Whose party do the townsmen yet admit?
—King John.
In order to preserve an even pace between the incidents of the tale, it
becomes necessary to revert to such events as occurred during the ward
of Ellen Wade.
For the few first hours, the cares of the honest and warm-hearted girl
were confined to the simple offices of satisfying the often-repeated
demands which her younger associates made on her time and patience,
under the pretences of hunger, thirst, and all the other ceaseless
wants of captious and inconsiderate childhood. She had seized a moment
from their importunities to steal into the tent, where she was
administering to the comforts of one far more deserving of her
tenderness, when an outcry among the children recalled her to the
duties she had momentarily forgotten.
“See, Nelly, see!” exclaimed half a dozen eager voices; “yonder ar’
men; and Phoebe says that they ar’ Sioux-Indians!”
Ellen turned her eyes in the direction in which so many arms were
already extended, and, to her consternation, beheld several men,
advancing manifestly and swiftly in a straight line towards the rock.
She counted four, but was unable to make out any thing concerning their
characters, except that they were not any of those who of right were
entitled to admission into the fortress. It was a fearful moment for
Ellen. Looking around, at the juvenile and frightened flock that
pressed upon the skirts of her garments, she endeavoured to recall to
her confused faculties some one of the many tales of female heroism,
with which the history of the western frontier abounded. In one, a
stockade had been successfully defended by a single man, supported by
three or four women, for days, against the assaults of a hundred
enemies. In another, the women alone had been able to protect the
children, and the less valuable effects of their absent husbands; and a
third was not wanting, in which a solitary female had destroyed her
sleeping captors and given liberty not only to herself, but to a brood
of helpless young. This was the case most nearly assimilated to the
situation in which Ellen now found herself; and, with flushing cheeks
and kindling eyes, the girl began to consider, and to prepare her
slender means of defence.
She posted the larger girls at the little levers that were to cast the
rocks on the assailants, the smaller were to be used more for show than
any positive service they could perform, while, like any other leader,
she reserved her own person, as a superintendent and encourager of the
whole. When these dispositions were made, she endeavoured to await the
issue, with an air of composure, that she intended should inspire her
assistants with the confidence necessary to ensure success.
Although Ellen was vastly their superior in that spirit which emanates
from moral qualities, she was by no means the equal of the two eldest
daughters of Esther, in the important military property of
insensibility to danger. Reared in the hardihood of a migrating life,
on the skirts of society, where they had become familiarised to the
sights and dangers of the wilderness, these girls promised fairly to
become, at some future day, no less distinguished than their mother for
daring, and for that singular mixture of good and evil, which, in a
wider sphere of action, would probably have enabled the wife of the
squatter to enrol her name among the remarkable females of her time.
Esther had already, on one occasion, made good the log tenement of
Ishmael against an inroad of savages; and on another, she had been left
for dead by her enemies, after a defence that, with a more civilised
foe, would have entitled her to the honours of a liberal capitulation.
These facts, and sundry others of a similar nature, had often been
recapitulated with suitable exultation in the presence of her
daughters, and the bosoms of the young Amazons were now strangely
fluctuating between natural terror and the ambitious wish to do
something that might render them worthy of being the children of such a
mother. It appeared that the opportunity for distinction, of this wild
character, was no longer to be denied them.
The party of strangers was already within a hundred rods of the rock.
Either consulting their usual wary method of advancing, or admonished
by the threatening attitudes of two figures, who had thrust forth the
barrels of as many old muskets from behind the stone entrenchment, the
new comers halted, under favour of an inequality in the ground, where a
growth of grass thicker than common offered the advantage of
concealment. From this spot they reconnoitred the fortress for several
anxious, and to Ellen, interminable minutes. Then one advanced singly,
and apparently more in the character of a herald than of an assailant.
“Phoebe, do you fire,” and “no, Hetty, you,” were beginning to be heard
between the half-frightened and yet eager daughters of the squatter,
when Ellen probably saved the advancing stranger from some imminent
alarm, if from no greater danger, by exclaiming—
“Lay down the muskets; it is Dr. Battius!”
