The flat boats had floated down the beautiful Ohio, through scenes of surpassing loveliness, about one hundred miles, when one night about ten o'clock a prodigious shouting and yelling of Indians was heard some distance farther down the river on the northern shore. Very soon they came in sight of their camp-fires, which were burning very brightly. It was evident that the Indians were having a great carousal rejoicing over some victory. Mr. Rowan immediately ordered the two boats to be lashed firmly together. There were but seven men on board who were capable of making efficient use of the rifle. Plying the oars as vigorously and noiselessly as they could, they endeavored to keep close to the Kentucky shore. And yet they were careful not to approach too near, lest there might be Indians there also. It was evident that there was a large gathering of the Indians on the northern bank, for their camp-fires extended for a distance of nearly half a mile along the river. As the boats floated noiselessly along in the gloom of the night, under shadow of the cliffs, they were not detected until they were opposite the central fire, whose brilliancy threw a flood of light nearly across the stream. A simultaneous shout greeted this discovery, and with terrific yells the savages rushed to their canoes and commenced a pursuit. The two flat boats rapidly floated beyond the illumination of the fires into the region of midnight darkness. The timid Indians, well acquainted with the white man's unerring aim, pursued cautiously, though their hideous yells resounded along the shores. Mr. Rowan ordered all on board to keep perfect silence, to conceal themselves as much as possible, and ordered not a gun to be fired till the Indians were so near that the powder of the gun would burn them, thus rendering every shot absolutely certain. The Indians, with their hideous yells, pursued in their canoes until within a hundred yards of the boats. They then seemed simultaneously to have adopted the conviction that the better part of valor was discretion. In the darkness, they could not see the boatmen, who they had no doubt were concealed behind bullet-proof bulwarks. Their birch canoes presented not the slightest obstruction to the passage of a rifle ball. Knowing that the flash of a gun from the boat would be certain death to some one of their number, and that thus the boatmen, with the rapidity with which they could load and fire, would destroy a large part of their company before they could hope to capture the flat boats, they hesitated to approach any nearer, but followed in the pursuit for nearly three miles down the river, assailing the white men only with harmless yells.