...”In such a night
Did This be fearfully o’ertrip the dew;
And saw the lion’s shadow ere himself.”—Merchant of Venice
The suddenness of the flight of his guide, and the wild cries of the pursuers,
caused Heyward to remain fixed, for a few moments, in inactive surprise. Then
recollecting the importance of securing the fugitive, he dashed aside the
surrounding bushes, and pressed eagerly forward to lend his aid in the chase.
Before he had, however, proceeded a hundred yards, he met the three foresters
already returning from their unsuccessful pursuit.
“Why so soon disheartened!” he exclaimed; “the scoundrel must
be concealed behind some of these trees, and may yet be secured. We are not
safe while he goes at large.”
“Would you set a cloud to chase the wind?” returned the
disappointed scout; “I heard the imp brushing over the dry leaves, like a
black snake, and blinking a glimpse of him, just over ag’in yon big pine,
I pulled as it might be on the scent; but ’twouldn’t do! and yet
for a reasoning aim, if anybody but myself had touched the trigger, I should
call it a quick sight; and I may be accounted to have experience in these
matters, and one who ought to know. Look at this sumach; its leaves are red,
though everybody knows the fruit is in the yellow blossom in the month of
July!”
“’Tis the blood of Le Subtil! he is hurt, and may yet fall!”
“No, no,” returned the scout, in decided disapprobation of this
opinion, “I rubbed the bark off a limb, perhaps, but the creature leaped
the longer for it. A rifle bullet acts on a running animal, when it barks him,
much the same as one of your spurs on a horse; that is, it quickens motion, and
puts life into the flesh, instead of taking it away. But when it cuts the
ragged hole, after a bound or two, there is, commonly, a stagnation of further
leaping, be it Indian or be it deer!”
“We are four able bodies, to one wounded man!”
“Is life grievous to you?” interrupted the scout. “Yonder red
devil would draw you within swing of the tomahawks of his comrades, before you
were heated in the chase. It was an unthoughtful act in a man who has so often
slept with the war-whoop ringing in the air, to let off his piece within sound
of an ambushment! But then it was a natural temptation! ’twas very
natural! Come, friends, let us move our station, and in such fashion, too, as
will throw the cunning of a Mingo on a wrong scent, or our scalps will be
drying in the wind in front of Montcalm’s marquee, ag’in this hour
to-morrow.”
This appalling declaration, which the scout uttered with the cool assurance of
a man who fully comprehended, while he did not fear to face the danger, served
to remind Heyward of the importance of the charge with which he himself had
been intrusted. Glancing his eyes around, with a vain effort to pierce the
gloom that was thickening beneath the leafy arches of the forest, he felt as
if, cut off from human aid, his unresisting companions would soon lie at the
entire mercy of those barbarous enemies, who, like beasts of prey, only waited
till the gathering darkness might render their blows more fatally certain. His
awakened imagination, deluded by the deceptive light, converted each waving
bush, or the fragment of some fallen tree, into human forms, and twenty times
he fancied he could distinguish the horrid visages of his lurking foes, peering
from their hiding places, in never ceasing watchfulness of the movements of his
party. Looking upward, he found that the thin fleecy clouds, which evening had
painted on the blue sky, were already losing their faintest tints of
rose-color, while the imbedded stream, which glided past the spot where he
stood, was to be traced only by the dark boundary of its wooded banks.
“What is to be done!” he said, feeling the utter helplessness of
doubt in such a pressing strait; “desert me not, for God’s sake!
remain to defend those I escort, and freely name your own reward!”
His companions, who conversed apart in the language of their tribe, heeded not
this sudden and earnest appeal. Though their dialogue was maintained in low and
cautious sounds, but little above a whisper, Heyward, who now approached, could
easily distinguish the earnest tones of the younger warrior from the more
deliberate speeches of his seniors. It was evident that they debated on the
propriety of some measure, that nearly concerned the welfare of the travelers.
Yielding to his powerful interest in the subject, and impatient of a delay that
seemed fraught with so much additional danger, Heyward drew still nigher to the
dusky group, with an intention of making his offers of compensation more
definite, when the white man, motioning with his hand, as if he conceded the
disputed point, turned away, saying in a sort of soliloquy, and in the English
tongue:
“Uncas is right! it would not be the act of men to leave such harmless
things to their fate, even though it breaks up the harboring place forever. If
you would save these tender blossoms from the fangs of the worst of serpents,
gentleman, you have neither time to lose nor resolution to throw away!”