Her subordinates so far complied, as to withdraw their hands from the
locks, though the threatening barrels still maintained the portentous
levels. The naturalist, who had advanced with sufficient deliberation
to note the smallest hostile demonstration of the garrison, now raised
a white handkerchief on the end of his fusee, and came within speaking
distance of the fortress. Then, assuming what he intended should be an
imposing and dignified semblance of authority, he blustered forth, in a
voice that might have been heard at a much greater distance—
“What, ho! I summon ye all, in the name of the Confederacy of the
United Sovereign States of North America, to submit yourselves to the
laws.”
“Doctor or no Doctor; he is an enemy, Nelly; hear him! hear him! he
talks of the law.”
“Stop! stay till I hear his answer!” said the nearly breathless Ellen,
pushing aside the dangerous weapons which were again pointed in the
direction of the shrinking person of the herald.
“I admonish and forewarn ye all,” continued the startled Doctor, “that
I am a peaceful citizen of the before named Confederacy, or to speak
with greater accuracy, Union, a supporter of the Social Compact, and a
lover of good order and amity;” then, perceiving that the danger was,
at least, temporarily removed, he once more raised his voice to the
hostile pitch,—“I charge ye all, therefore, to submit to the laws.”
“I thought you were a friend,” Ellen replied; “and that you travelled
with my uncle, in virtue of an agreement—”
“It is void! I have been deceived in the very premises, and, I hereby
pronounce, a certain compactum, entered into and concluded between
Ishmael Bush, squatter, and Obed Battius, M.D., to be incontinently
null and of non-effect. Nay, children, to be null is merely a negative
property, and is fraught with no evil to your worthy parent; so lay
aside the fire-arms, and listen to the admonitions of reason. I declare
it vicious—null—abrogated. As for thee, Nelly, my feelings towards thee
are not at all given to hostility; therefore listen to that which I
have to utter, nor turn away thine ears in the wantonness of security.
Thou knowest the character of the man with whom thou dwellest, young
woman, and thou also knowest the danger of being found in evil company.
Abandon, then, the trifling advantages of thy situation, and yield the
rock peaceably to the will of those who accompany me—a legion, young
woman—I do assure you an invincible and powerful legion! Render,
therefore, the effects of this lawless and wicked squatter,—nay,
children, such disregard of human life, is frightful in those who have
so recently received the gift, in their own persons! Point those
dangerous weapons aside, I entreat of you; more for your own sakes,
than for mine. Hetty, hast thou forgotten who appeased thine anguish
when thy auricular nerves were tortured by the colds and damps of the
naked earth! and thou, Phoebe, ungrateful and forgetful Phoebe! but for
this very arm, which you would prostrate with an endless paralysis, thy
incisores would still be giving thee pain and sorrow! Lay, then, aside
thy weapons, and hearken to the advice of one who has always been thy
friend. And now, young woman,” still keeping a jealous eye on the
muskets which the girl had suffered to be diverted a little from their
aim,—“and now, young woman, for the last, and therefore the most solemn
asking: I demand of thee the surrender of this rock, without delay or
resistance, in the joint names of power, of justice, and of the—” law
he would have added; but recollecting that this ominous word would
again provoke the hostility of the squatter’s children, he succeeded in
swallowing it in good season, and concluded with the less dangerous and
more convertible term of “reason.”
This extraordinary summons failed, however, of producing the desired
effect. It proved utterly unintelligible to his younger listeners, with
the exception of the few offensive terms, already sufficiently
distinguished, and though Ellen better comprehended the meaning of the
herald, she appeared as little moved by his rhetoric as her companions.
At those passages which he intended should be tender and affecting, the
intelligent girl, though tortured by painful feelings, had even
manifested a disposition to laugh, while to the threats she turned an
utterly insensible ear.
“I know not the meaning of all you wish to say, Dr. Battius,” she
quietly replied, when he had ended; “but I am sure if it would teach me
to betray my trust, it is what I ought not to hear. I caution you to
attempt no violence, for let my wishes be what they may, you see I am
surrounded by a force that can easily put me down, and you know, or
ought to know, too well the temper of this family, to trifle in such a
matter with any of its members, let them be of what sex or age they
may.”
“I am not entirely ignorant of human character,” returned the
naturalist, prudently receding a little from the position, which he
had, until now, stoutly maintained at the very base of the hill. “But
here comes one who may know its secret windings still better than I.”
