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At the height of the trouble, when Stuart and Demeré, themselves anxious and nervous, and greatly reduced by the poor quality and scarcity of food, sat together and speculated on the problem of Montgomery's silence, and the continued absence of the express, and wondered how long this state of things could be maintained, yearning for, yet fearing the end, talking as they dared not talk to any human being but each to the other, Ensign Whitson burst into the room with an excited face and the news that there had been a fight over in the northeast bastion at the further side of the terrepleine.
"They ought to show a white flag," said Demeré, exactingly, like the martinet he was.
"I am anxious as to the homing qualities of our dove that we are about to send out of this ark of ours," he said, as he lay stretched out at full length on the buffalo rug on the floor, in the moonlight that fell so peacefully in at the window of his friend's bedroom. Demeré was recumbent on his narrow camp-bed, so still, so silent, that more than once Stuart asked him if he slept.
The moonlight was coming in at the window, reminding Stuart of that night when he lay at length on the rug and consulted with Demeré and anxiously foreboded events, the news of Montgomery's departure from the country having fallen upon them like a crushing blow. How prescient of disaster they had felt but how little they had appraised its force!
The courteous Captain Demeré handed her to the door, and she stepped out from the bizarre decorated mess-hall into the dark night, with the stars showing a chill scintillation as of the approach of winter in their white glitter high in the sky, and the looming bastion close at hand.
"I hope you will not acquaint him with the circumstances," she said, stiffly. "By no means," said Demeré, appreciating her scruples. "That sort of thing is beyond discipline. The men in a garrison will tell everything they know or think they know." Odalie sat for a moment longer.
"Of course Captain Stuart couldn't have known that his valued friend, the great chief, Willinawaugh, was to be passing with the English party, but, sure, he would take it mighty ill if the chief did not stop over, too, and lie at the fort to-night, an' he so seldom up from Toquoe! Captain Demeré, too, will expect the great chief. My word on't, he will."
"Here read them, John I can't," said Demeré, handing the package to Stuart, and throwing himself into a chair to listen. Although the suspense had been of the kind that does not usually herald surcease of anxiety, he was not prepared for the face of consternation with which Stuart silently perused the scrawled lines. "From Montgomery!" he exclaimed.
Demeré was with him still, not in the guise of that white, stark face, upturned now to the stars on the plains of Taliquo, but in his serene, staid presence as he lived; together they were at Fort Loudon, consulting, planning, as in its happier days; now it was the capacity of the spring which they wished to enlarge, and this they had done with blasting-powder; now it was the device to add to the comfort of the garrison by framing the little porches that stood before the doors of the barracks; now it was the erection of an out-work on the side exposed to assault by the river, and they were marking off the ravelin, Corporal O'Flynn and a squad, with the tapes, and directing the fashioning of the gabions, the Indians peacefully sitting by the while like some big, unintelligent, woodland animals, while the great, basket-like frames were woven of white oak splints and then filled with the solid earth.
Josephine fixed an amazed stare upon his polished shoes as he crossed his legs, never having seen any men's foot-gear save a buskin of deer hide. "The men have a natural interest in warfare," suggested Odalie, forlornly, seeking to be responsive to his conversational efforts. "Warfare!" exclaimed Captain Demeré, with sudden animation. "Contention with savages is not warfare!
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