The night was cloudy and black, and not too still; everything, in fact, was in the boy’s favour as, with beating heart, he wormed his way out of the wigwam and crawled stealthily on his belly from the camp towards the dense gloom of the forest.  Then, almost as he had succeeded in gaining the comparative safety of the trees, beneath his moccasined foot a stick snapped, and a cursed Indian dog gave tongue, rousing the entire pack, and the sleeping camp, like an angry swarm of bees, woke at once to venomous life.

But Kerr by this time was at least clear of the wigwams; if he could but reach that rock by the lake-side, and if the Frenchman had kept faith, he might get safely away.  Boileau would surely never fail him.  Hampered and constantly tripped up by roots and tangled undergrowth, confused by the blackness of the night, the boy toiled on with thumping heart and shortening breath; and at last, looming above him, was the welcome outlines of the great rock.  But on neither side of it could he find sign of the trader or of his canoe.  And already by the rustlings in the woods and the occasional snapping of dry sticks, he could tell that the pursuing Indians were drawing perilously near him.

“Boileau!” he whispered.  “Boileau!” And then, in an agony of mind he risked all, and shouted: 

“Boileau, Boileau! A moi!”

An angry whisper from almost at his side replied viciously: 

“Pas de chahut, malheureux!  A bord vite, mille dieux!”

And as the canoe silently glided from the shore with the boy safely on board, the form of an Indian could be dimly seen where Kerr had stood the previous moment, and a bullet sang past his ear.

There for the time his more acute troubles ended.  A few days later, at Detroit, a throng of persons, half helpless with laughter, noisily escorted to the Fort a forlorn, bald-headed, painted scare-crow, clad in a tattered Indian blanket, which scare-crow presently introduced itself to the commandant as Andrew Kerr, lately a prisoner of the Indians.

Once recovered from his fatigues and hardships, Andrew, as one of a small force, was sent to Niagara to obtain supplies for the Detroit garrison.  The outward voyage down Lake Erie was safely and pleasantly accomplished.  But these vast American lakes are subject to sudden and violent storms, and on the return trip, during an exceptionally fierce squall, the little 40-ton sloop, heavily laden as she was with military stores, sprang a leak, and to save themselves the crew were forced to run her aground on a gravelly beach under the lee of a projecting headland.  The situation at best was most critical, for if the wind should shift but a few points the sloop must inevitably break up; and not only was the one boat available a mere skiff incapable of living in a heavy sea, but even should they all succeed in safely getting ashore with muskets intact and ammunition dry, their position would still be in the last degree precarious.  For well they knew in what manner of country they were about to set unwilling foot—­forest land occupied by the fiercest and most treacherous of the hostile Indian tribes.  Capture meant death, probably with torture to precede it.