The instant their mistake was rectified, the whole
party retraced the error with the utmost diligence.
Duncan willingly relinquished the support of Cora
to the arm of Uncas and Cora as readily accepted the
welcome assistance. Men, hot and angry in pursuit,
were evidently on their footsteps, and each instant
threatened their capture, if not their destruction.
“Point de quartier aux coquins!” cried
an eager pursuer, who seemed to direct the operations
of the enemy.
“Stand firm, and be ready, my gallant Sixtieths!”
suddenly exclaimed a voice above them; “wait
to see the enemy, fire low and sweep the glacis.”
“Father! father!” exclaimed a piercing
cry from out the mist: “it is I! Alice!
thy own Elsie! Spare, oh! save your daughters!”
“Hold!” shouted the former speaker, in
the awful tones of parental agony, the sound reaching
even to the woods, and rolling back in solemn echo.
“’Tis she! God has restored me to
my children! Throw open the sally-port; to the
field, Sixtieths, to the field; pull not a trigger,
lest ye kill my lambs! Drive off these dogs of
France with your steel.”
Duncan heard the grating of the rusty hinges, and
darting to the spot, directed by the sound, he met
a long line of dark red warriors, passing swiftly
toward the glacis. He knew them for his own battalion
of the Royal Americans, and flying to their head,
soon swept every trace of his pursuers from before
the works.
For an instant, Cora and Alice had stood trembling
and bewildered by this unexpected desertion; but before
either had leisure for speech, or even thought, an
officer of gigantic frame, whose locks were bleached
with years and service, but whose air of military grandeur
had been rather softened than destroyed by time, rushed
out of the body of mist, and folded them to his bosom,
while large scalding tears rolled down his pale and
wrinkled cheeks, and he exclaimed, in the peculiar
accent of Scotland:
“For this I thank thee, Lord! Let danger
come as it will, thy servant is now prepared!”
“Then go we in,
to know his embassy;
Which I could, with
ready guess, declare,
Before the Frenchmen
speak a word of it.”
—King Henry
V
A few succeeding days were passed amid the privations,
the uproar, and the dangers of the siege, which was
vigorously pressed by a power, against whose approaches
Munro possessed no competent means of resistance.
It appeared as if Webb, with his army, which lay slumbering
on the banks of the Hudson, had utterly forgotten the
strait to which his countrymen were reduced.
Montcalm had filled the woods of the portage with
his savages, every yell and whoop from whom rang through
the British encampment, chilling the hearts of men
who were already but too much disposed to magnify
the danger.
