An Indian staggered out from behind the trunk of a tall pine. He dragged one leg, a useless mass of bloody meat, and fell heavily to the ground. He held a rifle. He shook his fist at the _Victory_, then aimed the rifle from his prone position. In sudden fear, Raoul was about to duck behind a hay bale when a dozen shots cracked out from the railings beside him. Bleeding from his chest and his head, the Indian collapsed and rolled into the Mississippi. Nodding happily, Raoul watched the current catch his body. It drifted slowly downstream, trailing blood. "Keep firing!" Raoul roared. A cannoneer swabbed inside the gun barrel to cool it down for more powder. In a moment the gun boomed out again. More trees splintered, but no more Indians were flushed out. "Raise elevation ten degrees," Kingsbury called to the gunners. "They're probably lurking farther back in the woods." Raoul heard the clicks as the gunners used hand spikes to raise the cannon in its carriage. After the cannon went off, dirt and broken tree limbs sprayed out of the forest, and Raoul heard shrieking sounds that he hoped were the screams of Indians. The cannon boomed again and again. With hand signals to Captain Bill in the pilot house, Raoul had the _Victory_'s bow swung to starboard and then to port, so that the grapeshot struck the island in a wide arc. Trees slowly toppled over, and shrieks of pain and shouts of rage and defiance pierced the silence between the roars of the cannon. He pictured the lead balls tearing into howling Indians, ripping their flesh apart. He remembered Helene's body in Lake Michigan. He remembered Black Salmon's lash on his back. He saw--as he had seen them two weeks ago--the heap of blackened, split logs that had been Victoire, his home, the place where Clarissa, Phil and Andy died. He saw the mound of earth in the family cemetery where they lay together. What little had been left of them. The cannon's heat was his rage. The cannon's boom was his roar. The grapeshot was his vengeance. He hurled his hatred over the water and into the trees, blowing Indian bodies to shreds. He heard something hum past his head and plunk into the pilot house behind him. He saw smoke puff from the shadowy base of a clump of spruces. Another puff, and another. The reports of rifles carried across the water. "Sir!" Kingsbury's hand gripped his shoulder, the fingers digging in. Raoul realized he had been momentarily out of his mind with fury. Breathing heavily, he got his eyes focused on the brown-mustached lieutenant. "Get down, sir, before you get hit." Reluctantly, because he wanted to see where the grapeshot was hitting, Raoul crouched down behind a hay bale. When he'd first come out on deck he'd been afraid of being shot at. Now he felt sure they couldn't hit him. The six-pounder repeatedly tore into the area on shore where powder smoke had appeared. Raoul saw no sign of Indian bodies, but the firing from the trees stopped.