After some deliberation, I concluded that I would hail my friend who was yet an enemy, or at least in the position of one. I was afraid to shout to him, for most likely, with his forest cunning, he would think it a mere device to entrap him into an unwary action that would cost his life. These wilderness men are not to be deluded in that manner. However, there might be others lurking near, perhaps British and Americans both, and either one or the other would take me for an enemy and shoot me.
But at last I called in a loud whisper to the sentinel. I said that I was a friend, though I came in the guise of an enemy. The whisper was shrill and penetrating, and I was confident that it reached him, for the distance was not great. But he made no sign. If he heard me he trusted me not. I think there are times when we can become too cunning, too suspicious. This I felt with a great conviction to be one of such times.
As a second experiment, I decided that I would expose my hat or a portion of my uniform, in the hope that it would draw his fire. Then I could rush upon him and shout my explanations at him before he could reload his gun and shoot a second bullet at me. But this attempt was as dire a failure as the whispering. He was too wary to be caught by such a trick, with which he had doubtless been familiar for years.
I almost swore in my vexation at being stopped in such a manner. But vexation soon gave way to deepening alarm. I could not retreat from the tree without exposing myself to his fire, and there I was, a prisoner. As I lay against the tree-trunk, sheltering myself from the sharpshooter, a bullet fired by some one else might cut my life short at any moment. I waited some minutes, and again I raised myself up and took a peep. There he was, crouched behind his log, and still waiting for me. He seemed scarce to have moved. I knew the illimitable patience of these forest-bred men, the hours that they could spend waiting for their prey, immovable like wooden images. I repeat that I had seen them at work at Saratoga, and I knew their capabilities. I liked not the prospect, and I had good reason for it.
The old chill, the old depression, which was born part of the night and part of my situation, came upon me. I could do naught while my grim sentinel lay in the path. I knew of no device that would tempt him to action, to movement. I wearied my brain in the endeavor to think of some way to form a treaty with him or to tell him who and what I was. At last another plan suggested itself, I tore off a piece of the white facing of my uniform, and, putting it on the end of my gun-barrel, thrust it out as a sign of amity. I waved it about for full five minutes, but the watcher heeded not; perchance he thought this too was a trick to draw him from cover, and he would have none of it. Again I cursed excessive caution and suspicion, but that did me no good, save to serve as some slight relief to my feelings.