usual greetings and ceremonies General Hernandez took out a
paper and said that General Jesup wanted to know the Indians' answer to
these questions: "What is your object in coming? What do you expect? Are
you prepared to deliver up at once the slaves taken from the citizens?
Why have you not surrendered them already as promised by Alligator at
Fort King? Have the chiefs of the nation held a council in relation to
the subjects of the talk at Fort King? What chiefs attended that council
and what was their determination? Have the chiefs sent a messenger with
the decision of the council? Have the principal chiefs, Micanopy,
Jumper, Cloud, and Alligator, sent a messenger, and if so, what is their
message? Why have not those chiefs come in themselves?"

When Osceola heard these questions he struggled to answer. He began a
sentence but could not finish it. Turning to Alligator he said in a low
husky voice: "I feel choked. You must speak for me." Perhaps his
suspicions were aroused by the questions; perhaps he saw afar the lines
of soldiers closing round his camp--at any rate he was deeply troubled.

Finding the answers given by Alligator unsatisfactory, General
Hernandez, following the orders of General Jesup, gave the signal and
the troops surrounding the camp closed in upon the dismayed Indians and
marched them off to the fort.

In this way was the man that the generals in Florida pronounced the war
spirit of the Seminoles conquered.

XI. THE IMPRISONMENT OF OSCEOLA

Osceola and his warriors were taken by their captors to St. Augustine
where they were imprisoned within the strong walls of the old Spanish
castle of San Marco. It was very hard for these Indians who loved
liberty better than life to be shut up in narrow dark cells, to be
obliged to give up the warpath, to sit for hours, and days, and weeks,
and months in inaction, not knowing what need their friends had of them
but imagining the heaviest possible misfortunes for those they held
dear.

[Illustration: FORT SAN MARCO]

Osceola could have stood the torture of wrenched limbs and of fire with
haughty spirit unbent. What was that to this torture of the white man's,
the dim light, the quiet, the narrow walls, the waiting, the not
knowing, the fearing of evil?

The warrior still held his head high, but gradually the fierce gleam in
his eye changed to a look of gentleness, of unspeakable sadness, and his
winning smile came to have so much sorrow in it th