E FLEET

Adam Colfax had been making slow progress up the Ohio, far slower than
he had hoped, and his brave soul was worn by hardships and troubled by
apprehensions. A great hurricane had caused him serious alarm for his
smaller boats. They had been saved from sinking with the greatest
difficulty, and the precious stores had to be kept well and guarded
well.

He was grieved and troubled, too, over the disappearance of the five,
the valiant five who had continually been doing him such great service
from the very moment of the start at New Orleans. He liked them all, and
he mourned them for their own sakes as well. He also realized quickly
that he had lost more than the five themselves. His fleet seemed to have
come into a very nest of dangers. Men who went ashore to hunt never
returned. At narrow points in the river they were fired upon from the
dense forest on the bank, and if they sent a strong force ashore, they
found nothing. If they camped at night, bullets drew blood or scattered
the coals at their feet.

Invisible but none the less terrible foes hung upon them continually,
and weakened their spirits. The men in the fleet were willing and eager
to fight a foe whom they could see, but to be stung to death by
invisible hornets was the worst of fates.

Adam Colfax missed the "eyes of the fleet" more and more every day. If
Henry Ware and Shif'less Sol and their comrades had been there, they
could have discovered these unseen foes, and they could have told him
what to do. At night he often saw signal fires, blazing on either side
of the Ohio and, although he did not know what they meant, he felt sure
that they were lighted by his enemies, who were talking to one another.

Two or three of his men who had been originally woodsmen of the great
valley told him that the allied tribes had come to destroy him. They had
seen certain signs in the forest that could not be mistaken. The woods
were full of warriors. They had heard, too, that further on was a fort
on the river bank which the Indians had probably taken by this time, and
which they would certainly use against the fleet. Adam Colfax wished
once more for the five, who were more familiar than anybody else with
the country, and who were such magnificent scouts. Never had he felt
their absence more.

He came at last to the narrowest place in the river that he had yet
seen, enclosed on either bank by jutting hills. As the fleet approached
this watery pass a tremend