Island,
the position of which has been described in our introductory chapter.
From this point a certain signal, that could be easily distinguished
with the aid of a telescope, was to be made from the canoe, which,
without being of a nature to attract the attention of the savages, was
yet to be such as could not well be mistaken by the garrison. This was
a precaution adopted, not only with the view of giving the earliest
intimation of the result of the enterprise, but lest the Canadian
should be prevented, by any closer investment on the part of the
Indians, from communicating personally with the fort in the way he had
been accustomed.

It will easily be comprehended therefore, that, as the period
approached when they might reasonably look for the return of Francois,
if he should return at all, the nervous anxiety of the officers became
more and more developed. Upwards of a week had elapsed since the
departure of their friends; and already, for the last day or two, their
impatience had led them, at early dawn, and with beating hearts, to
that quarter of the rampart which overlooked the eastern extremity of
Hog Island. Hitherto, however, their eager watching had been in vain.
As far as our recollection of the Canadian tradition of this story
serves us, it must have been on the fourth night after the final
discomfiture of the plans of Ponteac, and the tenth from the departure
of the adventurers, that the officers were assembled in the mess-room,
partaking of the scanty and frugal supper to which their long
confinement had reduced them. The subject of their conversation, as it
was ever of their thoughts, was the probable fate of their companions;
and many and various, although all equally melancholy, were the
conjectures offered as to the result. There was on the countenance of
each, that deep and fixed expression of gloom, which, if it did not
indicate any unmanliness of despair, told at least that hope was nearly
extinct: but more especially was this remarkable in the young but sadly
altered Charles de Haldimar, who, with a vacant eye and a pre-occupied
manner, seemed wholly abstracted from the scene before him.

All was silence in the body of the fort. The men off duty had long
since retired to rest in their clothes, and only the "All's well!" of
the sentinels was heard at intervals of a quarter of an hour, as the
cry echoed from mouth to mouth in the line of circuit. Suddenly,
however, between two of those intervals,