After burying their own dead, they returned to the island in the swamp long before nightfall. To this point, they brought the spoils of victory, which were deemed important for carrying on the war. Night had scarcely closed around them, however, when Osceola and his followers arrived from Fort King, bringing intelligence of the death of Thompson and Lieutenant Smith, together with the sutler and his two clerks. There, too, was Louis, the guide to Dade's command. He was now _free_! He engaged in conversation with his sable friends. Well knowing the time and place at which the attack was to be made, he had professed necessity for stopping by the way-side before entering the defile; thus separating himself from the troops and from danger. Soon as the first fire showed him the precise position of his friends, he joined them; and swearing eternal hostility to all who enslave their fellow men, lent his own efforts in carrying forward the work of death, until the last individual of that doomed regiment sunk beneath their tomahawks. The massacre of the unfortunate Dade and his companions, and the murder of Thompson and his friends, at Fort King, occurred on the same day, and constituted the opening scenes of the second Seminole War. [Sidenote: 1847.] We bespeak the indulgence of the reader, while we digress from the chronological narration of events which followed consecutively upon this opening of the second Seminole War, in order to give a short sketch of some incidents which occurred in Congress, and were connected with the employment of Louis, and his subsequent service with the enemy. Twelve years after the massacre of Dade's command, Antonio Pacheco presented his petition to Congress, setting forth that he had been the owner of a valuable slave named Louis; that he hired him as guide to Major Dade to conduct his command from "Fort Brooke" to "Fort King;" that at the time of Dade's defeat, Louis had been _captured by the Indians_, and by them had been subsequently surrendered to Major General Jessup, and by that officer sent to the Indian country, west of the Mississippi, whereby he became lost to his owner, who, therefore, prayed Congress to grant him full indemnity for his loss. Among the proofs accompanying this petition was a letter from General Jessup, setting forth that, after Louis had been employed to act as guide, he had kept up a correspondence with the "Seminole negroes," informing them of the intended march of Major Dade, etc. He also represented Louis as a man of extraordinary intellect and learning, declaring that he regarded him as a _dangerous_ man; that he would have had him tried and hanged, instead of sending him West, if he had found leisure to attend to it; that from prudential motives he had sent him to the Indian country; and stated that he was worth a _thousand dollars_.