derision, and the skeleton--he who bore the child, a poor little boy
of some three or four years--waved him thrice round his head, as if
with the intention of dashing out his brains against a tree; then,
suddenly seeming to change his mind, he deliberately deposited him on
the ground, and grasping a handful of the boy's golden hair in his
brown fingers, drew his scalping-knife from the tail-piece of a
musk-rat, the skin of which formed his hunting-pouch: but now a wild
cry of entreaty from Mary MacGillivray made him pause.
"Ewen Chisholm--Alaster, shoot--shoot, at all hazards!" exclaimed her
husband.
Ewen knelt down, took a deliberate aim, and then paused, for the
Iroquois was also on his knees, and had artfully interposed the child
between his person and the soldiers.
"Fire, Ewen, I command you; fire at all hazards!" reiterated
MacGillivray, impetuously; "'tis better for the poor child to die by
a bullet than by an Indian's knife--a poisoned one, perhaps."
The Iroquois raised his arm for the purpose of giving the knife one
vigorous sweep round the scalp of the child, who was frozen with
fear; but at that moment Ewen fired. The ball pierced the red skin
near the shoulder; with a yell of rage he dropped his weapon, and
plunging into the woods disappeared. A shot from the musket of
Alaster MacGregor brought down his companion, who though one of his
legs was broken, endeavoured to crawl away, but was overtaken by the
soldiers, and roughly dragged up the slope to the forest path. The
rescued child clung to his preservers, and to the neck of Mary
MacGillivray, who placed him on her saddle-bow, and with that
motherly tenderness and those caresses which come so naturally from a
kind and amiable woman, endeavoured to calm the terrors his late
adventure had excited.
With a sudden glare of defiance, the wounded Iroquois surveyed those
captors at whose hands he expected immediate immolation.
Several bayonets were directed against him, and more than one musket
was clubbed butt-end uppermost to close his career, when Mary
interposed and begged that his life might be spared, on which the
Highlanders drew back. The glittering eyes of the Iroquois were
fixed upon her, and though he knew not the language in which she
spoke, he was aware that to her intercession he owed his life, and
smiled; for, Indian like, he despised the manhood of men who could be
swayed by a woman. Thus he evinced neither surprise nor gratitude,
nor even pain, though his wounded limb bled freely, and must have
occasioned him exquisite torment. By Mary's desire the limb was
bound up, and in a few minutes the astonished savage found himself
placed across four muskets, and borne towards the fort, which was now
little more than a quarter of a mile distant. From time to time he
glanced keenly and sharply into the adjacent thickets, as if
expecting a rescue, but none appeared; and on finding himself clear
of the forest he doubtless gave himself up for lost.
"We are close to the gates," said MacGillivray to the piper; "play
up, Alisdair Bane."
"Bodoich n' m briogois?" suggested the piper, assuming his drones.
The officer assented, and soon the far-stretching dingles of American
forest were ringing to the stirring notes of Lord Breadalbane's
march, while the tones of the instrument seemed to astonish and
excite the terror of the Indian, in front of whom the piper was
strutting with that lofty port peculiar to his profession.
Considering this to be probably a prelude to his being scalped and
slain, the Iroquois smiled disdainfully, remembered that he was a
warrior, and relapsed into his previous state of apathetic
indifference, resolved that in the death of torment for which he
doubted not he was reserved, to perish with the phlegmatic coolness
and iron resolution of his race.
These Iroquois were a confederation of tribes, who supported each
other in battle in a manner not unlike the sixteen confederated clans
known in Scotland as the Clan Chattan. The chief of the Iroquois
were the Mohawks, who resided on the Mohawk River and the banks of
those lakes which still bear their name, and from thence they
extended their conquests beyond the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence,
subduing the Eries, the Hurons, the Ottawas and five other tribes,
till they became the terror of their enemies by their ferocity and
valour; but even these were forced to yield at last to British rule.*
* In the Army List of the 15th September, 1816, will be found among
_officers_ having the local rank of _Major_ in Canada, "John Norton,
_alias_ Teyoninhakawaren, Captain and leader of the Indians of the
Five Nations."
The report of the musket-shots had reached the fort, where the
mainguard and a strong inlying piquet were under arms when the
Highlanders marched in. They were received by their countryman
Colonel Munro, who, to his astonishment and joy, discovered in the
little fellow who nestled in the arms of the mounted lady, his own
son and only child Eachin (or Hector), who had been abstracted--but
how, none could tell--from the gate of the fort by some of the
lurking Indians.
