Although many an eager chief had found it difficult to repress the strong feeling of mingled curiosity and excitement, that half raised him from the floor on which he sat, the first shot had been heard without the effect of actually disturbing the assembly from its fair propriety; but no sooner had the second report, accompanied as it was by the wild yell of their followers without, reached their ears, than, wholly losing sight of the dignity attached to their position as councillors, they sprang wildly up, and seizing the weapons that lay at their side, rushed confusedly forth, leaving Tecumseh, and two or three only of the more aged chiefs, behind them. The debate thus interrupted, the council was adjourned, and soon afterwards General Brock, accompanied by his staff, and conversing, through his interpreter, with the Shawnee chieftain as they walked, approached the groups still crowded along the bank of the river. Meanwhile, after the discharge of the last gun, the battery on the island had been quitted by the officer in command, who, descending to the beach, preceded by two of his men, stepped into a light skiff that lay chained to the gnarled root of a tree overhanging the current, and close under the battery. A few sturdy strokes of the oars soon brought the boat into the centre of the stream, when the stout, broad-built figure and carbuncled face of an officer in the uniform of the forty-first regiment, were successively recognised, as he stood upright in the stern. "What the deuce brings Tom Raymond to us in such a hurry? I thought the order of the general was that he should on no account leave his post, unless summoned by signal," observed one of the group of younger officers who had first quitted the council hall, and who now waited with interest for the landing of their companion. "What brings him here, can you ask?" replied one at the side of the questioner, and with a solemnity of tone and manner that caused the whole of the group to turn their eyes upon him, as he mournfully shook his head. "Aye, _what_ brings him here?" repeated more than one voice, while all closed inquiringly around for information. "Why the thing is as clear as the carbuncles on his own face--the boat, to be sure." And the truism was perpetrated with the same provokingly ludicrous, yet evidently forced, gravity of tone and manner. "Execrable, Middlemore.--Will you never give over that vile habit of punning?" "Detestable!" said another. "Ridiculous!" repeated a third. "Pshaw! the worst you ever uttered!" exclaimed a fourth, and each, as he thus expressed himself, turned away with a movement of impatience.