ll speed to their guns, that were leaned
against the trees hard by, and, without more ado, began firing in so
brisk and earnest a manner, that left the Virginians no choice but to
return it, which they did with spirit. About the same time, the Half
King and his warriors came down to the bottom of the hill on the
opposite side of the hollow, and, screening themselves behind a bit of
rising ground, joined the music of their rifles with the rest. For
about fifteen minutes, the skirmish was kept up with great spirit on
both sides; when the French, having lost ten of their number (among
whom was their leader, Capt. de Jumonville), surrendered, and yielded
up their arms. Washington had one man shot dead at his side, and three
men wounded; but his Indian allies, protected as they were by the
rising ground, came off without the loss of a single feather or
porcupine-quill. Unluckily, in the heat of the encounter, a
swift-footed Canadian, better, no doubt, at dodging than shooting,
managed to make his escape, and carried the news to Fort Duquesne.

The Half King and his warriors, I am sorry to tell you, would have
butchered the prisoners in cold blood, had not Washington sternly
forbidden them. They therefore consoled themselves as best they might
for this disappointment by scalping the dead; which, however, yielded
them but sorry comfort, as there were but ten scalps to be divided
among forty warriors.

The Half King was much offended by this humane interference, on the
part of his young white brother, in behalf of the prisoners; for he
seemed to think, that as they were spies, and French spies at that,
they richly deserved to be scalped alive. Such milk-and-water,
half-way measures might do for pale-faces, but were not the sort of
entertainment to be relished by a genuine Indian brave of the first
water, or, to speak more to the point, of the first blood.

Without, however, in the least heeding these muttered grumblings of
the worthy old chief, who had his failings along with the rest of
mankind, Col. Washington took the prisoners to his camp, where he
treated them with even more kindness and courtesy than they as spies
deserved. From thence he sent them under a strong guard to
Williamsburg, and wrote to Gov. Dinwiddie, begging him to treat them
with all the humanity due to prisoners of war, but to keep a strict
watch over them, as there were among them two or three very cunning
and dangerous men.

This encounter, commonly