The colonel was a brave and veteran officer, who had recently been
deprived, by death, of a young wife. She had left him this little
boy, and the heart of the soldier was filled with lively gratitude
for the rescue of one whom he prized more than life. After pouring
out his thanks to MacGillivray, he turned sternly towards the
Iroquois. A sudden glow of anger for the narrow escape of the child
made him unsheath his sword, with the intention of passing it through
the heart of the Indian, to destroy him, as one might slay a reptile
or wild animal; but again Mary interposed, saying,--
"For my sake, spare him, Colonel Munro."
"I cannot refuse you anything, madam," replied the old soldier,
courteously, lowering the point of his sword; "and I would that you
had something of greater value to ask of me than the life of a
wretched Iroquois; but it shall be spared--ay, and his wound shall be
dressed, if such is your wish."
"Thanks, dear colonel."
"But, bear in mind, madam," continued Munro, pressing his little boy
close to his breast, "that were the case reversed and we at the mercy
of the Iroquois, even as this tawny villain is at ours, we should be
stripped, bound to trees, and put to death by such torments as devils
alone could devise. And now, MacGillivray, though doubtless weary
with your long march, ere you refresh, tell me (for here amid the
wilds of the Horican, we hear nothing but the whoop of the wild
Iroquois, the yells of the Mohawks, and, now and then, a rattle of
musketry) what news of the war?"
"The Earl of London has marched to besiege Louisbourg!"
"And delayed his attack upon Crown Point?"
"Yes."
"I expected so much. Since the capture of Oswego, the French have
remained masters of the lakes, and collecting the Indians, force or
lure them, like the Iroquois, to serve King Louis, and thus all our
settlements on the Mohawk River and the German Flats have been
destroyed and the land laid as waste and desolate as--"
"The Braes of Lochaber after Culloden," said MacGillivray, with a
louring eye.
"While here with red coats on us, let us think no more of Culloden,"
replied Munro in a low voice. "But what news of Montcalm? Our
scouts assert he is moving up this way to besiege me."
"At Abercrombie's head-quarters, all say that, elated by recent
advantages, Louis de St. Veran, and his second in command, the Baron
de Beauchatel, are desirous of attempting something great."
"And that something--"
"Will be the destruction of Fort William Henry, as it covers the
frontiers and commands Lake George."
"But does the commander-in-chief expect that I, with only three
thousand regulars, will be able to withstand the whole French army?"
asked Munro, with a stern and anxious whisper.
"No--General Webb--"
"Old Dan Webb of the 48th?"
"With a column of infantry, was to leave headquarters a day or two
after us to succour you, and Fort Edward is to be the base of his
operations. Meanwhile, I with my fifty Highland marksmen, pushed on
as a species of avant-garde."
"Then both Webb and Montcalm are _en route_ for this locality?"
"'Tis a race, and he who wins may win Fort William Henry."
"In three days a great game shall have been played here, perhaps,"
said Munro, thoughtfully; "but to God and our own valour we must
commit the event; and now, madam, a hundred pardons for leaving you
here so long," he added, bowing to Mary, and with that old air of
Scoto-French gallantry which Scott has so well portrayed in his
"Baron of Bradwardine," he drew the glove from his right hand, and
raised his little triangular hat; "permit me to lead you to my
quarters until your own are prepared, and wo shall have a cheerful
evening's chat about poor old Scotland, and the homes we may never
see again. When I first heard the sound of your pipe rising up from
the dingles of yonder forest, and saw the tartans waving as your
Highlanders marched up the gate, I cannot describe the emotions that
filled my heart. The thoughts of home and other times came thronging
thick and fast upon my memory--kinsmen and friends, father, mother,
and wife--voices and faces of years long passed away, of the loved,
the lost, and the dead, were there with the memory of _all_ that the
voice of the war-pipe rouses in the heart of an exiled Scotsman; but
enough of this! And now, to you, madam, and to you, MacGillivray, as
we say in the land of hills and eagles, a hundred thousand welcomes
to Fort William Henry!"
