“There is nothing else you can do, Jonathan Ogden, in justice to those who call you their captain,” Master Bartlett replied, and he had hardly more than ceased speaking before a bright light flashed up near the river, considerably beyond musket-shot from where we were standing, and at the same time we heard shrieks and yells as of rejoicing. “It is as we feared,” Master Morley said, turning suddenly upon me, and speaking for the first time since I had come. “The savages have captured the lads, and we know full well the meaning of that fire.” “The meaning of it?” I screamed, understanding what he meant, but at the same time refusing to admit it. “Ay, lad,” Master Bartlett replied, in a tearful tone. “Now is the time when those whom we whipped inside the stockade will have their revenge, and, if I mistake not, the fiends count on doing their bloody work where we must witness it.” “Then you believe they have taken our lads, and are about to torture them?” I whispered. The old man nodded his head, and then turned away as if unwilling to say more. CHAPTER V. THE SORTIE There could be no question but that Master Bartlett had guessed rightly as to the purpose of the savages, for there was no other way by which we could account for the fire which had just been kindled. They would not have camped so far from Wintermoot’s in order to break a day’s march, and even if they had halted for the purpose of resting, common prudence would have dictated that they do so secretly. When I had reasoned all this out in my mind, and been forced to believe the worst, it was no longer possible for me to think of ourselves as Minute Boys, if by so acting we were forced to remain inside the fort. Only one idea found lodgment in my brain, which was that we must, at all hazards, do what we might toward aiding the unfortunate lads, who were thus come to the stake while in pursuance of duty. To remain idle within the stockade, as Master Bartlett seemed willing to do, while they suffered such torture as those fiendish savages could invent, seemed to me more heartless than anything I had ever heard, and, forgetting my duty to the company of which I was captain, I cried, passionately: “It shall not be. We will not remain here with folded hands and allow those murderers to do their cruel work!” “Ay, it would not be if it were in our power to give them aid,” Master Bartlett said, grimly. “Stephen Morley had fair chance to judge of the strength of the red-skinned wolves, and from him we know that there must, at the very least, be more than an hundred gathered around yonder fire. To venture out now is but to play into their hands, leaving the fort so illy manned that its capture would be certain.” “We are stronger than before Stephen Morley’s party came in,” I said, half to myself, and Master Bartlett replied: “True, we are, and yet the number here is all too small for the defence of the stockade.”