Feeling considerably stronger and more hopeful after his meal, the American cast his eyes round in search of a way of escape. He was unbound, and might possibly succeed in crawling, inch by inch, down to the water-side; yet, with his shoulder in its present condition, he could neither swim nor--supposing he should have the luck to find a canoe--work a paddle; reason, moreover, suggested that a semi-permanent camp such as this appeared to be, would assuredly be far enough away from any white station or boat-route. While he was still revolving plans, two redskins crossed over to him, made him stand, seized his arms and bound them securely, though not unmercifully, behind his back, and motioned to him to follow them. They conducted him towards the largest of the wigwams, outside which sat the chief of the tribe, solemnly smoking. After an interval of dead silence, that personage gave a little shout, and all the men in the camp collected round about the prisoner. A lengthy harangue followed, addressed partly to Munson, partly to the bystanders; and, at the close of this, one of the Indians drew a knife and whetted it on his moccasin. Young Munson pulled himself together and endeavoured to take courage from the fact that, if death had now come, it had come while he was doing his duty; a man of his calling must expect to meet it any day of the week; indeed, how many of his old comrades-in-arms had met it within the last few hours? At least the savages should see that he could die like a man, without making a fuss. The Indians nearest to him took him by the shoulders and forced him into a sitting posture, and the man with the knife walked slowly up to him and stood grinning over him. Then a horrible thought came to him; they were going to give him a punishment almost worse than death--to scalp him, in fact--an indignity which only a man who had lived all his life in the neighbourhood of Indians could fully appreciate. He wriggled himself free and, springing up again, kicked out fiercely at his tormentors. For this they seemed to care little; the man's hands were tied and he was at their mercy. He was forced down again and held motionless; then, while one man gripped him by the back of his neck so that he could not possibly move his head, the operator with the knife entered upon his task. But he whom Munson had regarded as the public executioner was but the barber to the tribe; the formidable-looking knife had no more terrible work to perform than that of shaving the unfortunate man's head, and this in token that henceforth he was the chief's bond-slave. So much relieved that he laughed loudly at himself for his idle fears, the sergeant was then liberated, and taken to a wigwam where he found a fellow-slave, a Crow Indian, who had been captured some few weeks earlier; and both occupied the tent that night, by no means cheered by the fact that an armed redskin stood at the entrance all night long.