The boat yielded to them without opposition. They killed the Captain and a boy, and took the women on board prisoners. Making a screen of these unfortunate women, by exposing them to the fire of Captain Hubbel's boat, they returned to the assault. It imposed upon him the painful alternative, either to yield to the Indians, or to fire into their canoes at the hazard of killing the women of their own people. But the intrepid Captain remarked, that if these women escaped their fire, it would probably be to suffer a more terrible death from the savages. He determined to keep up his fire, even on these hard conditions; and the savages were beaten off a second time. In the course of the engagement, the boat, left to itself, had floated with the current near the north shore, where four or five hundred Indians were collected, who poured a shower of balls upon the boat. All the inmates could do, was to avoid exposure as much as possible, and exercise their patience until the boat should float past the Indian fire. One of the inmates of the boat, seeing, as it slowly drifted on, a fine chance for a shot at an Indian, although warned against it, could not resist the temptation of taking his chance. He raised his head to take aim, and was instantly shot dead. When the boat had drifted beyond the reach of the Indian fire, but two of the nine fighting men on board were found unhurt. Two were killed, and two mortally wounded. The noble courage of a boy on board deserves to be recorded. When the boat was now in a place of safety, he requested his friends to extract a ball that had lodged in the skin of his forehead. When this ball had been extracted, he requested them to take out a piece of bone that had been fractured in his elbow by another shot. When asked by his mother why he had not complained or made known his suffering during the engagement, he coolly replied, intimating that there was noise enough without his, that the Captain had ordered the people to make no noise. All attempts of the General Government to pacify the Indians, having proved ineffectual, an expedition was planned against the hostile tribes north-west of the Ohio. The object was to bring the Indians to a general engagement; or, if that might not be, to destroy their establishments on the waters of the Scioto and the Wabash. General Harmar was appointed to the command of this expedition. Major Hamtranck, with a detachment, was to make a diversion in his favor up the Wabash.