“How can such a wish be doubted! Have I not already offered—”
“Offer your prayers to Him who can give us wisdom to circumvent the
cunning of the devils who fill these woods,” calmly interrupted the
scout, “but spare your offers of money, which neither you may live to
realize, nor I to profit by. These Mohicans and I will do what man’s
thoughts can invent, to keep such flowers, which, though so sweet, were never
made for the wilderness, from harm, and that without hope of any other
recompense but such as God always gives to upright dealings. First, you must
promise two things, both in your own name and for your friends, or without
serving you we shall only injure ourselves!”
“Name them.”
“The one is, to be still as these sleeping woods, let what will happen
and the other is, to keep the place where we shall take you, forever a secret
from all mortal men.”
“I will do my utmost to see both these conditions fulfilled.”
“Then follow, for we are losing moments that are as precious as the
heart’s blood to a stricken deer!”
Heyward could distinguish the impatient gesture of the scout, through the
increasing shadows of the evening, and he moved in his footsteps, swiftly,
toward the place where he had left the remainder of the party. When they
rejoined the expecting and anxious females, he briefly acquainted them with the
conditions of their new guide, and with the necessity that existed for their
hushing every apprehension in instant and serious exertions. Although his
alarming communication was not received without much secret terror by the
listeners, his earnest and impressive manner, aided perhaps by the nature of
the danger, succeeded in bracing their nerves to undergo some unlooked-for and
unusual trial. Silently, and without a moment’s delay, they permitted him
to assist them from their saddles, and when they descended quickly to the
water’s edge, where the scout had collected the rest of the party, more
by the agency of expressive gestures than by any use of words.
“What to do with these dumb creatures!” muttered the white man, on
whom the sole control of their future movements appeared to devolve; “it
would be time lost to cut their throats, and cast them into the river; and to
leave them here would be to tell the Mingoes that they have not far to seek to
find their owners!”
“Then give them their bridles, and let them range the woods,”
Heyward ventured to suggest.
“No; it would be better to mislead the imps, and make them believe they
must equal a horse’s speed to run down their chase. Ay, ay, that will
blind their fireballs of eyes! Chingach—Hist! what stirs the bush?”
“The colt.”
“That colt, at least, must die,” muttered the scout, grasping at
the mane of the nimble beast, which easily eluded his hand; “Uncas, your
arrows!”
“Hold!” exclaimed the proprietor of the condemned animal, aloud,
without regard to the whispering tones used by the others; “spare the
foal of Miriam! it is the comely offspring of a faithful dam, and would
willingly injure naught.”
“When men struggle for the single life God has given them,” said
the scout, sternly, “even their own kind seem no more than the beasts of
the wood. If you speak again, I shall leave you to the mercy of the Maquas!
Draw to your arrow’s head, Uncas; we have no time for second
blows.”
The low, muttering sounds of his threatening voice were still audible, when the
wounded foal, first rearing on its hinder legs, plunged forward to its knees.
It was met by Chingachgook, whose knife passed across its throat quicker than
thought, and then precipitating the motions of the struggling victim, he dashed
into the river, down whose stream it glided away, gasping audibly for breath
with its ebbing life. This deed of apparent cruelty, but of real necessity,
fell upon the spirits of the travelers like a terrific warning of the peril in
which they stood, heightened as it was by the calm though steady resolution of
the actors in the scene. The sisters shuddered and clung closer to each other,
while Heyward instinctively laid his hand on one of the pistols he had just
drawn from their holsters, as he placed himself between his charge and those
dense shadows that seemed to draw an impenetrable veil before the bosom of the
forest.
The Indians, however, hesitated not a moment, but taking the bridles, they led
the frightened and reluctant horses into the bed of the river.
At a short distance from the shore they turned, and were soon concealed by the
projection of the bank, under the brow of which they moved, in a direction
opposite to the course of the waters. In the meantime, the scout drew a canoe
of bark from its place of concealment beneath some low bushes, whose branches
were waving with the eddies of the current, into which he silently motioned for
the females to enter. They complied without hesitation, though many a fearful
and anxious glance was thrown behind them, toward the thickening gloom, which
now lay like a dark barrier along the margin of the stream.
