"_Guard._--Qui est la?
_Puc._--Paisans, pauvres gens de France."
_King Henry VI._
During the rapid movement from the block-house, and until the party was
deeply buried in the forest, each individual was too much interested in
the escape to hazard a word even in whispers. The scout resumed his post
in the advance, though his steps, after he had thrown a safe distance
between himself and his enemies, were more deliberate than in their
previous march, in consequence of his utter ignorance of the localities
of the surrounding woods. More than once he halted to consult with his
confederates, the Mohicans, pointing upwards at the moon, and examining
the barks of the trees with care. In these brief pauses, Heyward and the
sisters listened, with senses rendered doubly acute by the danger, to
detect any symptoms which might announce the proximity of their foes. At
such moments, it seemed as if a vast range of country lay buried in
eternal sleep; not the least sound arising from the forest, unless it
was the distant and scarcely audible rippling of a water-course. Birds,
beasts, and man, appeared to slumber alike, if, indeed, any of the
latter were to be found in that wide tract of wilderness. But the sounds
of the rivulet, feeble and murmuring as they were, relieved the guides
at once from no trifling embarrassment, and towards it they immediately
held their way.
When the banks of the little stream were gained, Hawkeye made another
halt; and, taking the moccasins from his feet, he invited Heyward and
Gamut to follow his example. He then entered the water, and for near an
hour they travelled in the bed of the brook, leaving no trail. The moon
had already sunk into an immense pile of black clouds, which lay
impending above the western horizon, when they issued from the low and
devious water-course to rise again to the light and level of the sandy
but wooded plain. Here the scout seemed to be once more at home, for he
held on his way with the certainty and diligence of a man who moved in
the security of his own knowledge. The path soon became more uneven, and
the travellers could plainly perceive that the mountains drew nigher to
them on each hand, and that they were, in truth, about entering one of
their gorges. Suddenly, Hawkeye made a pause, and waiting until he was
joined by the whole party, he spoke, though in tones so low and
cautious, that they added to the solemnity of his words, in the quiet
and darkness of the place.
"It is easy to know the pathways, and to find the licks and
water-courses of the wilderness," he said; "but who that saw this spot
could venture to say, that a mighty army was at rest among yonder silent
trees and barren mountains?"
"We are then at no great distance from William Henry?" said Heyward,
advancing nigher to the scout.
"It is yet a long and weary path, and when and where to strike it, is
now our greatest difficulty. See," he said, pointing through the trees
towards a spot where a little basin of water reflected the stars from
its placid bosom, "here is the 'bloody pond'; and I am on the ground
that I have not only often travelled, but over which I have fou't the
enemy, from the rising to the setting sun."
"Ha! that sheet of dull and dreary water, then, is the sepulchre of the
brave men who fell in the contest. I have heard it named, but never have
I stood on its banks before."
"Three battles did we make with the Dutch-Frenchman[20] in a day,"
continued Hawkeye, pursuing the train of his own thoughts, rather than
replying to the remark of Duncan. "He met us hard by, in our outward
march to ambush his advance, and scattered us, like driven deer, through
the defile, to the shores of Horican. Then we rallied behind our fallen
trees, and made head against him, under Sir William--who was made Sir
William for that very deed; and well did we pay him for the disgrace of
the morning! Hundreds of Frenchmen saw the sun that day for the last
time; and even the leader, Dieskau himself, fell into our hands so cut
and torn with the lead, that he has gone back to his own country, unfit
for further acts in war."
"'Twas a noble repulse!" exclaimed Heyward, in the heat of his youthful
ardor; "the fame of it reached us early, in our southern army."
"Ay! but it did not end there. I was sent by Major Effingham, at Sir
William's own bidding, to outflank the French, and carry the tidings of
their disaster across the portage, to the fort on the Hudson. Just
hereaway, where you see the trees rise into a mountain swell, I met a
party coming down to our aid, and I led them where the enemy were taking
their meal, little dreaming that they had not finished the bloody work
of the day."
"And you surprised them?"
"If death can be a surprise to men who are thinking only of the cravings
of their appetites. We gave them but little breathing time, for they had
borne hard upon us in the fight of the morning, and there were few in
our party who had not lost friend or relative by their hands. When all
was over, the dead, and some say the dying, were cast into that little
pond. These eyes have seen its waters colored with blood, as natural
water never yet flowed from the bowels of the 'arth."
