How, with so numerically weak a force, could they resist the Indians, whose diabolical profiles they saw fantastically lit up in the sinister reflections of the conflagration? The officer sighed deeply. "We are lost!" he murmured. In the incessant combats fought on the Indian frontiers, the laws of civilized warfare are completely unknown. The _vae victis_ reigns in the full acceptation of the term. Inveterate enemies, who fight one against another with all the refinements of barbarity, never ask or give quarter. Every conflict, then, is a question of life and death. Such is the custom. The captain knew this well, therefore he did not indulge in the least allusion as to the fate that awaited him if he fell into the hands of the Comanches. He had committed the fault of allowing himself to be surprised by the redskins, and he must undergo the consequence of his imprudence. But the captain was a good and brave soldier; certain of not being able to retreat safe and sound from the wasp's nest into which he had fallen, he wished at least, to succumb with honour. The soldiers had no need to be excited to do their duty; they knew as well as their captain that they had no chance of safety left. The defenders of the fort, therefore, placed themselves resolutely behind the barricades, and began to fire upon the Indians with a precision that speedily caused them a heavy loss. The first person the captain saw, on mounting the platform of the little fort, was the old hunter, White Eyes. "Ah, ah!" murmured the officer to himself, "what is this fellow doing here?" Drawing a pistol from his belt, he walked straight up to the half-breed, and, seizing him by the throat, he clapped the barrel of his pistol to his breast, saying, to him with that coolness which the Americans inherit from the English, and upon which they have improved-- "In what fashion did you introduce yourself into the fort, you old screech owl?" "Why, by the gate, seemingly," the other replied, unmoved. "You must be a sorcerer, then!" "Perhaps I am." "A truce with your jokes, mixed-blood, you have sold us to your brothers the redskins." A sinister smile passed over the countenance of the half-breed; the captain perceived it. "But your treachery shall not profit you, you miserable scoundrel!" he said, in a voice of thunder; "you shall be the first victim of it." The hunter disengaged himself by a quick, unexpected movement; then, with a spring backwards, and clapping his gun to his shoulder, he said-- "We shall see," with a sneer. These two men, placed face to face upon that narrow platform, lighted by the sinister reflection of the fire, the intensity of which increased every minute, would have had a terrific expression for the spectator who was able to contemplate them coolly. Each of them personified in himself those two races confronted in the United States, whose struggle will only finish by the complete extinction of the one to the profit of the other.