A messenger sent to negotiate had been seized and put to death, and no mercy was to be expected. All hands were on the alert. Twenty muskets, which had been provided for the settlement, were prudently kept by the missionary, Mr. Brown, ready loaded in the upper story of his house, which had around it a fence of pickets. Two carpenters were at the time inmates of the dwelling: their names deserve record, for they, Zion Harris and Demery, constituted, with the missionary, the entire force at the point of approach. Suddenly, in the morning before the men began their work, they heard the yelling and crashing of three or four hundred savages through the bushes. This was Gaytumba’s tribe: Gotera was at their head, bringing with him a pot to cook the missionary for his next repast. Harris and Demery placed themselves quietly at the fence, confronting the negroes as they came straggling in a mass, expecting no resistance, and exposing themselves amid the low green leaves of a cassada patch. The two men fired into the thickest of them, and Mr. Brown commenced a destructive slaughter with his muskets overhead. As the mass heaved backwards and forwards, a furious return of musketry, arrows, and spears was made. Gotera, with some skill, disentangled himself with a band of resolute men, broke through the pickets at one end, and came upon Harris, standing defenceless, with his musket just discharged. He toned to grasp a hatchet, as a last resource, but fortunately caught a musket, which a wounded colonist, in running for shelter, had placed against the pickets, and lodged its contents in Gotera’s breast. The death of their chief was the signal for a general retreat. But ashamed and indignant at not having secured the dead body, they attempted by a rush to recover it, and were again and again driven back, till they utterly despaired, and disappeared. This strange episode of war lasted an hour and twenty minutes. The forest recovered its suspicious character from the prowling and threatening of the enemy spread through it; and there were reports of the gathering of more distant tribes to join Gaytumba, to make the work of destruction sure by an overwhelming rush upon the settlements. The governor, full of warlike foresight, saw the remedy for this state of things; and, after screwing up the courage of his people, he planned an expedition against Gaytumba in his own den. For this purpose, a force of two hundred effective men, with a field-piece and a body of followers, assembled at Millsburg, on the St. Paul’s River. About thirty miles from this, by the air line, in the swampy depths of the forest, was the point aimed at. Many careful arrangements were necessary to baffle spies, and keep the disaffected at bay during this desperate incursion, which the governor was about to make into the heart of the enemy’s country. The fine conception had this redeeming characteristic, that it was quite beyond the enemy’s understanding.