So soon as Cora and Alice were seated, the scout, without regarding the
element, directed Heyward to support one side of the frail vessel, and posting
himself at the other, they bore it up against the stream, followed by the
dejected owner of the dead foal. In this manner they proceeded, for many rods,
in a silence that was only interrupted by the rippling of the water, as its
eddies played around them, or the low dash made by their own cautious
footsteps. Heyward yielded the guidance of the canoe implicitly to the scout,
who approached or receded from the shore, to avoid the fragments of rocks, or
deeper parts of the river, with a readiness that showed his knowledge of the
route they held. Occasionally he would stop; and in the midst of a breathing
stillness, that the dull but increasing roar of the waterfall only served to
render more impressive, he would listen with painful intenseness, to catch any
sounds that might arise from the slumbering forest. When assured that all was
still, and unable to detect, even by the aid of his practiced senses, any sign
of his approaching foes, he would deliberately resume his slow and guarded
progress. At length they reached a point in the river where the roving eye of
Heyward became riveted on a cluster of black objects, collected at a spot where
the high bank threw a deeper shadow than usual on the dark waters. Hesitating
to advance, he pointed out the place to the attention of his companion.
“Ay,” returned the composed scout, “the Indians have hid the
beasts with the judgment of natives! Water leaves no trail, and an owl’s
eyes would be blinded by the darkness of such a hole.”
The whole party was soon reunited, and another consultation was held between
the scout and his new comrades, during which, they, whose fates depended on the
faith and ingenuity of these unknown foresters, had a little leisure to observe
their situation more minutely.
The river was confined between high and cragged rocks, one of which impended
above the spot where the canoe rested. As these, again, were surmounted by tall
trees, which appeared to totter on the brows of the precipice, it gave the
stream the appearance of running through a deep and narrow dell. All beneath
the fantastic limbs and ragged tree tops, which were, here and there, dimly
painted against the starry zenith, lay alike in shadowed obscurity. Behind
them, the curvature of the banks soon bounded the view by the same dark and
wooded outline; but in front, and apparently at no great distance, the water
seemed piled against the heavens, whence it tumbled into caverns, out of which
issued those sullen sounds that had loaded the evening atmosphere. It seemed,
in truth, to be a spot devoted to seclusion, and the sisters imbibed a soothing
impression of security, as they gazed upon its romantic though not unappalling
beauties. A general movement among their conductors, however, soon recalled
them from a contemplation of the wild charms that night had assisted to lend
the place to a painful sense of their real peril.
The horses had been secured to some scattering shrubs that grew in the fissures
of the rocks, where, standing in the water, they were left to pass the night.
The scout directed Heyward and his disconsolate fellow travelers to seat
themselves in the forward end of the canoe, and took possession of the other
himself, as erect and steady as if he floated in a vessel of much firmer
materials. The Indians warily retraced their steps toward the place they had
left, when the scout, placing his pole against a rock, by a powerful shove,
sent his frail bark directly into the turbulent stream. For many minutes the
struggle between the light bubble in which they floated and the swift current
was severe and doubtful. Forbidden to stir even a hand, and almost afraid to
breath, lest they should expose the frail fabric to the fury of the stream, the
passengers watched the glancing waters in feverish suspense. Twenty times they
thought the whirling eddies were sweeping them to destruction, when the
master-hand of their pilot would bring the bows of the canoe to stem the rapid.
A long, a vigorous, and, as it appeared to the females, a desperate effort,
closed the struggle. Just as Alice veiled her eyes in horror, under the
impression that they were about to be swept within the vortex at the foot of
the cataract, the canoe floated, stationary, at the side of a flat rock, that
lay on a level with the water.
“Where are we, and what is next to be done!” demanded Heyward,
perceiving that the exertions of the scout had ceased.
“You are at the foot of Glenn’s,” returned the other,
speaking aloud, without fear of consequences within the roar of the cataract;
“and the next thing is to make a steady landing, lest the canoe upset,
and you should go down again the hard road we have traveled faster than you
came up; ’tis a hard rift to stem, when the river is a little swelled;
and five is an unnatural number to keep dry, in a hurry-skurry, with a little
birchen bark and gum. There, go you all on the rock, and I will bring up the
Mohicans with the venison. A man had better sleep without his scalp, than
famish in the midst of plenty.”
