On the morning of the 2d of December the general-in-chief went aboard of the lake steamer, with a view of visiting Granada. Just before the anchor was hove, a courier from San Juan del Sur announced the arrival of the Orizaba with eighty men for Nicaragua. The steamer was getting under weigh when a small canoe, with three men in it, approached the vessel from the direction of Omotepe. The men from the canoe were taken aboard the steamer, and they reported that the Americans on the island had been attacked the night previously by a large body of Indians. The tale of these three persons was indistinct, but as they had been out during the night and were shivering from exposure to the damp, chilly air, it was more charitable to impute the confusion of their story to cold than to fear. The steamer was forthwith ordered to the island, and the general-in-chief took the most intelligent of the three fugitives to the cabin and dosing him with a half-tumblerful of whiskey, tried to get out of him the true state of affairs at Omotepe. All he could get out of the man was that every soul on the island, sick and wounded, women and children, had probably been murdered. The cowardly fellow was not ashamed to live and tell the tale. As the steamer approached the island one of the large iron launches used by the Transit Company for loading freight and passengers was seen drifting in the lake, without sail or rudder, and filled with a crowd of men, women, and children, in all varieties of dress and humor. It was some comfort to see that everybody on the island was not killed; though the forlorn condition of the launch’s passengers was well fitted to excite pity and compassion. Among them, two or three ladies who had been delicately brought up, bore their trials and sufferings with more patience than the stoutest men; while some of the women, viragos in appearance, as soon as they were safely aboard the steamer, loosened their tongues and gave free play to their long-restrained feelings. Soon the steamer anchored off the village where Fry was quartered; and he immediately reported that the Indians had attacked the Americans merely to get a chance of rifling their trunks, and that they had disappeared not long after daylight. Some of the men capable of bearing arms, and even some officers, had disgraced themselves by deserting women and children, as well as the sick and wounded, at the first alarm. Two or three of these men, as they might by courtesy be called, escaped to the main land before the passengers by the Orizaba left Virgin Bay; and thus the report was sent to the United States that all the people of Omotepe had been massacred by the Indians.