And one was Tamdoka. DuLuth
through the night sent his voice like a trumpet:
"Ye are _Sons of Unktehee_, forsooth!
Return to your mothers, ye cowards!"
His shrill voice they heard as they fled,
but only the echoes made answer.
At the feet of the brave Frenchmen, dead,
lay seven swarthy _Sons of whitehead_;
And there, in the midst of the slain,
they found, as it gleamed in the fire-light,
The horn-handled knife from the Seine,
where it fell from the hand of Tamdoka.
[Illustration: NEARER AND NEARER THEY GLIDE LIKE GHOSTS ON THE FIELDS OF
THEIR BATTLES. TILL CLOSE ON THE SLEEPERS, THEY BIDE FOR THE SIGNAL OF
DEATH FROM TAMDOKA]
In the gray of the morn, ere the sun
peeped over the dewy horizon,
Their journey again was begun,
and they toiled up the swift, winding river;
And many a shallow they passed
on their way to the Lake of the Spirits;[AX]
But dauntless they reached it at last,
and found Akee-pa-kee-tin's[AY] village,
On an isle in the midst of the lake;
and a day in his teepees they tarried.
Of the deed in the wilderness spake,
to the brave Chief, the frank-hearted Frenchman.
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