French and English: A Story of the Struggle in America. Everett-Green Evelyn
and so prisoners were wanted more urgently than ever.
At midday upon a steamy midsummer day, one of the young Rangers who had been wandering about near to the camp in search of game came back with cautious haste to report that he had seen a small party of French leaving the fort by the water gate, cross the narrow waterway, and plunge into the forest. He had observed the direction taken, and thought they could easily surround and cut them off. He did not think there were more than six in the party; probably they were out hunting, unconscious of the proximity of any foe.
Stark was on his feet in a second. This was just the chance for the Rangers. Seizing their arms and hastily conferring together, they laid their plans, and then divided themselves into three companies of three, planning to fetch a circuit, keep under cover, and thus surround the little company, who would believe themselves entirely overmatched, and some of whom would surrender at discretion, if they did not all do so.
Stark, Fritz, and Charles remained together, taking a certain path as agreed upon. They crept like Indians through the wood. Hardly the breaking of a branch betrayed their movements. In Charles's eyes the slumbering fire leaped into life. He always lived in the hope of again meeting his foe face to face. He knew that he was probably within the walls of Ticonderoga. Any day might bring them face to face once more.
Softly and cautiously they crept through the brushwood. Stark had made a sign of extra caution, for some nameless instinct seemed to have told him that they were near the quarry now. He paused a moment, held up his hand as if in warning; and at that instant there suddenly arose from the heart of the wood the unwonted sound of a sweet, fresh girl's voice raised in a little French song!
The men looked at one another in amaze. Were their ears deceiving them? But no; the trilling notes came nearer. Involuntarily they pressed forward a few paces, and then came to a dead stop. What was it they saw?
A maiden, a young girl of perhaps seventeen summers, her hat suspended by a broad ribbon from her arm, and half filled with flowers, was wandering through the woodland tracks as quietly as though in her sheltered home across the water. As she moved she sang snatches of song in a clear, bird-like voice; and when her eyes suddenly fell upon the three strange figures in the path, there was no fear in their violet depths, only a sort of startled bewilderment, instantly followed by an eagerness that there was no mistaking.
"Oh," she exclaimed eagerly, in accents which denoted almost unmixed pleasure, and speaking English with only a very slight intonation denoting her mixed nationality, "I am sure that I have my wish at last! You are Rogers' Rangers!"
Stark and Fritz had doffed their hats in a moment. They were more nonplussed a great deal than this fearless maiden, who looked like the goddess of the glade, secure in her right of possession. Her eyes were dancing with glee; her mouth had curved to a delicious smile of triumph.
"I have been longing to see the Rangers ever since I arrived at Ticonderoga; but they declared they were terrible fire-eating men, worse than the wild Indians, and that they would kill me if I adventured myself near to them-kill me or carry me away captive. But I said 'No!'" (and the girl threw back her head in a gesture of pride and scorn); "I said that the Rangers were Englishmen-English gentlemen, many of them-and that they did not war with women! I was not afraid; I knew they would not lay a finger upon me.
"I am not wrong, am I, sirs? You would not hurt a maiden who trusts your chivalry and honour?"
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