Everything being thus mapped out with almost diabolical cunning , the main body of the redskins folded their blankets around them , and in the phlegmatic manner that is to them , the pearl of manhood squatted above the children 's home , awaiting the cold moment when they should deal pale death . Here dreaming , though wide-awake , of the exquisite tortures to which they were to put him at break of day , those confiding savages were found by the treacherous Hook . From the accounts afterwards supplied by such of the scouts as escaped the carnage , he does not seem even to have paused at the rising ground , though it is certain that in that grey light he must have seen it : no thought of waiting to be attacked appears from first to last to have visited his subtle mind ; he would not even hold off till the night was nearly spent ; on he pounded with no policy but to fall to -LSB- get into combat -RSB- . What could the bewildered scouts do , masters as they were of every war-like artifice save this one , but trot helplessly after him , exposing themselves fatally to view , while they gave pathetic utterance to the coyote cry . Around the brave Tiger Lily were a dozen of her stoutest warriors , and they suddenly saw the perfidious pirates bearing down upon them . Fell from their eyes then the film through which they had looked at victory . No more would they torture at the stake . For them the happy hunting-grounds was now . They knew it ; but as their father 's sons they acquitted themselves . Even then they had time to gather in a phalanx -LSB- dense formation -RSB- that would have been hard to break had they risen quickly , but this they were forbidden to do by the traditions of their race . It is written that the noble savage must never express surprise in the presence of the white . Thus terrible as the sudden appearance of the pirates must have been to them , they remained stationary for a moment , not a muscle moving ; as if the foe had come by invitation . Then , indeed , the tradition gallantly upheld , they seized their weapons , and the air was torn with the war-cry ; but it was now too late . It is no part of ours to describe what was a massacre rather than a fight . Thus perished many of the flower of the Piccaninny tribe . Not all unavenged did they die , for with Lean Wolf fell Alf Mason , to disturb the Spanish Main no more , and among others who bit the dust were Geo . Scourie , Chas . Turley , and the Alsatian Foggerty . Turley fell to the tomahawk of the terrible Panther , who ultimately cut a way through the pirates with Tiger Lily and a small remnant of the tribe . To what extent Hook is to blame for his tactics on this occasion is for the historian to decide .
Had he waited on the XXXXX ground till the proper hour he and his men would probably have been butchered ; and in judging him it is only fair to take this into account .
acquitted break come confiding exposing gather paused risen rising save