"It was a convenient, and, I trust, will prove a peaceful grave for a
soldier. You have, then, seen much service on this frontier?"
"I!" said the scout, erecting his tall person with an air of military
pride; "there are not many echoes among these hills that haven't rung
with the crack of my rifle, nor is there the space of a square mile
atwixt Horican and the river, that 'Killdeer' hasn't dropped a living
body on, be it an enemy or be it a brute beast. As for the grave, there,
being as quiet as you mention, it is another matter. There are them in
the camp who say and think, man, to lie still, should not be buried
while the breath is in the body; and certain it is that in the hurry of
that evening, the doctors had but little time to say who was living and
who was dead. Hist! see you nothing walking on the shore of the pond?"
"'Tis not probable that any are as houseless as ourselves, in this
dreary forest."
"Such as he may care but little for house or shelter, and night dew can
never wet a body that passes its days in the water," returned the scout,
grasping the shoulder of Heyward with such convulsive strength as to
make the young soldier painfully sensible how much superstitious terror
had got the mastery of a man usually so dauntless.
"By heaven! there is a human form, and it approaches! Stand to your
arms, my friends; for we know not whom we encounter."
"Qui vive?" demanded a stern, quick voice, which sounded like a
challenge from another world, issuing out of that solitary and solemn
place.
"What says it?" whispered the scout; "it speaks neither Indian nor
English!"
"Qui vive?" repeated the same voice, which was quickly followed by the
rattling of arms, and a menacing attitude.
"France!" cried Heyward, advancing from the shadow of the trees to the
shore of the pond, within a few yards of the sentinel.
"D'ou venez-vous--ou allez-vous, d'aussi bonne heure?" demanded the
grenadier, in the language and with the accent of a man from old France.
"Je viens de la decouverte, et je vais me coucher."
"Etes-vous officier du roi?"
"Sans doute, mon camarade; me prends-tu pour un provincial! Je suis
capitaine de chasseurs (Heyward well knew that the other was of a
regiment in the line); j'ai ici, avec moi, les filles du commandant de
la fortification. Aha! tu en as entendu parler! je les ai fait
prisonnieres pres de l'autre fort, et je les conduis au general."
"Ma foi! mesdames; j'en suis fache pour vous," exclaimed the young
soldier, touching his cap with grace; "mais--fortune de guerre! vous
trouverez notre general un brave homme, et bien poli avec les dames."
"C'est le caractere des gens de guerre," said Cora, with admirable
self-possession. "Adieu, mon ami; je vous souhaiterais un devoir plus
agreable a remplir."
The soldier made a low and humble acknowledgment for her civility; and
Heyward adding a "Bonne nuit, mon camarade," they moved deliberately
forward, leaving the sentinel pacing the banks of the silent pond,
little suspecting an enemy of so much effrontery, and humming to himself
those words, which were recalled to his mind by the sight of women, and
perhaps by recollections of his own distant and beautiful France--
"Vive le vin, l'amour," etc., etc.
"'Tis well you understood the knave!" whispered the scout, when they had
gained a little distance from the place, and letting his rifle fall into
the hollow of his arm again; "I soon saw that he was one of them uneasy
Frenchers; and well for him it was that his speech was friendly and his
wishes kind, or a place might have been found for his bones among those
of his countrymen."
He was interrupted by a long and heavy groan which arose from the little
basin, as though, in truth, the spirits of the departed lingered about
their watery sepulchre.
"Surely it was of flesh!" continued the scout; "no spirit could handle
its arms so steadily!"
"It _was_ of flesh; but whether the poor fellow still belongs to this
world may well be doubted," said Heyward, glancing his eyes around him,
and missing Chingachgook from their little band. Another groan more
faint than the former, was succeeded by a heavy and sullen plunge into
the water, and all was as still again as if the borders of the dreary
pool had never been awakened from the silence of creation. While they
yet hesitated in uncertainty, the form of the Indian was seen gliding
out of the thicket. As the chief rejoined them, with one hand he
attached the reeking scalp of the unfortunate young Frenchman to his
girdle, and with the other he replaced the knife and tomahawk that had
drunk his blood. He then took his wonted station, with the air of a man
who believed he had done a deed of merit.
