“Major Errington,” continued Henry, “while thanking me, laughed at my forebodings.  Then Wawatam urged me, as his adopted brother, to depart for Sault Ste. Marie.  But I delayed and once more sought Errington, who still ridiculed my fears.  While I was yet expostulating with him we heard the louder shouts of the Indians.  They had rushed through the fort gateway into the enclosure within the palisades in pursuit of a lost ball.  This was but a ruse to gain admittance, for in a moment the laughter and shouts changed to wild yells and warwhoops.  The guard was overpowered in a flash, and in the attack that followed almost the entire garrison was tomahawked and scalped.”

“Ah!” said Brock, “so British lethargy and self-complaisance succumbed to Indian duplicity.”

Then his thoughts turned to Niagara.  He saw the open portals of Fort George, and Tuscarora youths playing the Indian game of ball in the meadows of the Mohawk village.

“Those who escaped massacre at Mackinaw,” said Henry, refilling his stone pipe and resuming his story, “were preserved for a worse fate.  Pontiac’s allies—­and you, Colonel, know something of these matters from the tales told you by the officers of the North-West Company—­entered on a carnival of blood.  From a garret, where a Pawnee Indian woman had secreted me, I saw the captured soldiers tomahawked and scalped, and some butchered like so many cattle, just as required for the cannibal feast that followed.”

“Tortured?” interrogated Brock.

“Tortured!” repeated Henry.  “Why, the diabolical devices that those men resorted to to inflict acute physical agony were inconceivable—­ unutterable, Colonel.”  He paused....  “After all, no worse, perhaps, than the tortures that have been inflicted by civilized fanatics in Europe.”

There was silence for a moment.  Both men were buried deep in thought, the one living in the past, the other striving to forecast the future.

“Through the intercession of Wennway, another friendly Indian,” continued Henry, “my life was spared.  Preparations were made for my secret departure.  As I shoved my canoe into the water, en voyage for Wagoshene, the prayers of Wawatam rang in my ears as, standing on the yellow beach with outstretched arms, he invoked the Gitche Manitou, the Great Spirit, to conduct me in safety to the wigwams of my people.”

“Surely, Master Henry,” commented Isaac Brock, “with all the latent qualities for good that seem to underlie the outward ferocity of some redmen, firmness and kindness are alone needed to convert them into faithful friends.”