The wounded Iroquois was consigned to the temporary hospital of the
fort; the newly arrived Highlanders were "told off" (as the phrase
is) to their quarters, and in one hour after, when the last roll of
the drum at the tattoo had died away, and when the rising moon shone
over the wooded mountains on the clear glassy water and green islets
of Lake George, all was still in Fort William Henry, and nothing
seemed moving but the bayonets flashing back the rays of silver on
their tips, as the muffled sentinels trod to and fro upon the
palisadoed ramparts.
The fatigue of her journey northwards from Albany to Lake George had
proved too much for the delicate wife of MacGillivray, as at this
time she was on the eve of adding a little stranger to the number of
the garrison, and thus the solicitude of her husband for her health
and safety, in a crowded fort, prepared for a desperate siege, and
situated in a wild district, now swarming with hostile Indians,
became at times alike deep and painful. The issue of the coming
strife, none could foretell, and Roderick knew that if aught fatal
happened to him, Mary and her babe--the babe he might not be spared
to see--would be alone, in this far world of the west, exposed to
penury, to perils and horrors, which his mind could neither
contemplate nor conceive.
The first and second day after their arrival passed without any alarm.
On the third, Mary visited the wounded Indian, and gave him some
little comforts prepared by her own hands. His limb had been simply
fractured, and the wound, which was not so severe as had been at
first supposed, was now healing rapidly. He received her with a
bright smile of recognition--perhaps of gratitude, for he remembered
that she had twice saved his life--first from the bayonets of the
Highlanders, and secondly from the sword of Colonel Munro. His
features were rather regular and handsome, and save for their deep
tawny tint and strong lines, not unlike those of many Europeans. He
received her presents, and then relapsed into moody and sullen
silence; but Mary, whose tender nature felt pity for the poor Indian
who was deemed and treated little better than a dog by those around
him, had learned some of the native language from an old Ottawa woman
who had acted as her servant in Albany; and now she made an effort to
address the savage in that singular mixture of Canadian-French,
English, and Indian, which formed the usual medium of communication
with the natives. She asked his name.
"Orono," he replied in a husky voice, while his eyes brightened, and
a red deeper even than the warpaint and the glass beads he wore,
spread under his tawny skin.
"And he who accompanied you?"
"Ossong, a Mohawk warrior, and a brave one! Before the door of his
wigwam a hundred scalps of the Yengees are drying in the wind."
Mary uttered a faint exclamation of horror, but the savage smiled,
and said--
"Are no men ever killed in your country?"
"And what meant you to do with the child?"
The stealthy and cunning eyes of Orono lowered for a moment; then, as
a gleam of unutterable ferocity spread over his striped visage, he
answered--
"To have kept him till we could get the grey scalp of the white chief
his father."
"And then----"
"We would have given him to an old pawaw, as a son, to replace one
slain by the white chief two moons ago; but I will pardon him all
wrong for the sake of you, the pale-face who have been so kind to me."
As he said this the Indian took the tiny white hand of Mary in his
strong brown muscular fingers, and attempted to place it on his bare
head near the scalp-lock, in token of amity and future service; but
she shrank bock in terror and with a repugnance which she could not
repress, and once more the malevolent gleam which always filled her
with dread, shone in the glittering eyes of the Red Indian.
"Have you a wife, Orono?" she asked, to conciliate him.
"Orono _had_ a wife," replied the Indian, sadly; "a girl of the
Oneidas, and he had two little children for whom she boiled the rice
and maize, and wove bright belts of wampum. Orono had a mother too,
who shared his wigwam by the sunny bank of the Horican; but three
moons ago the red warriors came, his wigwam was burned, his cattle
taken, the trees were cut down, and the mother, the squaw, and the
children of Orono were all destroyed, as we would destroy the big
snakes in the reeds or the otter in the swamps. And they slew his
father--an aged warrior, a man of many moons, and many, many days,
who remembered when first the great fire-spouting canoes of the
Yengees, with their huge white sails, came over the salt lake from
beyond the rising sun; but they slew him also--all, all! Father,
mother, squaw, and papoose--cattle and dog; nothing was left but a
little heap of cinders to mark where the wigwam stood: all were gone,
like the flowers of last summer--gone to the happy hunting grounds of
the Iroquois," he added, pointing westward.
"And poor Orono is left quite alone!" said Mary, patting his shoulder
kindly, for the story of the Indian impressed her by its resemblance
to the fate of her own family in Glencoe, and to many an episode of
murder and outrage after Culloden; "alone," she added, "in this great
selfish world!"
