“I’ve faught on land, I’ve faught at sea,
          At hame I faught my aunty, O;
        But I met the deevil and Dundee
          On the braes o’ Killiecrankie, O.”

I piped it at the top of my voice, and sure enough the regiment took up the chorus, for it had a famous swing.

       “An’ ye had been where I had been,
          Ye wad na be sae cantie, O;
        An’ ye had seen what I ha’e seen’
          On the braes o’ Killiecrankie, O.”

When their breath was gone we heard Cowan shout that he had found a path under his feet,—­a path that was on dry land in the summer-time.  We followed it, feeling carefully, and at length, when we had suffered all that we could bear, we stumbled on to a dry ridge.  Here we spent another night of torture, with a second backwater facing us coated with a full inch of ice.

And still there was nothing to eat.

CHAPTER XIX

THE HAIR BUYER TRAPPED

To lie the night on adamant, pierced by the needles of the frost; to awake shivering and famished, until the meaning of an inch of ice on the backwater comes to your mind,—­these are not calculated to put a man into an equable mood to listen to oratory.  Nevertheless there was a kind of oratory to fit the case.  To picture the misery of these men is well-nigh impossible.  They stood sluggishly in groups, dazed by suffering, and their faces were drawn and their eyes ringed, their beards and hair matted.  And many found it in their hearts to curse Clark and that government for which he fought.

When the red fire of the sun glowed through the bare branches that morning, it seemed as if the campaign had spent itself like an arrow which drops at the foot of the mark.  Could life and interest and enthusiasm be infused again in such as these?  I have ceased to marvel how it was done.  A man no less haggard than the rest, but with a compelling force in his eyes, pointed with a blade to the hills across the river.  They must get to them, he said, and their troubles would be ended.  He said more, and they cheered him.  These are the bare facts.  He picked a man here, and another there, and these went silently to a grim duty behind the regiment.

“If any try to go back, shoot them down!” he cried.

Then with a gun-butt he shattered the ice and was the first to leap into the water under it.  They followed, some with a cheer that was most pitiful of all.  They followed him blindly, as men go to torture, but they followed him, and the splashing and crushing of the ice were sounds to freeze my body.  I was put in a canoe.  In my day I have beheld great suffering and hardship, and none of it compared to this.  Torn with pity, I saw them reeling through the water, now grasping trees and bushes to try to keep their feet, the strongest breaking the way ahead and supporting the weak between them.  More than