The scout dropped one end of his rifle to the earth, and leaning his
hands on the other, he stood musing in profound silence. Then shaking
his head in a mournful manner, he muttered,--
"'T would have been a cruel and an unhuman act for a white-skin; but
'tis the gift and natur' of an Indian, and I suppose it should not be
denied. I could wish, though, it had befallen an accursed Mingo, rather
than that gay young boy from the old countries."
"Enough!" said Heyward, apprehensive the unconscious sisters might
comprehend the nature of the detention, and conquering his disgust by a
train of reflections very much like that of the hunter; "'tis done; and
though better it were left undone, cannot be amended. You see we are,
too obviously, within the sentinels of the enemy; what course do you
propose to follow?"
"Yes," said Hawkeye, rousing himself again, "'tis as you say, too late
to harbor further thoughts about it. Ay, the French have gathered around
the fort in good earnest, and we have a delicate needle to thread in
passing them."
"And but little time to do it in," added Heyward, glancing his eyes
upward, toward the bank of vapor that concealed the setting moon.
"And little time to do it in!" repeated the scout. "The thing may be
done in two fashions, by the help of Providence, without which it may
not be done at all."
"Name them quickly, for time presses."
"One would be to dismount the gentle ones, and let their beasts range
the plain; by sending the Mohicans in front, we might then cut a lane
through their sentries, and enter the fort over the dead bodies."
"It will not do--it will not do!" interrupted the generous Heyward; "a
soldier might force his way in this manner, but never with such a
convoy."
"'Twould be, indeed, a bloody path for tender feet to wade in," returned
the equally reluctant scout; "but I thought it befitting my manhood to
name it. We must then turn on our trail and get without the line of
their look-outs, when we will bend short to the west, and enter the
mountains; where I can hide you, so that all the devil's hounds in
Montcalm's pay would be thrown off the scent, for months to come."
"Let it be done, and that instantly."
Further words were unnecessary; for Hawkeye, merely uttering the mandate
to "follow," moved along the route by which they had just entered their
present critical and even dangerous situation. Their progress, like
their late dialogue, was guarded, and without noise; for none knew at
what moment a passing patrol, or a crouching picket of the enemy, might
rise upon their path. As they held their silent way along the margin of
the pond, again Heyward and the scout stole furtive glances at its
appalling dreariness. They looked in vain for the form they had so
recently seen stalking along its silent shores, while a low and regular
wash of the little waves, by announcing that the waters were not yet
subsided, furnished a frightful memorial of the deed of blood they had
just witnessed. Like all that passing and gloomy scene, the low basin,
however, quickly melted in the darkness, and became blended with the
mass of black objects in the rear of the travellers.
Hawkeye soon deviated from the line of their retreat, and striking off
towards the mountains which form the western boundary of the narrow
plain, he led his followers, with swift steps, deep within the shadows
that were cast from their high and broken summits. The route was now
painful; lying over ground ragged with rocks, and intersected with
ravines, and their progress proportionately slow. Bleak and black hills
lay on every side of them, compensating in some degree for the
additional toil of the march, by the sense of security they imparted. At
length the party began slowly to climb a steep and rugged ascent by a
path that curiously wound among rocks and trees, avoiding the one, and
supported by the other, in a manner that showed it had been devised by
men long practised in the arts of the wilderness. As they gradually rose
from the level of the valleys, the thick darkness which usually precedes
the approach of day began to disperse, and objects were seen in the
plain and palpable colors with which they had been gifted by nature.
When they issued from the stunted woods which clung to the barren sides
of the mountain, upon a flat and mossy rock that formed its summit, they
met the morning, as it came blushing above the green pines of a hill
that lay on the opposite side of the valley of the Horican.
The scout now told the sisters to dismount; and taking the bridles from
the mouths, and the saddles off the backs of the jaded beasts, he turned
them loose, to glean a scanty subsistence among the shrubs and meagre
herbage of that elevated region.
"Go," he said, "and seek your food where natur' gives it you; and beware
that you become not food to ravenous wolves yourselves, among these
hills."
"Have we no further need of them?" demanded Heyward.
