This much Mike succeeded in making the captain comprehend, though a great deal was lost through the singular confusion that prevailed in the mind of the messenger.  Mike however, had still another communication, which we reserve for the ears of the person to whom it was especially sent.

This news produced a pause in captain Willoughby’s determination.  Some of the fire of youth awoke within him, and he debated with himself on the possibility of making a sortie, and of liberating his son, as a step preliminary to victory; or, at least, to a successful retreat.  Acquainted with every foot of the ground, which had singular facilities for a step so bold, the project found favour in his eyes each minute, and soon became fixed.

Chapter XXIII.

  Yet I well remember
  The favours of these men:  were they not mine? 
  Did they not sometimes cry, all hail! to me? 
  So Judas did to Christ:  but he, in twelve
  Found truth in all but one; I in twelve thousand none.

  Willis.

While the captain and Joyce were digesting their plans Mike proceeded on an errand of peculiar delicacy with which he had been entrusted by Robert Willoughby.  The report that he had returned flew through the dwellings, and many were the hearty greetings and shakings of the hand that the honest fellow had to undergo from the Plinys and Smashes, ere he was at liberty to set about the execution of this trust.  The wenches, in particular, having ascertained that Mike had not broken his fast, insisted on his having a comfortable meal, in a sort of servants’ hall, before they would consent to his quitting their sight.  As the county Leitrim-man was singularly ready with a knife and fork, he made no very determined opposition, and, in a few minutes, he was hard at work, discussing a cold ham, with the other collaterals of a substantial American breakfast.

The blacks, the Smashes inclusive, had been seriously alarmed at the appearance of the invading party.  Between them and the whole family of red-men there existed a sort of innate dislike; an antipathy that originated in colour, and wool, and habits, and was in no degree lessened by apprehensions on the score of scalps.

“How you look, ole Plin, widout wool?” Big Smash had reproachfully remarked, not five minutes before Mike made his appearance in the kitchen, in answer to some apologetic observation of her husband, as to the intentions of the savages being less hostile than he had at first imagined; “why you say dey no murder, and steal and set fire, when you know dey’s Injin!  Natur’ be natur’; and dat I hear dominie Woods say t’ree time one Sunday.  What ’e dominie say often, he mean, and dere no use in saying dey don’t come to do harm.”

As Great Smash was an oracle in her own set, there was no gainsaying her dogmas, and Pliny the elder was obliged to succumb.  But the presence of Mike, one who was understood to have been out, near, if not actually in, the enemy’s camp, and a great favourite in the bargain, was a circumstance likely to revive the discourse.  In fact, all the negroes, crowded into the hall, as soon as the Irishman was seated at table, one or two eager to talk, the rest as eager to listen.