?" exclaimed the scout. "I should like to
look at the creature."

Saying this, he crept stealthily into the thicket. In a few moments he
returned, his suspicions fully confirmed. Magua had clearly led the
party into a trap for purposes of his own, and Hawk-eye at once took
steps to secure his capture. While Heyward held the runner in
conversation, the scout and the two Mohicans crept silently through the
undergrowth to surround him, but the slight crackle of a breaking stick
aroused Magua's suspicion, and, even as the ambush closed on him, he
dodged under Heyward's arms and vanished into the opposite thicket.

Hawk-eye was too well acquainted with Indian ways to think of pursuing,
and, restraining the eagerness of Heyward, who would have followed
Magua, and would have been undoubtedly led to the place where the
scalping-knives of Magua's companions awaited him, the scout called a
council of war.

The position was serious in the extreme, how serious was disclosed that
night as they lay hid in a cave.

Suddenly, with blood-curdling yells, the Maquas surrounded them. They
were surrounded completely, and, to add to the terrors of their
situation, they discovered that their ammunition was exhausted. There
seemed nothing to be done but die fighting. It was Cora who suggested an
alternative: that Hawk-eye and the two Mohicans should make for Fort
William Henry and procure from their father, Munro, enough men to take
them back in safety. It was the one desperate chance, and the Mohicans
took it. Dropping silently down the river, they disappeared. Duncan,
David, and the two girls were left alone; but not for long. As the night
drew out, a body of the Maquas, swimming across the river, entered the
cave, and made the whole party prisoners.

It was Magua who directed all these operations, and it was Magua who
announced their fate to his prisoners. Alice should go back to her
father, but Cora was to become his squaw in an Indian wigwam.

"Monster!" cried Cora, when this proposal was laid before her. "None but
a fiend could meditate such a vengeance!"

Magua answered with a ghastly smile, and, at his command, the Indians,
seizing their white victims, bound them to four t