The crews that had covered the beach and the ridge had gone: Cap Huff and his marines had gone: Nason and Tom Bickford and the rest—they were all gone. I remembered the rapidity with which Arnold always acted. He must have rounded up the crews and rushed them off for Crown Point—and thought, of course, that we were among them.

By carrying Nathaniel pig-a-back we might catch up with the column, unless our legs gave out from hunger.

I went back across the ridge, moving as rapidly as a dead-tired man could. Beneath the pines, where I had left Nathaniel and Doc and Verrieul, there was nobody. I thought I had come to the wrong place, but I saw I hadn’t. The pine needles bore traces of our labors over Nathaniel.

I looked at the spot stupidly, stared about me like a fool, then called loudly, shouting Doc’s name, and Verrieul’s. There was no answer. I took a few steps forward among the pines and shouted again. Then I held my breath and listened.

A squirrel whisked into sight on a tree trunk overhead. He flattened himself, his tail all a-twitch with nervousness, and peered down—not at me, but at something on the opposite side of the tree.

I looked at him dully and scratched my head, thinking: “Yes, he’s looking at something—– No, at somebody; there’s somebody on the other side of that tree!”

Then for a moment or two I had a strong conviction that I was asleep—asleep at last, somewhere, I wondered where—and that this was a dream.

I’ve often heard people say, “I thought I must be dreaming,” but for those few moments after the vanishing of Nathaniel and Doc and Verrieul, and the squirrel’s peeping down the wrong side of that tree, I believed in sober truth that I was having a dream—an ugly dream, too—and that I’d wake from it presently and find out where I really was. I’d been passing through thunderous nightmares in which I knew I was awake; here was another, but in so curious and ominous a silence that I couldn’t credit its actuality. Then I said to myself suddenly, “Look out!” I felt my heart thudding, was awake and had a hint of the grotesque reality.

I moved softly backward, loosening my hatchet in my belt.

Behind me I felt a silent movement—the loom of a body near at hand. I whirled. An Indian was so close on me that I could smell his oily, sweetish smell. His face was painted black, and he seemed enormous. He held a musket almost against my stomach. When I gave ground before him, another Indian grasped my arms from the rear. Two others came from among the trees and looked quietly at me.