“I think I can see a gleam of the sun on an epaulet.  It is certainly a camp of your people.  The lake is supposed to be under their command, and if the French should make a new incursion here upon its shores they would not build their fires so boldly.  Now, I see another gleam, and I hear the ring of axes.  They are not boat builders, because no boats, either finished or unfinished, show at the water’s edge.  They are probably cutting wood for their fires.  I hear, too, the crack of a whip, which means that they have wagons, and the presence of wagons indicates a large force.  They may be coming ahead with supplies for our great army when it advances.  I can now see men in uniform, and there are some red coats among them.  Hold your paddle as high as you can, Dagaeoga, as a sign that we are friends, and I will send the canoe in toward the shore.  Ah, they see us now, and men are coming down to the lake’s edge to meet us!  It is a large camp, and it should hold enough men to make St. Luc give up the siege of Colden.”

The two sent the canoe swiftly toward the land, where soldiers and others in hunter’s dress were already gathered to meet them.  Robert saw a tall, thin officer in a Colonial uniform, standing on the narrow beach, and, assuming him to be in command, he said as the canoe swept in: 

“We are messengers, sir, from the force of Captain Colden, which is besieged at the sawmill ten or twelve miles farther north.”

“Besieged, did you say?” said the officer, speaking in a sharp, dry voice.  “It’s one of those French tricks they’re always playing on us, rushing in under our very noses, and trying to cut out our forces.”

“That’s it, sir.  The French and Indian host, in this case, is led by St. Luc, the ablest and most daring of all their partisans, and, unless you give help, they’ll have to escape as best they can in what boats they have.”

“As I’m a good Massachusetts man, I expected something of this kind.  I sent word to Pownall, our Governor, that we must be extremely cautious in respect to the French, but he thinks the army of General Abercrombie will overwhelm everything.  Forest fighting is very different from that of the open fields, a fact which the French seem to have mastered better than we have.  My name, young sir, is Elihu Strong.  I’m a colonel of the Massachusetts militia, and I command the force that you see posted here.”

“And mine, sir, is Robert Lennox, a free lance, and this is Tayoga, of the clan of the Bear, of the great Onondaga nation, a devoted friend of ours and the finest trailer the world has ever produced.”

“Ah, I heard something of you both when I was at Albany from one Jacobus Huysman, a stout and worthy burgher, who spoke well of you, and who hazarded a surmise that I might meet you somewhere in the neighborhood of the lakes.”

“We lived in the house of Mynheer Jacobus when we went to school in Albany.  We owe him much.”