His passengers gladly complied with these directions. As the last foot touched
the rock, the canoe whirled from its station, when the tall form of the scout
was seen, for an instant, gliding above the waters, before it disappeared in
the impenetrable darkness that rested on the bed of the river. Left by their
guide, the travelers remained a few minutes in helpless ignorance, afraid even
to move along the broken rocks, lest a false step should precipitate them down
some one of the many deep and roaring caverns, into which the water seemed to
tumble, on every side of them. Their suspense, however, was soon relieved; for,
aided by the skill of the natives, the canoe shot back into the eddy, and
floated again at the side of the low rock, before they thought the scout had
even time to rejoin his companions.
“We are now fortified, garrisoned, and provisioned,” cried Heyward
cheerfully, “and may set Montcalm and his allies at defiance. How, now,
my vigilant sentinel, can see anything of those you call the Iroquois, on the
main land!”
“I call them Iroquois, because to me every native, who speaks a foreign
tongue, is accounted an enemy, though he may pretend to serve the king! If Webb
wants faith and honesty in an Indian, let him bring out the tribes of the
Delawares, and send these greedy and lying Mohawks and Oneidas, with their six
nations of varlets, where in nature they belong, among the French!”
“We should then exchange a warlike for a useless friend! I have heard
that the Delawares have laid aside the hatchet, and are content to be called
women!”
“Aye, shame on the Hollanders and Iroquois, who circumvented them by
their deviltries, into such a treaty! But I have known them for twenty years,
and I call him liar that says cowardly blood runs in the veins of a Delaware.
You have driven their tribes from the seashore, and would now believe what
their enemies say, that you may sleep at night upon an easy pillow. No, no; to
me, every Indian who speaks a foreign tongue is an Iroquois, whether the
castle[1] of his
tribe be in Canada, or be in York.”
[1]
The principal villages of the Indians are still called “castles”
by the whites of New York. “Oneida castle” is no more than a
scattered hamlet; but the name is in general use.
Heyward, perceiving that the stubborn adherence of the scout to the cause of
his friends the Delawares, or Mohicans, for they were branches of the same
numerous people, was likely to prolong a useless discussion, changed the
subject.
“Treaty or no treaty, I know full well that your two companions are brave
and cautious warriors! have they heard or seen anything of our enemies?”
“An Indian is a mortal to be felt afore he is seen,” returned the
scout, ascending the rock, and throwing the deer carelessly down. “I
trust to other signs than such as come in at the eye, when I am outlying on the
trail of the Mingoes.”
“Do your ears tell you that they have traced our retreat?”
“I should be sorry to think they had, though this is a spot that stout
courage might hold for a smart scrimmage. I will not deny, however, but the
horses cowered when I passed them, as though they scented the wolves; and a
wolf is a beast that is apt to hover about an Indian ambushment, craving the
offals of the deer the savages kill.”
“You forget the buck at your feet! or, may we not owe their visit to the
dead colt? Ha! what noise is that?”
“Poor Miriam!” murmured the stranger; “thy foal was
foreordained to become a prey to ravenous beasts!” Then, suddenly lifting
up his voice, amid the eternal din of the waters, he sang aloud:
“First born of Egypt, smite did he,
Of mankind, and of beast also:
O, Egypt! wonders sent ’midst thee,
On Pharaoh and his servants too!”
“The death of the colt sits heavy on the heart of its owner,” said
the scout; “but it’s a good sign to see a man account upon his dumb
friends. He has the religion of the matter, in believing what is to happen will
happen; and with such a consolation, it won’t be long afore he submits to
the rationality of killing a four-footed beast to save the lives of human men.
It may be as you say,” he continued, reverting to the purport of
Heyward’s last remark; “and the greater the reason why we should
cut our steaks, and let the carcass drive down the stream, or we shall have the
pack howling along the cliffs, begrudging every mouthful we swallow. Besides,
though the Delaware tongue is the same as a book to the Iroquois, the cunning
varlets are quick enough at understanding the reason of a wolf’s
howl.”
The scout, while making his remarks, was busied in collecting certain necessary
implements; as he concluded, he moved silently by the group of travelers,
accompanied by the Mohicans, who seemed to comprehend his intentions with
instinctive readiness, when the whole three disappeared in succession, seeming
to vanish against the dark face of a perpendicular rock that rose to the height
of a few yards, within as many feet of the water’s edge.