"See, and judge with your own eyes," said the scout, advancing towards
the eastern brow of the mountain, whither he beckoned for the whole
party to follow; "if it was as easy to look into the heart of man as it
is to spy out the nakedness of Montcalm's camp from this spot,
hypocrites would grow scarce, and the cunning of a Mingo might prove a
losing game, compared to the honesty of a Delaware."
When the travellers reached the verge of the precipice, they saw, at a
glance, the truth of the scout's declaration, and the admirable
foresight with which he had led them to their commanding station.
The mountain on which they stood, elevated, perhaps, a thousand feet in
the air, was a high cone that rose a little in advance of that range
which stretches for miles along the western shores of the lake, until
meeting its sister piles, beyond the water, it ran off towards the
Canadas, in confused and broken masses of rock, thinly sprinkled with
evergreens. Immediately at the feet of the party, the southern shore of
the Horican swept in a broad semicircle, from mountain to mountain,
marking a wide strand, that soon rose into an uneven and somewhat
elevated plain. To the north stretched the limpid, and, as it appeared
from that dizzy height, the narrow sheet of the "holy lake," indented
with numberless bays, embellished by fantastic headlands, and dotted
with countless islands. At the distance of a few leagues, the bed of the
waters became lost among mountains, or was wrapped in the masses of
vapor that came slowly rolling along their bosom, before a light morning
air. But a narrow opening between the crests of the hills pointed out
the passage by which they found their way still farther north, to spread
their pure and ample sheets again, before pouring out their tribute into
the distant Champlain. To the south stretched the defile, or rather
broken plain, so often mentioned. For several miles in this direction,
the mountains appeared reluctant to yield their dominion, but within
reach of the eye they diverged, and finally melted into the level and
sandy lands, across which we have accompanied our adventurers in their
double journey. Along both ranges of hills, which bounded the opposite
sides of the lake and valley, clouds of light vapor were rising in
spiral wreaths from the uninhabited woods, looking like the smokes of
hidden cottages; or rolled lazily down the declivities, to mingle with
the fogs of the lower land. A single, solitary, snow-white cloud floated
above the valley, and marked the spot beneath which lay the silent pool
of the "bloody pond."
Directly on the shore of the lake, and nearer to its western than to its
eastern margin, lay the extensive earthen ramparts and low buildings of
William Henry. Two of the sweeping bastions appeared to rest on the
water which washed their bases, while a deep ditch and extensive
morasses guarded its other sides and angles. The land had been cleared
of wood for a reasonable distance around the work, but every other part
of the scene lay in the green livery of nature, except where the limpid
water mellowed the view, or the bold rocks thrust their black and naked
heads above the undulating outline of the mountain ranges. In its front
might be seen the scattered sentinels, who held a weary watch against
their numerous foes; and within the walls themselves, the travellers
looked down upon men still drowsy with a night of vigilance. Towards the
southeast, but in immediate contact with the fort, was an entrenched
camp, posted on a rocky eminence, that would have been far more eligible
for the work itself, in which Hawkeye pointed out the presence of those
auxiliary regiments that had so recently left the Hudson in their
company. From the woods, a little farther to the south, rose numerous
dark and lurid smokes, that were easily to be distinguished from the
purer exhalations of the springs, and which the scout also showed to
Heyward, as evidences that the enemy lay in force in that direction.
But the spectacle which most concerned the young soldier was on the
western bank of the lake, though quite near to its southern termination.
On a strip of land, which appeared, from his stand, too narrow to
contain such an army, but which, in truth, extended many hundreds of
yards from the shores of the Horican to the base of the mountain, were
to be seen the white tents and military engines of an encampment of ten
thousand men. Batteries were already thrown up in their front, and even
while the spectators above them were looking down, with such different
emotions, on a scene which lay like a map beneath their feet, the roar
of artillery rose from the valley, and passed off in thundering echoes,
along the eastern hills.
"Morning is just touching them below," said the deliberate and musing
scout, "and the watchers have a mind to wake up the sleepers by the
sound of cannon. We are a few hours too late? Montcalm has already
filled the woods with his accursed Iroquois."
"The place is, indeed, invested," returned Duncan, "but is there no
expedient by which we may enter? capture in the works would be far
preferable to falling again into the hands of roving Indians."
