by force. I had begun to serve the banquet, at which the red-skins were smacking their lips, and they were casting approving and kindly glances at me, when I remembered my cask of brandy. I knew that this would completely cement our friendship, but I intended to give them only a little at a time to run no risk of intoxicating them. I retired, therefore, to the back of the tent for the purpose of drawing off a little in a bottle. While I was thus employed, one of them put his head into the tent to see what I was about. As he did so, his eye fell on the star of arrows over the head of my couch. A loud exclamation made me turn round. I saw where his glance was directed. My folly and want of forethought in a moment flashed across my mind. All was lost, I perceived. The savages sprang up, and seizing me, pointed to the arrows. I had nothing to say. Perhaps the expression of my countenance betrayed me. Several held me tight while the others spoke. Though I did not understand a word of their language, I could not fail to comprehend the tenor of their speeches. Their action, the intonation of their voices, their angry glances, showed it. “Our friends came here, and this man killed them. We came to look for them, and by the same arts with which he destroyed them he had endeavoured to destroy us. There are the proofs of his guilt. How else did he become possessed of those arrows?” Such, I have no doubt, is a very concise abridgment of their harangues.

They continued speaking for an hour or more, till they worked each other up into a perfect fury. Their eyes gleamed at me with malignant hatred. They foamed at the mouth; they gnashed their teeth at me. I thought they would have torn me limb from limb; but they were reserving me for a far more refined system of torture. Having condemned me to death, they lashed my hands behind me, and my feet together, and placed me in a sitting position on my bed, there to await my doom, while they all crouched down round the fire, where, stern and grim, they finished the repast I had prepared for them in horrible silence.