Chapter 14 - Page 2

to ensure success.

Although Ellen was vastly their superior in that spirit which emanates
from moral qualities, she was by no means the equal of the two eldest
daughters of Esther, in the important military property of
insensibility to danger. Reared in the hardihood of a migrating life,
on the skirts of society, where they had become familiarised to the
sights and dangers of the wilderness, these girls promised fairly to
become, at some future day, no less distinguished than their mother
for daring, and for that singular mixture of good and evil, which, in
a wider sphere of action, would probably have enabled the wife of the
squatter to enrol her name among the remarkable females of her time.
Esther had already, on one occasion, made good the log tenement of
Ishmael against an inroad of savages; and on another, she had been
left for dead by her enemies, after a defence that, with a more
civilised foe, would have entitled her to the honours of a liberal
capitulation. These facts, and sundry others of a similar nature, had
often been recapitulated with suitable exultation in the presence of
her daughters, and the bosoms of the young Amazons were now strangely
fluctuating between natural terror and the ambitious wish to do
something that might render them worthy of being the children of such
a mother. It appeared that the opportunity for distinction, of this
wild character, was no longer to be denied them.

The party of strangers was already within a hundred rods of the rock.
Either consulting their usual wary method of advancing, or admonished
by the threatening attitudes of two figures, who had thrust forth the
barrels of as many old muskets from behind the stone entrenchment, the
new comers halted, under favour of an inequality in the ground, where
a growth of grass thicker than common offered the advantage of
concealment. From this spot they reconnoitred the fortress for several
anxious, and to Ellen, interminable minutes. Then one advanced singly,
and apparently more in the character of a herald than of an assailant.

"Phoebe, do you fire," and "no, Hetty, you," were beginning to be
heard between the half-frightened and yet eager daughters of the
squatter, when Ellen probably saved the advancing stranger from some
imminent alarm, if from no greater danger, by exclaiming--

"Lay down the muskets; it is Dr. Battius!"

Her subordinates so far complied, as to withdraw their hands from the
locks, though the threatening barrels still maintained the portentous
levels. The naturalist, who had advanced with sufficient deliberation
to note the smallest hostile demonstration of the garrison, now raised
a white handkerchief on the end of his fusee, and came within