"See!" exclaimed the scout, unconsciously directing the attention of
Cora to the quarters of her own father, "how that shot has made the
stones fly from the side of the commandant's house! Ay! these Frenchers
will pull it to pieces faster than it was put together, solid and thick
though it be."
"Heyward, I sicken at the sight of danger that I cannot share," said the
undaunted, but anxious daughter. "Let us go to Montcalm, and demand
admission: he dare not deny a child the boon."
"You would scarce find the tent of the Frenchman with the hair on your
head," said the blunt scout. "If I had but one of the thousand boats
which lie empty along that shore, it might be done. Ha! here will soon
be an end of the firing, for yonder comes a fog that will turn day to
night, and make an Indian arrow more dangerous than a moulded cannon.
Now, if you are equal to the work, and will follow, I will make a push;
for I long to get down into that camp, if it be only to scatter some
Mingo dogs that I see lurking in the skirts of yonder thicket of birch."
"We are equal," said Cora, firmly: "on such an errand we will follow to
any danger."
The scout turned to her with a smile of honest and cordial approbation
as he answered,--
"I would I had a thousand men, of brawny limbs and quick eyes, that
feared death as little as you! I'd send them jabbering Frenchers back
into their den again, afore the week was ended, howling like so many
fettered hounds or hungry wolves. But stir," he added, turning from her
to the rest of the party, "the fog comes rolling down so fast, we shall
have but just the time to meet it on the plain, and use it as a cover.
Remember, if any accident should befall me, to keep the air blowing on
your left cheeks--or rather, follow the Mohicans; they'd scent their
way, be it in day or be it at night."
He then waved his hand for them to follow, and threw himself down the
steep declivity, with free, but careful footsteps. Heyward assisted the
sisters to descend, and in a few minutes they were all far down a
mountain whose sides they had climbed with so much toil and pain.
The direction taken by Hawkeye soon brought the travellers to the level
of the plain, nearly opposite to a sally-port in the western curtain of
the fort, which lay, itself, at the distance of about half a mile from
the point where he halted to allow Duncan to come up with his charge. In
their eagerness, and favored by the nature of the ground, they had
anticipated the fog, which was rolling heavily down the lake, and it
became necessary to pause, until the mists had wrapped the camp of the
enemy in their fleecy mantle. The Mohicans profited by the delay, to
steal out of the woods, and to make a survey of surrounding objects.
They were followed at a little distance by the scout, with a view to
profit early by their report, and to obtain some faint knowledge for
himself of the more immediate localities.
In a very few moments he returned, his face reddened with vexation,
while he muttered his disappointment in words of no very gentle import.
"Here has the cunning Frenchman been posting a picket directly in our
path," he said; "redskins and whites; and we shall be as likely to fall
into their midst as to pass them in the fog!"
"Cannot we make a circuit to avoid the danger," asked Heyward, "and come
into our path again when it is passed?"
"Who that once bends from the line of his march in a fog can tell when
or how to turn to find it again! The mists of Horican are not like the
curls from a peace-pipe, or the smoke which settles above a mosquito
fire."
He was yet speaking, when a crashing sound was heard, and a cannon-ball
entered the thicket, striking the body of a sapling, and rebounding to
the earth, its force being much expended by previous resistance. The
Indians followed instantly like busy attendants on the terrible
messenger, and Uncas commenced speaking earnestly and with much action,
in the Delaware tongue.
"It may be so, lad," muttered the scout, when he had ended; "for
desperate fevers are not to be treated like a toothache. Come, then, the
fog is shutting in."
"Stop!" cried Heyward; "first explain your expectations."
"'Tis soon done, and a small hope it is; but it is better than nothing.
This shot that you see," added the scout, kicking the harmless iron with
his foot, "has ploughed the 'arth in its road from the fort, and we
shall hunt for the furrow it has made, when all other signs may fail. No
more words, but follow, or the fog may leave us in the middle of our
path, a mark for both armies to shoot at."
Heyward perceiving that, in fact, a crisis had arrived when acts were
more required than words, placed himself between the sisters, and drew
them swiftly forward, keeping the dim figure of their leader in his eye.
It was soon apparent that Hawkeye had not magnified the power of the
fog, for before they had proceeded twenty yards, it was difficult for
the different individuals of the party to distinguish each other, in the
vapor.