“Ellen! Ellen Wade,” cried Paul Hover, who had advanced to his elbow,
without betraying any of that sensitiveness which had so manifestly
discomposed the Doctor; “I didn’t expect to find an enemy in you!”
“Nor shall you, when you ask that, which I can grant without treachery.
You know that my uncle has trusted his family to my care, and shall I
so far betray the trust as to let in his bitterest enemies to murder
his children, perhaps, and to rob him of the little which the Indians
have left?”
“Am I a murderer—is this old man—this officer of the States,” pointing
to the trapper and his newly discovered friend, both of whom by this
time stood at his side, “is either of these likely to do the things you
name?”
“What is it then you ask of me?” said Ellen, wringing her hands, in
excessive doubt.
“The beast! nothing more nor less than the squatter’s hidden, ravenous,
dangerous beast!”
“Excellent young woman,” commenced the young stranger, who had so
lately joined himself to the party on the prairie—but his mouth was
immediately stopped by a significant sign from the trapper, who
whispered in his ear—
“Let the lad be our spokesman. Natur’ will work in the bosom of the
child, and we shall gain our object, in good time.”
“The whole truth is out, Ellen,” Paul continued, “and we have lined the
squatter into his most secret misdoings. We have come to right the
wronged and to free the imprisoned; now, if you are the girl of a true
heart, as I have always believed, so far from throwing straws in our
way, you will join in the general swarming, and leave old Ishmael and
his hive to the bees of his own breed.”
“I have sworn a solemn oath—”
“A compactum which is entered into through ignorance, or in duresse, is
null in the sight of all good moralists,” cried the Doctor.
“Hush, hush,” again the trapper whispered; “leave it all to natur’ and
the lad!”
“I have sworn in the sight and by the name of Him who is the founder
and ruler of all that is good, whether it be in morals or in religion,”
Ellen continued, “neither to reveal the contents of that tent, nor to
help its prisoner to escape. We are both solemnly, terribly, sworn; our
lives perhaps have been the gift we received for the promises. It is
true you are masters of the secret, but not through any means of ours;
nor do I know that I can justify myself, for even being neutral, while
you attempt to invade the dwelling of my uncle in this hostile manner.”
“I can prove beyond the power of refutation,” the naturalist eagerly
exclaimed, “by Paley, Berkeley, ay, even by the immortal Binkerschoek,
that a compactum, concluded while one of the parties, be it a state or
be it an individual, is in durance—”
“You will ruffle the temper of the child, with your abusive language,”
said the cautious trapper, “while the lad, if left to human feelings,
will bring her down to the meekness of a fawn. Ah! you are like myself,
little knowing in the natur’ of hidden kindnesses!”
“Is this the only vow you have taken, Ellen?” Paul continued in a tone
which, for the gay, light-hearted bee-hunter, sounded dolorous and
reproachful. “Have you sworn only to this? are the words which the
squatter says, to be as honey in your mouth, and all other promises
like so much useless comb?”
The paleness, which had taken possession of the usually cheerful
countenance of Ellen, was hid in a bright glow, that was plainly
visible even at the distance at which she stood. She hesitated a
moment, as if struggling to repress something very like resentment,
before she answered with all her native spirit—
“I know not what right any one has to question me about oaths and
promises, which can only concern her who has made them, if, indeed, any
of the sort you mention have ever been made at all. I shall hold no
further discourse with one who thinks so much of himself, and takes
advice merely of his own feelings.”
“Now, old trapper, do you hear that!” said the unsophisticated
bee-hunter, turning abruptly to his aged friend. “The meanest insect
that skims the heavens, when it has got its load, flies straight and
honestly to its nest or hive, according to its kind; but the ways of a
woman’s mind are as knotty as a gnarled oak, and more crooked than the
windings of the Mississippi!”
“Nay, nay, child,” said the trapper, good-naturedly interfering in
behalf of the offending Paul, “you are to consider that youth is hasty,
and not overgiven to thought. But then a promise is a promise, and not
to be thrown aside and forgotten, like the hoofs and horns of a
buffaloe.”
