The narrative follows young cousins serving with colonial forces as they leave frontier posts to take part in campaigns along the lakes and the St. Lawrence, encountering wilderness dangers, hostile encounters, capture and imprisonment, and hazardous river passages. Interwoven are detailed episodes of scouting, small-scale skirmishes, a dramatic assault on the heights above a besieged city that leads to a pivotal battle, and a winter of waiting and peril. After imprisonment, escape, and renewed service the youths join the converging columns that result in the capture of the river city and the war's concluding shift toward peace.