Acashee, astute, cautious and devoid of all personal fear, was not
without a certain natural power over her tribe, which regarded her with
some degree of religious awe, inferior in extent but not unakin to that
which lent a halo to the brow of the unfortunate Hope Vines.
Acashee was skillful in all the incantations, dances, and magic of her
people, and did not scruple to work upon their terrors, or to turn all
their faith in her to her own account.
The chamber under the great falls was kept a secret from the people at
large, being used mostly for religious purposes, or in periods of great
extremity as a last rallying point of the chiefs of the tribe; hence,
comparatively few were acquainted with the place of retreat of Acashee,
when she retired from the council, and waved back the women who would
have importuned her with surmises.
Having plunged under the jutting water, she arose in a gorgeous room,
hung with pendants of crystal, and furnished with sacred altars,
fashioned in the long ages by that instinct of nature which leads her
to indicate in solitary grottos and overhanging woods that intuitive
need of worship which is the characteristic of our humanity, even in
its rudest shape.
Prominent in the center of this vast chamber was the stone of
sacrifice, and caldron, which told plainly its use to immolate human
beings, for stains of blood flecked here and there the whiteness of the
surrounding stones.
Acashee paused in front of this ghastly object, and seemed to feast her
eyes in contemplation of that which so well harmonized with her own
cruel and vindictive feelings. Intent upon her long work of vengeance,
devoid of all those gentler emotions which lend a grace to the sex,
while at the same time they present a barrier to great achievement,
she stood with a half-smile upon her lips as if already she beheld the
object of her wrath impaled upon the bloody altar, and sent shrieking
to the throne of the appeased deities. At length she turned away, and
paced slowly up and down the dim area, which gave out no echo to her
restless feet.
Here had for ages been performed those religious rites, so secretly
hidden, that to this day we are left in doubt whether or not the
northern Indians offered human beings upon the altar of sacrifice. Here
were deposited the skulls of great chiefs who had perished in battle,
or been tortured by their enemies, and had died as became brave men.
Skins of serpents and reptiles dried in the sun, bones and ivory, vases
of terra-cotta, thorns steeped in blood, polished stones and crystals
of vast size, were arranged in a niche beneath a stupendous arch; and
here, couched in crystal, extending fold beyond fold, dry from the
dust of centuries, but vivid with the hues of life, was one of those
gigantic lizards, (sauræ,) which might have crept in here before the
deluge, and here slept undisturbed, an object of superstitious awe to
these devotees of nature.
The grotto of the Pejipscot was not so broad at the entrance as might
have been anticipated, but it extended back to a vast distance,
widening laterally till it became a gorgeous labyrinth, rising arch
beyond arch, spreading itself into interminable vistas, and assuming
unexpected shapes of resplendent grace and beauty--columns from which
hung the most delicate tracery; pendents reflecting every prismatic
hue; vails of network, as if the fairy fingers of the frost had
been arrested in their play, and their work rendered eternal in
the adamantine stone: as if a thousand gnomes of the mine had here
collected their treasury, and here wrought a thousand fantastic shapes
into forms of beauty.
It was midday, and the sun, penetrating the sheet of the falls, cast a
not uncheerful light into the cave, the size and gloom of which were
still further relieved by a fire burning in the center, and one or more
torches stuck in the fissures of the rocks. With her back to the fire
stood Acashee, gazing intently upon the white, liquid, and tumultuous
mass which constituted the door or curtain to this strange habitation.
A fierce, cold expression rested upon her face, and the last few weeks
of toil and suffering had done the work of years in planting furrows
upon her brow.
At one side of the cave, stretched upon skins of a delicate texture, as
if prepared to do great honor to whomsoever should apply them to use,
appeared what might have been mistaken for a white vail, excepting that
a draft of air caused a portion of it to rise and fall, spreading the
filaments, and showing it to be a mass of human hair.
So still was the recumbent figure, so motionless the tiny, moccasined
foot just perceptible, and so ghostly the hue and abundance of the
covering, that all suggested an image of death--a draping for the tomb.
Acashee turned sharply around and surveyed the figure long and
silently, a malignant smile growing upon her features. At length she
asked:
“How much longer will you sleep, skake (snake)? Get up, I tell thee!”
At this ungracious speech the figure slightly started but did not obey.
Acashee laughed bitterly.
“You do not like skake (snake); you will be called Wa-ain (white soul),
and be a great medicine-woman; but you are no more than a skake at the
best. Get up, I say; the warriors are coming!”
Still there was neither movement nor reply, and the woman continued, in
a sharper tone:
“Hope Vines, I bid thee come and eat!”