They had made their little circuit to the left, and were already
inclining again towards the right, having, as Heyward thought, got over
nearly half the distance to the friendly works, when his ears were
saluted with the fierce summons, apparently within twenty feet of them,
of--
"Qui va la?"
"Push on!" whispered the scout, once more bending to the left.
"Push on!" repeated Heyward; when the summons was renewed by a dozen
voices, each of which seemed charged with menace.
"C'est moi," cried Duncan, dragging, rather than leading those he
supported, swiftly onward.
"Bete!--qui?--moi!"
"Ami de la France."
"Tu m'as plus l'air d'un _ennemi_ de la France; arrete! ou pardieu je te
ferai ami du diable. Non! feu, camarades, feu!"
The order was instantly obeyed, and the fog was stirred by the explosion
of fifty muskets. Happily, the aim was bad, and the bullets cut the air
in a direction a little different from that taken by the fugitives;
though still so nigh them, that to the unpractised ears of David and the
two females, it appeared as if they whistled within a few inches of the
organs. The outcry was renewed, and the order, not only to fire again,
but to pursue, was too plainly audible. When Heyward briefly explained
the meaning of the words they heard, Hawkeye halted, and spoke with
quick decision and great firmness.
"Let us deliver our fire," he said; "they will believe it a sortie, and
give way, or they will wait for reinforcements."
The scheme was well conceived, but failed in its effect. The instant the
French heard the pieces, it seemed as if the plain was alive with men,
muskets rattling along its whole extent, from the shores of the lake to
the farthest boundary of the woods.
"We shall draw their entire army upon us, and bring on a general
assault," said Duncan: "lead on, my friend, for your own life, and
ours."
The scout seemed willing to comply; but, in the hurry of the moment, and
in the change of position, he had lost the direction. In vain he turned
either cheek towards the light air; they felt equally cool. In this
dilemma, Uncas lighted on the furrow of the cannon-ball, where it had
cut the ground in three adjacent ant-hills.
"Give me the range!" said Hawkeye, bending to catch a glimpse of the
direction, and then instantly moving onward.
Cries, oaths, voices calling to each other, and the reports of muskets,
were now quick and incessant, and, apparently, on every side of them.
Suddenly, a strong glare of light flashed across the scene, the fog
rolled upwards in thick wreaths, and several cannon belched across the
plain, and the roar was thrown heavily back from the bellowing echoes of
the mountain.
"'Tis from the fort!" exclaimed Hawkeye, turning short on his tracks;
"and we, like stricken fools, were rushing to the woods, under the very
knives of the Maquas."
The instant their mistake was rectified, the whole party retraced the
error with the utmost diligence. Duncan willingly relinquished the
support of Cora to the arm of Uncas, and Cora as readily accepted the
welcome assistance. Men, hot and angry in pursuit, were evidently on
their footsteps, and each instant threatened their capture, if not their
destruction.
"Point de quartier aux coquins!" cried an eager pursuer, who seemed to
direct the operations of the enemy.
"Stand firm, and be ready, my gallant 60ths!" suddenly exclaimed a voice
above them; "wait to see the enemy,--fire low, and sweep the glacis."
"Father! father!" exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist; "it is I!
Alice! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!"
"Hold!" shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of parental
agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and rolling back in solemn
echo. "'Tis she! God has restored me my children! Throw open the
sally-port; to the field, 60ths, to the field; pull not a trigger, lest
ye kill my lambs! Drive off these dogs of France with your steel."
Duncan heard the grating of the rusty hinges, and darting to the spot,
directed by the sound, he met a long line of dark red warriors, passing
swiftly towards the glacis. He knew them for his own battalion of the
royal Americans, and flying to their head, soon swept every trace of his
pursuers from before the works.
For an instant, Cora and Alice had stood trembling and bewildered by
this unexpected desertion; but, before either had leisure for speech, or
even thought, an officer of gigantic frame whose locks were bleached
with years and service, but whose air of military grandeur had been
rather softened than destroyed by time, rushed out of the body of the
mist, and folded them to his bosom, while large scalding tears rolled
down his pale and wrinkled cheeks, and he exclaimed, in the peculiar
accent of Scotland,--
"For this I thank thee, Lord! Let danger come as it will, thy servant is
now prepared!"