He showed prodigious activity. All the extraordinary life that was in him leaped and sang in his veins. He rushed back and forth, uttering continuous shouts, whirling each torch until it made a perfect circle of fire. Doubtless to the heavy eyes of the buffaloes the single human being seemed twenty, every one enveloped in bursts of flame which they dreaded most of all things. A big bull buffalo, the leader of the herd, crouched at the very edge of the opening, decided first that it was time to move. The whirling circles of fire with living beings inside of them filled him with terror. His ton of flesh quivered and quaked. He rose with a mighty heave to his feet and then with a bellow of fright took flight from the flashing devils of fire. The whole herd was in a panic in an instant and followed the leader. They might have scattered in their fright, but they were shepherded by a human mind, which had allied with it a body without an equal in all that million and a half square miles of forest. As he leaped to and fro, shouting and whirling his torches, he drove the herd straight toward the camp on the river where the English officers and chiefs were even now asleep. A few animals broke off from the herd and were lost in the bushes, but the rest ran, packed close, a long column, tapering at the front like an arrow head, with the big bull as its point. They bellowed with fright and made a tremendous crashing as they raced over the mile that divided them from the Indian camp. Warriors heard the uproar, like the bursting of a storm in the night, and leaped to their feet. Now Henry fairly surpassed every effort that he had made hitherto. He leaped more wildly than ever, and redoubled his fierce shouting. He was so close upon the flank of the last buffaloes that they felt the torches singeing their hair, and, mad with fear lest they go to their buffalo heaven sooner than they wished they charged directly upon the Indian camp. The wild yells of the warriors joined with Henry's shouts. Alloway, Cartwright and the others leaped up to see the red eyes, the short crooked horns and the huge, humped shoulders of the buffaloes bearing down upon them. Nothing could withstand that rush of mighty bodies and white men and Indians alike ran for their lives. The buffaloes came up against the river, and blocked by its deep flood, turned, and, running over the camp again, crashed away toward the west. Henry, stopping at a convenient distance, tossed his torches into the river, and taking the rifle from his back sank into the bushes. Here he laughed once more, under his breath, but with the most intense delight. It was the hugest joke of all.