“It was a great victory,” concluded the eloquent narrator.  “The young conqueror did not sleep a wink that night.  Until the morning light he was on the quarter-deck of the Lawrence, doing what he could to relieve his suffering comrades, while the stifled groans of the wounded men echoed from ship to ship.  The next day the dead, both the British and the American, were buried in a wild and solitary spot on the shore.  And there they sleep the sleep of the brave, with the sullen waves to sing their perpetual requiem.”

We sat in silence a long time after; no one was disposed to speak.  It came to us with power there on the moonlit lake, a realization of the hard-fought battle, the gallant bearing of the young commander, his daring passage in an open boat through the enemy’s fire to the Niagara, the motto on his flag, the manner in which he carried his vessel alone through the enemy’s line, and then closed in half pistol-shot, his laconic account of the victory to his superior officer, the ships stripped of their spars and canvas, the groans of the wounded, and the mournful spectacle of the burial on the lake shore.

Our next stopping-place was at Detroit, the metropolis of Michigan, on the river of the same name, the colony of the old Frenchman De la Mothe Cadillac, the colonial Pontchartrain, the scene of Pontiac’s defeat and of Hull’s treachery, cowardice, or incapacity, grandly seated on the green Michigan shore, overlooking the best harbor on the Great Lakes, and with a population of more than one hundred thousand.  Two stormy days kept us within doors most of the time.  The third day we were again “on board,” steaming up Detroit River into Lake St. Clair.  On and on we kept, till the green waters of Huron sparkled beneath the keel of our steamer.  All the way over the lake we kept the shores of Michigan in sight, beaches of white sand alternating with others of limestone shingle, and the forests behind, a tangled growth of cedar, fir, and spruce in impenetrable swamps, or a scanty, scrubby growth upon a sandy soil.  Two hours were spent at Thunder Bay, where the steamer stopped for a supply of wood, and we went steaming on toward Mackinaw, a hundred miles away.  At sunset of that day the shores of the green rocky island dawned upon us.  The steamer swept up to an excellent dock, as the sinking sun was pouring a stream of molten gold across the flood, out of the amber gates of the west.

“At last Mackinaw, great in history and story,” announced the Historian leaning on the taffrail and gazing at the clear pebbly bottom and through forty feet of water.

“My history consists of a series of statues and tableaux—­statues of the great men, tableaux of the great events,” said Vincent.  “Were there any such at Mackinaw?”

“Yes,” answered Hugh, “two statues and one tableau—­the former Marquette and Mae-che-ne-mock-qua, the latter the massacre at Fort Michilimakinack.”

“The event happened during Pontiac’s war, I believe,” I hastened to observe.  “The Indians took the place by stratagem, did they not?”