"To revenge them; and for this I have trod on the pipe of peace and
dug up the war-hatchet!" he replied in a voice like the hiss of a
snake, while his eyes glared like two red carbuncles in the dusk of
the evening, as Mary retired in dismay.
Ere the night was finally set in her tender sympathies for her new
friend received a severe shock. To her husband, who had just
returned from a reconnoitring expedition, she was relating her
interview with Orono, when the sharp report of two muskets echoed
among the logwood edifices which formed the barracks of the fort.
Mary grew deadly pale, and clung to Roderick.
"The French!" was his first thought, as he broke away, snatched his
claymore, and hurried to the barrack-square, where he heard that a
soldier of the Royal American Regiment had been assassinated.
Orono the Indian had abstracted a knife from the basket of his late
unsuspecting visitor, and springing unseen upon the sentinel at the
hospital door had slain him, swept the blade once round his head
above the cars, and torn away his scalp. Then though weak and
wounded, with his knife in one hand, and the ghastly trophy reeking
in the other, he had bounded over the palisades like an evil spirit,
glided through the wet ditch like an eel, and, escaping the
musket-shots of two sentinels on the summit of the glacis, reached
the darkening forest, where all trace of him was instantly lost in
the thickness of the foliage and the gloom of a moonless evening.
"And so, dear Mary, with this terrible episode closes your little
romance," said MacGillivray, with a kind smile, as he put an arm
round her.
"I devoutly hope so," said she, shuddering, and feeling, she knew not
why, a horrible impression that she would yet see more of this
Indian, whose lithe but herculean form, sternly sombre face,
glittering eyes, and scalp-lock were ever before her.
"The black traitor, to reward our kindness thus! 'Tis a thousand
pities, dearest, you saved him from our men on the march, and from
old Munro's sword in the fort; for these wretches are no better than
wild beasts. Thus it matters little whether wo kill them now or a
month hence."
"Oh, Roderick!" exclaimed Mary, with her hazel eyes full of tears;
"how can you talk thus?"
"Why?"
"For so said King William's warrant to massacre my people in Glencoe;
and so said that order which was written on the night before
Culloden."
"True, true; the poor Indian only fights for the land God gave his
fathers, even as ours, Mary, was given to the children of the Gael,"
replied Roderick, as the usual current of his bitter thoughts
returned; "and a time there was Mary (God keep thee from harm!) when
I little thought to find myself so far from my father's grave,
wearing the black cockade of the Hanoverian in my bonnet, and the red
uniform of those men who trampled on the white rose at Culloden, and
murdered the aged men, the women, and the little ones of your race,
under cloud of night, at the behest of a bloodthirsty Dutchman!"
"Still speaking of Glencoe and Culloden!" said Colonel Munro, joining
them, as they sat on the bastion, at the base of which rippled the
waters of Lake George, then flushed red with the last light of sunset.
"Yes, Munro; I am thinking of the time when the kilt alone was seen
upon the Highland mountains, and when the breeches of the
Lowlander--the _brat-galla_ (_i.e._ foreigner's rag)--were unknown
among us."
"Let us have no more of these sour memories, and if my fair friend
will favour me with that song which she sang to my little boy last
evening, it may lighten the tedium of a time which to me, after being
caged up here for six months, seems insufferably weary."
Mary coloured, and glanced round timidly, for several officers of the
garrison who had been lounging on the parapets drew near, and she
knew few songs save those of her native hills, and consequently they
were in a language totally unintelligible to the gentlemen of the
Royal Americans and Parker's Foot; but on being pressed by the
colonel and his little one, who nestled at her feet, she sang the
only English song with which she was acquainted. It was a paraphrase
of one of the psalms,* and was then a favourite with the Jacobites,
who sang it to a beautiful and plaintive old Highland air.
* Psalm cxxxvii.
On Gallia's shore we sat and wept,
When Scotland we thought on.
Robbed of her bravest sons, and all
Her ancient spirit gone!
"Revenge!" the sons of Gallia said,
"Revenge your wasted land;
Already your insulting foes
Crowd the Batavian strand!
"How shall the sons of Freedom e'er
For foreign conquest fight?
For power how wield the sword, deprived
Of liberty and right?
