There was no longer anything comical to me in the attempt we were making, for I questioned whether by such a venture the lives of those who were hidden in the tunnel had not been imperilled without due reason. However, despite all my forebodings, we made the détour successfully, gaining the river bank a full half-mile below where we believed the enemy were searching for us, and then it was necessary to creep up along the water’s edge until coming to the canoes. And this also we did without detection, finding the frail craft on the shore with never a man left to guard them. Six canoes were there, and all these we took, our party embarking in two, and towing the others well out into the stream, when, stopping sufficiently long to slash the bottoms with our knives in such fashion that they could never be repaired, we sent them adrift. “Now we have forced those curs to stay on the same side of the river with those whom it is our duty to guard, and who can say that they may not find the tunnel before we return to defend it?” I said, gloomily, as the last of the wounded canoes disappeared from view. “We need have little fear of what they may do ’twixt now and sunrise,” Master Bartlett said, curtly, as if he also had begun to question whether we were acting wisely. “It will be well to midnight before they give over searching the thicket for us, and as much more time must be spent looking after the boats. In the meantime we shall have returned.” “Ay, unless we come across those on the opposite shore who are strong enough to hold us there,” I replied, and then held my peace, ashamed of thus croaking like a bird of ill-omen. We buckled down to the paddles, each one realizing by this time the necessity of making all speed, and the light craft skimmed the surface of the water like birds. Then, at the very moment when we heard the report of a musket from the shore where the enemy were searching for us, the bows of the canoes ran up on the bank. We had come into the very thick of John Butler’s wolves, and the lives of those left behind depended, perhaps, upon our returning before daylight. “It was a fool’s trick for us to make this venture,” Giles March whispered to me after the canoes had been hidden among the bushes where we might find them again without too long a search, and we were following at Master Bartlett’s heels. I gripped his arm hard, but made no reply. He thus told me that much the same forebodings had come into his mind as were in mine, and the fact did not tend to render me any more cheerful. We were all familiar with the country hereabouts, and, since it simply remained to make our way over travelled roads, there was no reason why we could not push on rapidly, save only when we might see others in advance. Nothing occurred to delay us, and it was yet early in the night when we arrived near the log walls of Forty Fort; but, much to our surprise, we saw sentinels on the walls, as if the place was being defended against an enemy.