Suddenly the baying of hounds was heard.  “Hurra! there are dogs; men must be near.”  A volley from a dozen rifles was the answer to our explanation.  The shots were fired not two hundred yards from us, yet we saw nothing of the persons who fired them.  The wild beasts around us trembled and crouched before this new danger, but did not attempt to move a step.  We ourselves were standing in the midst of them up to our waists in water.  “Who goes there?” we shouted.  Another volley, and this time not one hundred yards off.  We saw the flashes of the pieces, and heard voices talking in a dialect compounded of French and Indian.  We perceived that we had to do with Acadians.  A third volley, and the bullets whistled about our ears.  It was getting past a joke.  “Halt!” shouted we, “stop firing till you see what you are firing at.”  There was a dead silence for a moment, then a burst of savage laughter.  “Fire! fire!” cried two or three voices.

“If you fire,” cried I, “look out for yourselves, for we shall do the same.  Have a care what you are about.”

“Morbleu!  Sacre!” roared half a score of voices.  “Who is that who dares to give us orders?  Fire on the dogs!”

“If you do, we return it.”

“Sacre!” screamed the savages.  “They are gentlemen from the towns.  Their speech betrays them.  Shoot them—­the dogs, the spies!  What do they want in the prairie?”

“Your blood be on your own heads,” cried I. And, with the feelings of desperate men, we levelled our guns in the direction in which we had seen the flashes of the last volley.  At that moment—­“Halt!  What is here?” shouted a stentorian voice close to us.

“Stop firing, or you are dead men,” cried five or six other voices.

“Sacre! ce sont des Americains,” muttered the Acadians.

“Monsieur Carleton!” cried a voice.

“Here!” replied my friend.  A boat shot out of the smoke, between us and our antagonists.  Carleton’s servant was in it.  The next moment we were surrounded by a score of Acadians and half-a-dozen Americans.

It appeared that the Acadians, so soon as they perceived the prairie to be on fire, had got into boat and descended a creek that flowed into the Chicot creek, on which we now were.  The beasts of the forest and prairie, flying to the water, found themselves inclosed in the angle formed by the two creeks, and their retreat being cut off by the fire, they fell an easy prey to the Acadians, wild, half savage fellows, who slaughtered them in a profusion and with a brutality that excited our disgust, a feeling which the Americans seemed to share.

“Well, stranger!” said one of the latter, an old man, to Carleton, “do you go with them Acadians or come with us?”

“Who are you, my friends?”

“Friends!” repeated the Yankee, shaking his head, “your friendships are soon made.  Friends, indeed!  We ain’t that yet; but if you be minded to come with us, well and good.”