"If thee, O Scotland! we forget,
Even to our latest breath,
May foul dishonour stain our name,
And bring a coward's death.
"May sad remorse for fancied guilt
Our future days employ,
If all thy sacred rights are not
Above our ohiefest joy.
"And thou, proud Gaul, O faithless friend,
Thy ruin is not far;
May God, on thy devoted head,
Pour all the woes of war!
"When thou, thy slaughtered little ones,
And outraged dames shalt see;
Such help, such pity mayest thou have,
As Scotland had from thee!"
* * * *
As Mary sang, many loiterers of the Black Watch had joined the little
group around her, and listened as if turned to stone. The veteran
colonel of the Royal Americans, who had been long, long from the land
of his birth, felt his grave iron nature melted. He sat on the
parapet of the gun-battery, with his chin placed in his right hand,
and his left nervously grasping the hilt of his sword. His keen grey
eyes, which roved uneasily from one object to another, began at last
to moisten and fill, and then tears ran down the furrows of his
cheeks--old dry channels worn by war and time, but all unused to such
visitors.
The _air_ rather than the words moved MacGillivray and his soldiers
who listened. Their heads were bowed and their eyes were sad, for
their hearts and souls, their memory and their love, were far
away--away to the land where, at that hour, the silver moon was
casting the shadows of the heath-clad mountains on the grassy glens
below; away to the Braes of Lochaber, the shores of Lochiel, and the
deep blue lochs that form a chain of watery links in the great glen
of Caledonia; away to the land of the clans, the soil from whence
their fathers sprang, and where their graves lay under the old
sepulchral yew, or by the Druid clachan of ages past and gone; away
from the lone woods and mighty wilds of that Far West, which in the
next century was to become the home of their children, where the
expatriated men of Sutherland, Barra, and Breadalbane were to find a
refuge from the avaricious dukes, the canting marquises, and grinding
factors of the Western Highlands, and from their infamous system of
modern oppression, tyranny, and misrule, which has decreed that the
poor have no right to the soil of their native country.
All were hushed and still in the group as the Highland girl
sang--for, though a wedded wife, and on the eve of being a mother,
Mary was but a girl yet--when hark! the report of a musket on the
outer bastion broke the stillness of the evening hour, and an officer
of the mainguard rushed, sword in hand, towards the startled
listeners.
"Munro,", he exclaimed; "Colonel Munro--a column of French are in
sight, and already within range of cannon-shot."
"So close, Captain Dacres?"
"And in great strength," added the officer.
"And the Indians--those diabolical Iroquois?"
"Fill the woods on every side--they are already at the foot of the
glacis. Hark!" continued Captain Dacres, as a contused volley was
heard, "the mainguard are opening a fire on their advanced files."
The colonel kissed his child, and with an impressive glance consigned
it to the care of Mary.
"Fall in, Sixtieth!" he exclaimed, rushing into the barracks, where
the alarm was now general. "MacGillivray, get your lads of the Black
Watch under arms, and let them pick me off those brown devils as fast
as they can load and fire again. Gentlemen, to your companies; we
shall have grim work to do before another sun sets on the waters of
the Horican."
In ten minutes the troops in the little garrison were all under arms,
for the men came rushing, cross-belted, to their colours, while the
log huts echoed again and again to the long roll of the alarm
drum--that peculiar roll, which, when heard in camp or garrison,
makes the blood of all quicken, as it is the well-known warning "to
arms;" and now the pipes of Alisdair Bane (a pupil of Munich Dhu, or
Black Murdoch MacInnon, the old piper of Glenarrow) lent their
pibroch to swell the warlike din, while the troops loaded, and fresh
casks of ball-cartridge were staved and distributed by the sergeants
in rear of each company.
The artillerymen stood by their guns, with rammer, sponge, and
lighted matches; the battalions of the Royal Americans and of the
unfortunate Colonel Parker, a corps of Provincials, and the fifty
Celts of the Black Watch, soon manned the ramparts, from whence, in
the dim twilight of eve, the white uniforms of the regiments of
Bearn, Guienne, and Languedoc, who formed the flower of Montcalm's
army, and the bronze-like figures of the gliding Iroquois, who formed
the scourge of ours, were seen at times between the green masses of
foliage that fringed the calm, deep waters of Lake George, which lay
motionless as a vast mirror of polished steel.