but Monsieur Vigo stopped, and Kaskaskia heard,
with a shock, that this man of iron was to march against Vincennes.

The gates of the fort were shut, and the captains summoned. Undaunted
woodsmen as they were, they were lukewarm, at first, at the idea of this
march through the floods. Who can blame them? They had, indeed,
sacrificed much. But in ten minutes they had caught his enthusiasm
(which is one of the mysteries of genius). And the men paraded in the
snow likewise caught it, and swung their hats at the notion of taking the
Hair Buyer.

"'Tis no news to me," said Terence, stamping his feet on the flinty
ground; "wasn't it Davy that pointed him out to us and the hair liftin'
from his head six months since?"

"Und you like schwimmin', yes?" said Swein Poulsson, his face like the
rising sun with the cold.

"Swimmin', is it?" said Terence, "sure, the divil made worse things than
wather. And Hamilton's beyant."

"I reckon that'll fetch us through," Bill Cowan put in grimly.

It was a blessed thing that none of us had a bird's-eye view of that same
water. No man of force will listen when his mind is made up, and perhaps
it is just as well. For in that way things are accomplished. Clark
would not listen to Monsieur Vigo, and hence the financier had, perforce,
to listen to Clark. There were several miracles before we left.
Monsieur Vigo, for instance, agreed to pay the expenses of the
expedition, though in his heart he thought we should never get to
Vincennes. Incidentally, he was never repaid. Then there were the
French--yesterday, running hither and thither in paroxysms of fear;
to-day, enlisting in whole companies, though it were easier to get to the
wild geese of the swamps than to Hamilton. Their ladies stitched colors
day and night, and presented them with simple confidence to the Colonel
in the church. Twenty stands of colors for 170 men, counting those who
had come from Cahokia. Think of the industry of it, of the enthusiasm
behind it! Twenty stands of colors! Clark took them all, and in due
time it will be told how the colors took Vincennes. This was because
Colonel Clark was a man of destiny.

Furthermore, Colonel Clark was off the next morning at dawn to buy a
Mississippi keel-boat. He had her rigged up with two four-pounders and
four swivels, filled her with provisions, and called her the Willing.
She was the first gunboat on the Western waters. A great fear came into
my heart, and at dusk I stole back