"I tried to get out last night," said the scout, "but a snake would have had to grease himself to slip by. It's their great chief, Timmendiquas, who is doing it all, and he doesn't mean that we shall know a single thing about what is going on outside." "He is certainly carrying out his intentions. I give him all credit for his generalship," said Major Braithwaite. The three relapsed again into silence and stared at the river, now a dark, flowing current, and then molten metal in the dazzling glare of the lightning. The time, the place, and his troubles stirred Major Braithwaite deeply. To-night the wilderness oppressed him with its immensity and its unknown, but none the less deadly, dangers. Things that he had read, scraps of old learning at college, floated through his head. "_Magna pars fui_," he murmured, looking at the river and the black forest beyond. "What did you say, sir?" asked the scout. "I merely meant," replied the Major, "that we, too, have our part in great events. This, with distance's long view, may seem obscure and small to the great world elsewhere, but it is not obscure and small to us. Could any spectacle be more tremendous than the one we behold to-night?" "If the fleet does not come it is not likely that we shall behold any more spectacles of any kind," said Gregory Wilmot. "The red men hold their cordon, and in time our food must become exhausted." "That is so," said the Major. "Some of the women have given up already, and look upon themselves as dead." "We are not lost," said the scout. "He'll come, that boy, Henry Ware, will. He's only a boy, Major, but he's got a soul like that of the great chief, Timmendiquas. He'll come with the fleet." Major Braithwaite wished to believe, but it was hard to do it. How could anything come out of that darkness and storm and through the Indian host? A soldier, he recognized the mental grasp and energy of Timmendiquas and the thoroughness of the leaguer of both fort and river. He left the bastion presently and went into one of the log cabins where some of the wounded men lay. He made it a point to visit them and cheer them whenever he could, and he would not neglect it to-night. He spent a half hour with them and then he returned to the bastion. "What have you seen?" he asked. "Nothing but the river and the woods and much lightning," replied Gregory Wilmot. "Nor heard anything?" "Only the thunder and the wind." "I am weary of both. Surely they cannot last much longer."