watching the moment when he might pounce unnoticed on
his unprepared victim, it followed, with momentary pleasure and
excitement, the activity and skill displayed by the harmless paddler,
in the swift and meteor-like race that set the troubled surface of the
Huron in a sheet of hissing foam. Nor was this all. When the eye turned
wood-ward, it fell heavily, and without interest, upon a dim and dusky
point, known to enter upon savage scenes and unexplored countries;
whereas, whenever it reposed upon the lake, it was with an eagerness
and energy that embraced the most vivid recollections of the past, and
led the imagination buoyantly over every well-remembered scene that had
previously been traversed, and which must be traversed again before the
land of the European could be pressed once more. The forest, in a word,
formed, as it were, the gloomy and impenetrable walls of the
prison-house, and the bright lake that lay before it the only portal
through which happiness and liberty could be again secured.

The principal entrance into the fort, which presented four equal sides
of a square, was from the forest; but, immediately opposite to this,
and behind the apartments of the commanding officer, there was another
small gate that opened upon the lake shore; but which, since the
investment of the place, had been kept bolted and locked, with a
precaution befitting the danger to which the garrison was exposed.
Still, there were periods, even now, when its sullen hinges were to be
heard moaning on the midnight breeze; for it served as a medium of
communication between the besieged and others who were no less
critically circumstanced than themselves.

The very day before the Indians commenced their simultaneous attack on
the several posts of the English, the only armed vessel that had been
constructed on these upper lakes, serving chiefly as a medium of
communication between Detroit and Michilimackinac, had arrived with
despatches and letters from the former fort. A well-concerted plan of
the savages to seize her in her passage through the narrow waters of
the river Sinclair had only been defeated by the vigilance of her
commander; but, ever since the breaking out of the war, she had been
imprisoned within the limits of the Huron. Laborious indeed was the
duty of the devoted crew. Several attempts had been renewed by the
Indians to surprise them; but, although their little fleets stole
cautiously and noiselessly, at the still hou