Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/371

Rh would need to watch every moment lest an arrow, winged with flaming tow, should fire their combustible defences, or they should expose head or limb to foes armed now with the white man's weapons as well as their own, and skilled already in some of the arts and guile of their enemies.

The courage of the garrison was nerved in every fibre and muscle to hold the fort; bearing almost inconceivable drafts upon their fortitude and endurance, because they well knew what horrors and torments would attend their fate if they faltered and were vanquished. We read with creepings of our flesh, and as if we were having part in the long-drawn agony, the literally faithful reports from these forest strongholds. As when we witness the marvellous feats of acrobats and jugglers, or listen to the strains of some gifted musician, or admire the genius of an artist in some consummate work, we are led to marvel at the manifold and latent capacities and aptitudes of our common human nature in its play and in its finer endowments, — so, when we are made to realize what men have dared and done, what they have effected and endured, and how they have existed and also found the zest of a strange joy through perils and woes, even the relation of which we cannot bear, then also are we reminded of what there is of latent power and ability in men. One grows distasteful of sentimental romance and the creations of fiction who has informed himself of such real things in man's exposures and ventures and endurings. It seems heartless to play with such stern experiences as if fancy or rhythm could either soften or heighten them.

In keeping up communication between these forest garrisons with each other and with their base, it was always necessary — and the emergency was greatest when the peril or disaster was most threatening and dire — to send expresses through the haunted wilderness. Whenever the straits or the baffled wits or the deliberate judgment of the officer in command decided that a scout or messenger