The figure slowly lifted itself up, and looked wistfully, and yet half
defiantly, at the speaker.
“Acashee, I will answer only to my own name.”
“As you like. Skake is as good as Acashee. But the spider snares even
the snake.”
To this truism Hope replied only by a low moan, and settled herself
upon her elbow, amid the masses of luxurious skins woven with wampum,
and fringed with purple and pearl-white shells.
To a stranger, Hope might have seemed but a mere child, and yet the
mouth showed that a woman’s thoughts and passions had been there and
the eye was a well of deep, fathomless emotions, while the grasp of
the little hand showed that no child’s fiber restricted its power. The
arched foot bespoke the elasticity of the tiger, while the small waist
and womanly bust told of a thousand latent charms of character which
time had failed to destroy.
Rising from her recumbent posture, she approached the water at the
entrance to the cave, till the spray dashed itself upon her long,
white locks, and the stronger light falling upon her brow revealed
the sharp, beautiful outline of her face, scarcely touched by the
lapse of time, and those weird, foreshadowing, Raleigh eyes, kindling
in intensity, blue in the light, and nearly black when burning with
emotion.
“Water! still water! forever and forever lapsing away, and stealing my
soul away--away!”
There was a mournful pathos in the tone, as if the speaker might indeed
dissolve into the element upon which she gazed. A moment more and she
turned to Acashee in a way which showed our little Hope of years agone
was by no means broken in spirit, for she asked, sharply:
“Where have you been, Spider?--and now that I look at you, I see that
your people have set a seal upon you.”
Acashee grasped the hair of Hope fiercely, and her form towered and
dilated with rage, but Hope was immovable, and with a derisive smile,
said:
“You dare not do it, Spider--you _dare_ not.”
“What should hinder that I should hurl you into the abyss below?” she
cried.
“We would only go together, as you well know.”
Acashee unconsciously dropped her hold of Hope, and passed her hand
over her own head, which the former observing, asked, lightly:
“Who did it? and why?”
The woman now seized her by the arm, and bending down, hissed through
her clenched teeth:
“John Bonyton did it.”
Hope Vines dropped to the floor as if a shot had penetrated her heart,
and there she lay with no sign of life, to the evident gratification
of the other, who left her to recover as best she might, while she
busied herself in preparing a meal over the coals. Seeing Hope rise to
her feet, and stand erect and motionless at the mouth of the cave, she
called out:
“Skake, come and eat.”
Receiving no answer, and perhaps weary of this useless teasing, she
strode across the space, and shaking her by the arm, cried again:
“Come and eat.”
“I will eat,” answered Hope, softly, taking corn and dried venison.
There was a strange light in her eye which the woman saw, but did not
understand, for she went on in her former vein:
“The Spider caught a bad snake when she wove a net for Hope Vines.”
The latter covered her face with both her hands, and the veins of her
forehead swelled above them. Yet when she uncovered her eyes they were
red, not with tears, but with the effort to suppress them.
“It is a long, long time that I have been here, Acashee,” she murmured,
softly.
“Have you never passed the curtain of water since Samoset brought you
here?” asked the net-weaver; and she fixed her eyes searchingly upon
the face of the other, who neither quailed nor changed color beneath
her gaze, but answered in the same sorrowful accent:
“How should little Hope penetrate the vail of water? Who is left to her
now!”
“You remember that I once told you, ‘_You had a friend; you have a
foe_.’ The white boy and girl shouldn’t have scorned the red girl.
Acashee is glad down to the bottom of her soul. John Bonyton is more
wretched than I am.”
Hope’s eyes dilated and her breast heaved.
“Tell me where you saw John Bonyton, Acashee?”
“Oh, he wears the eagle tuft bravely, and they call him Sagamore of
Saco now.” And she laughed in scorn.
“Oh, the long, weary years!” murmured Hope.
“Where is O-ye-ah?” asked the other.
“She died a moon ago.”
“Did she make you a great medicine-woman?”
Hope rose to her feet with dignity, her brow contracted, and her eyes
gleaming with unearthly radiance. She pointed upward and said:
“The Great Spirit alone knows the morrow as to-day. He reveals himself
to me. Acashee, listen! I behold you pierced, through and through with
arrows; I see you bleed at every pore.”
The proud woman was awed at her tone, and felt that Hope had the
mastery.
“Who shoots the arrows?” she at length asked.
“John Bonyton, and the warriors.”
The woman’s head fell upon her breast, but a smile, fair as the smiles
of the daughter of Samoset in her days of youth and beauty, stole to
her lips as she whispered:
“It contents me so to die.”