“I thank you for reminding me of my oath,” said the still resentful
Ellen, biting her pretty nether lip with vexation; “I might else have
proved forgetful!”
“Ah! female natur’ is awakened in her,” said the old man, shaking his
head in a manner to show how much he was disappointed in the result;
“but it manifests itself against the true spirit!”
“Ellen!” cried the young stranger, who until now had been an attentive
listener to the parley, “since Ellen is the name by which you are
known—”
“They often add to it another. I am sometimes called by the name of my
father.”
“Call her Nelly Wade at once,” muttered Paul; “it is her rightful name,
and I care not if she keeps it for ever!”
“Wade, I should have added,” continued the youth. “You will acknowledge
that, though bound by no oath myself, I at least have known how to
respect those of others. You are a witness yourself that I have
forborne to utter a single call, while I am certain it could reach
those ears it would gladden so much. Permit me then to ascend the rock,
singly; I promise a perfect indemnity to your kinsman, against any
injury his effects may sustain.”
Ellen seemed to hesitate, but catching a glimpse of Paul, who stood
leaning proudly on his rifle, whistling, with an appearance of the
utmost indifference, the air of a boating song, she recovered her
recollection in time to answer,—
“I have been left the captain of the rock, while my uncle and his sons
hunt, and captain will I remain till he returns to receive back the
charge.”
“This is wasting moments that will not soon return, and neglecting an
opportunity that may never occur again,” the young soldier gravely
remarked. “The sun is beginning to fall already, and many minutes
cannot elapse before the squatter and his savage brood will be
returning to their huts.”
Doctor Battius cast a glance behind him, and took up the discourse, by
saying—
“Perfection is always found in maturity, whether it be in the animal or
in the intellectual world. Reflection is the mother of wisdom, and
wisdom the parent of success. I propose that we retire to a discreet
distance from this impregnable position, and there hold a convocation,
or council, to deliberate on what manner we may sit down regularly
before the place; or, perhaps, by postponing the siege to another
season, gain the aid of auxiliaries from the inhabited countries, and
thus secure the dignity of the laws from any danger of a repulse.”
“A storm would be better,” the soldier smilingly answered, measuring
the height and scanning all its difficulties with a deliberate eye;
“’twould be but a broken arm or a bruised head at the worst.”
“Then have at it!” shouted the impetuous bee-hunter, making a spring
that at once put him out of danger from shot, by carrying him beneath
the projecting ledge on which the garrison was posted; “now do your
worst, young devils of a wicked breed; you have but a moment to work
your mischief!”
“Paul! rash Paul!” shrieked Ellen; “another step and the rocks will
crush you! they hang by but a thread, and these girls are ready and
willing to let them fall!”
“Then drive the accursed swarm from the hive; for scale the rock I
will, though I find it covered with hornets.”
“Let her if she dare!” tauntingly cried the eldest of the girls,
brandishing a musket with a mien and resolution that would have done
credit to her Amazonian dam. “I know you, Nelly Wade; you are with the
lawyers in your heart, and if you come a foot nigher, you shall have
frontier punishment. Put in another pry, girls; in with it! I should
like to see the man, of them all, that dare come up into the camp of
Ishmael Bush, without asking leave of his children!”
“Stir not, Paul; for your life keep beneath the rock!”
Ellen was interrupted by the same bright vision, which on the preceding
day had stayed another scarcely less portentous tumult, by exhibiting
itself on the same giddy height, where it was now seen.
“In the name of Him, who commandeth all, I implore you to pause—both
you, who so madly incur the risk, and you, who so rashly offer to take
that which you never can return!” said a voice, in a slightly foreign
accent, that instantly drew all eyes upward.
“Inez!” cried the officer, “do I again see you! mine shall you now be,
though a million devils were posted on this rock. Push up, brave
woodsman, and give room for another!”
The sudden appearance of the figure from the tent had created a
momentary stupor among the defendants of the rock, which might, with
suitable forbearance, have been happily improved; but startled by the
voice of Middleton, the surprised Phoebe discharged her musket at the
female, scarcely knowing whether she aimed at the life of a mortal or
at some being which belonged to another world. Ellen uttered a cry of
horror, and then sprang after her alarmed or wounded friend, she knew
not which, into the tent.
