Chapter 20:  The Path Down The Heights.

As the midshipman crawled away from the tent of the French general, he adopted the precautions which James had suggested, and felt the ground carefully for twigs or sticks each time he moved.  The still-glowing embers of the campfires warned him where the Indians and Canadians were sleeping, and, carefully avoiding these, he made his way up beyond the limits of the camp.  There were no sentries posted here, for the French were perfectly safe from attack from that quarter, and, once fairly beyond the camp, the midshipman rose to his feet, and made his way to the edge of the slopes above the Saint Lawrence.  He walked for about a mile, and then paused, on the very edge of the sharp declivity, and whistled as agreed upon.

A hundred yards further, he repeated the signal.  The fourth time he whistled he heard, just below him, the answer, and a minute later James Walsham stood beside him.

“You young scamp, what are you doing here?”

“It was not my fault, Captain Walsham, it wasn’t indeed; but I should have been tomahawked if I had stayed there a moment longer.”

“What do you mean by ‘you would have been tomahawked,’” James asked angrily, for he was convinced that the midshipman had made up his mind, all along, to accompany him.

“The pilot of the Sutherland swam ashore, with the news that you had been taken prisoner on purpose, and were really a spy.”

“But how on earth did he know that?” James asked.  “I took care the man was not on deck, when we made the holes in the boat, and he does not understand a word of English, so he could not have overheard what the men said.”

“I am sorry to say, sir, that it is a case of treachery, and that one of our officers is concerned in it.  The man said that an officer released him from his cell, and took him to his cabin, and then lowered him by a rope through the porthole.”

“Impossible!” James Walsham said.

“It sounds impossible, sir; but I am afraid it isn’t, for the officer gave him a note to bring to the general, telling him all about it, and that note I have got in my pocket now.”

The midshipman then related the whole circumstances of his discovery.

“It is an extraordinary affair,” James said.  “However, you are certainly not to blame for making your escape when you did.  You could not have got back into your tent till too late; and, even could you have done so, it might have gone hard with you, for of course they would have known that you were, what they would call an accomplice, in the affair.”

“I will go on if you like, sir,” the boy said, “and hide somewhere else, so that if they track me they will not find you.”

“No, no,” James said, “I don’t think there’s any fear of our being tracked.  Indian eyes are sharp; but they can’t perform miracles.  In the forest it would be hopeless to escape them, but here the grass is short and the ground dry, and, without boots, we cannot have left any tracks that would be followed, especially as bodies of French troops have been marching backwards and forwards along the edge of these heights for the last fortnight.  I won’t say that it is impossible that they can find us, but it will not be by our tracks.