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Montreal, forgetful of his councillors, traversed his tent with hasty strides; then summoning the officer who had admitted Adrian, he said, "Count Landau still keeps the pass?" "Yes, General!" "Hie thee fast back, then the ambuscade must tarry till nightfall. We have trapped the wrong fox." The officer departed, and shortly afterwards Montreal broke up the divan.
All was in vain. The bear vanished in the forest like a flying shadow; and, presuming from his known ferocity and vindictiveness that he had prepared an ambuscade for us in the woods, we deemed it the better part of valour to abandon the pursuit.
Half the party were then sent back, under the overseer, to conceal themselves in the scrub and allow the natives to pass on in pursuit of the tracks; this ambuscade, however, was scented out by the dogs accompanying the blacks, and the natives halted, poising their spears. One of the men hastily fired, and a retreat was made for the bank of the river by the blacks.
As it was, the French commander nearly succeeded in drawing the thousand men that Johnson had sent out to meet him into an ambuscade, and among the slain was brave Colonel Williams, commander of the Provincials in this engagement, and gallant Chief Hendrick, who had accompanied him with two hundred Mohawks.
But inasmuch as the convoy across the moors, under his command, would be strong, and strongly armed, the Doones must be sure to send not less than a score of men, if possible. He himself, at a place agreed upon, and fit for an ambuscade, would call a halt, and contrive in the darkness to pour a little water into the priming of his company's guns.
The girl divined the unspoken word and drew back a trifle. Retreat is the first and essential principle of feminine strategy, and in practice it should suggest the ambuscade to even the most thoughtless of masculine minds. But it never does. Constans stepped up a little closer. "Nanna must go with me," repeated the girl, hurriedly.
More than once she had permitted her eyes to rest upon him with that peculiarly womanish gaze which, although superficially of a blank innocence, is yet all-seeing and even shoots little fine arrows of questions from its ambuscade. But now she was ignoring his lordship as utterly as she did the Belknap-Jacksons.
He concluded by telling them not to fire a shot until they heard the report of his musket; that then they were to pepper away as hard as they could pelt, taking, however, a sure and steady aim at every shot. In the meantime the bushmen, whose advance had been, and still was, very slow and cautious, as if they dreaded an ambuscade, had approached to within seventy yards of the house.
It came about a month after the repulse at the Gate Pa. For months the friendlies had been guarding the passage of the river against a strong Hau-Hau force. At last, tired of waiting, they challenged the enemy to a fair fight on the island of Moutua. It was agreed that neither side should attempt to take advantage of the other by surprise or ambuscade. They landed at opposite ends of the islet.
Robin Hood assured them that he had detached a party in the direction of the road they were to pass, who would not fail to discover and apprize them of any secret ambuscade; and that he had little doubt they would find the ways secure, or, if otherwise, would receive such timely notice of the danger as would enable them to fall back on a strong troop of archers, with which he himself proposed to follow on the same route.
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