During this moment of dangerous by-play, the sounds of a serious attack
were very distinctly audible beneath. Paul had profited by the
commotion over his head to change his place so far, as to make room for
Middleton. The latter was followed by the naturalist, who, in a state
of mental aberration, produced by the report of the musket, had
instinctively rushed towards the rocks for cover. The trapper remained
where he was last seen, an unmoved but close observer of the several
proceedings. Though averse to enter into actual hostilities, the old
man was, however, far from being useless. Favoured by his position, he
was enabled to apprise his friends of the movements of those who
plotted their destruction above, and to advise and control their
advance accordingly.
In the mean time, the children of Esther were true to the spirit they
had inherited from their redoubtable mother. The instant they found
themselves delivered from the presence of Ellen and her unknown
companion, they bestowed an undivided attention on their more masculine
and certainly more dangerous assailants, who by this time had made a
complete lodgment among the crags of the citadel. The repeated summons
to surrender, which Paul uttered in a voice that he intended should
strike terror in their young bosoms, were as little heeded as were the
calls of the trapper to abandon a resistance, which might prove fatal
to some among them, without offering the smallest probability of
eventual success. Encouraging each other to persevere, they poised the
fragments of rocks, prepared the lighter missiles for immediate
service, and thrust forward the barrels of the muskets with a
business-like air, and a coolness, that would have done credit to men
practised in warfare.
“Keep under the ledge,” said the trapper, pointing out to Paul the
manner in which he should proceed; “keep in your foot more, lad—ah! you
see the warning was not amiss! had the stone struck it, the bees would
have had the prairies to themselves. Now, namesake of my friend; Uncas,
in name and spirit! now, if you have the activity of Le Cerf Agile, you
may make a far leap to the right, and gain twenty feet, without danger.
Beware the bush—beware the bush! ’twill prove a treacherous hold! Ah!
he has done it; safely and bravely has he done it! Your turn comes
next, friend; that follows the fruits of natur’. Push you to the left,
and divide the attention of the children. Nay, girls, fire,—my old ears
are used to the whistling of lead; and little reason have I to prove a
doe-heart, with fourscore years on my back.” He shook his head with a
melancholy smile, but without flinching in a muscle, as the bullet,
which the exasperated Hetty fired, passed innocently at no great
distance from the spot where he stood. “It is safer keeping in your
track than dodging when a weak finger pulls the trigger,” he continued
“but it is a solemn sight to witness how much human natur’ is inclined
to evil, in one so young! Well done, my man of beasts and plants!
Another such leap, and you may laugh at all the squatter’s bars and
walls. The Doctor has got his temper up! I see it in his eye, and
something good will come of him! Keep closer, man—keep closer.”
The trapper, though he was not deceived as to the state of Dr. Battius’
mind, was, however, greatly in error as to the exciting cause. While
imitating the movements of his companions, and toiling his way upward
with the utmost caution, and not without great inward tribulation, the
eye of the naturalist had caught a glimpse of an unknown plant, a few
yards above his head, and in a situation more than commonly exposed to
the missiles which the girls were unceasingly hurling in the direction
of the assailants. Forgetting, in an instant, every thing but the glory
of being the first to give this jewel to the catalogues of science, he
sprang upward at the prize with the avidity with which the sparrow
darts upon the butterfly. The rocks, which instantly came thundering
down, announced that he was seen; and for a moment, while his form was
concealed in the cloud of dust and fragments which followed the furious
descent, the trapper gave him up for lost; but the next instant he was
seen safely seated in a cavity formed by some of the projecting stones
which had yielded to the shock, holding triumphantly in his hand the
captured stem, which he was already devouring with delighted, and
certainly not unskilful, eyes. Paul profited by the opportunity.
Turning his course, with the quickness of thought, he sprang to the
post which Obed thus securely occupied, and unceremoniously making a
footstool of his shoulder, as the latter stooped over his treasure, he
bounded through the breach left by the fallen rock, and gained the
level. He was followed by Middleton, who joined him in seizing and
disarming the girls. In this manner a bloodless and complete victory
was obtained over that citadel which Ishmael had vainly flattered
himself might prove impregnable.