“It is but a shadow vanished—a bubble broke—a dreame finish’t: Eternitie will pay for all.”—Roger Williams.
Scarcely had the invaders disappeared and the sound of their footsteps died away, when Digby and Hutton came in view of the dwelling. “Ah!” said Hutton, reining in his horse, “I thought all this fluster was for nothing—the blast a boy’s prank. A pretty piece of work we’ve made of it; you’ll have Mistress Grafton about your ears for tossing away her Lon’on gimcracks. All is as quiet here as a Saturday night; nothing to be seen but the smoke from the kitchen chimney, and that’s a pleasant sight to me, for I went off without my dinner, and methinks it will now taste as savoury as Jacob’s pottage.”
Digby lent no attention to his companion’s chattering, but pressed on; his fears were allayed, but not removed. As he approached the house, he felt that the silence which pervaded it boded no good; but the horrors of the reality far surpassed the worst suggestions of his vague apprehensions. “Oh, my mistress! my mistress!” he screamed, when the havoc of death burst upon his sight. “My good mistress—and her girls! and the baby too! Oh, God, have mercy on my master!” and he bent over the bodies and wrung his hands: “not one—not one spared!”
“Yes, one,” spoke a trembling, whining voice, which proved to be Jennet’s, who had just emerged from her hiding-place covered with soot; “by the blessing of a kind Providence, I have been preserved for some wise end; but,” she continued, panting, “the fright has taken my breath away, besides being squeezed as flat as a pancake in the bedroom chimney.”
“Stop—for Heaven’s sake, stop, Jennet, and tell me, if you can, if Mr. Everell was here.”
Jennet did not know; she remembered having seen the family in general assembled, just before she heard the yell of the savages.
“How long,” Digby inquired, “have they been gone? how long since you heard the last sound?”
“That’s more than mortal man, or woman either, in my case, could tell, Mr. Digby. Do you think, when a body seems to feel a scalping-knife in their heads, they can reckon time? No; hours are minutes, and minutes hours, in such a case.”
“Oh, fool! fool!” cried Digby; and, turning disgusted away, his eye fell on his musket. “Thank the Lord!” he exclaimed, “Mr. Everell has poured one shot into the fiends; he alone knew where the gun was: bless the boy—bless him; he has a strong arm and a stout soul—bless him. They have taken him off; we’ll after him, Hutton. Jennet, bring my hunting pouch. Look to your firelock, Hutton. Magawisca! Oneco! Faith Leslie, all gone!” he continued, his first amazement dissipating, and thought after thought flashing the truth on his mind. “I remember last night—oh, Mr. Everell, how the girl deceived you! she knew it all.”
“Ah, Magawisca! so I thought,” said Jennet. “She knows everything evil that happens in earth, sea, or air—she and that mother-witch Nelema. I always told Mrs. Fletcher she was warming a viper in her bosom, poor dear lady; but I suppose it was for wise ends she was left to her blindness.”
“Are you ready, Hutton?” asked Digby, impatiently.
“Ready! yes, I am ready; but what is the use, Digby? what are we two against a host? and, besides, you know not how long they have been gone.”
“Not very long,” said Digby, shuddering, and pointing to blood that was trickling, drop by drop, from the edge of the flooring to the step. How long the faithful fellow might have urged, we know not, for cowardice hath ever ready and abundant arguments, and Hutton was not a man to be persuaded into danger; but the arrival of Mr. Pynchon and his men put an end to the debate.
Mr. Pynchon was the faithful, paternal guardian of his little colony. He saw in this scene of violent death not only the present overwhelming misery of the family at Bethel, but the fearful fate to which all were exposed who had perilled their lives in the wilderness; but he could give but brief space to bitter reflections and the lamentings of nature. Instant care and service were necessary for the dead and the living. The bodies of the mother and children were removed to one of the apartments, and decently disposed, and then, after a fervent prayer—a duty never omitted in any emergency by the Pilgrims, whose faith in the minute superintendence of Providence was practical—he directed the necessary arrangements for the pursuit of the enemy.
Little could be gathered from Jennet. She was mainly occupied with her own remarkable preservation, not doubting that Providence had specially interposed to save the only life utterly insignificant in any eyes but her own. She recollected to have heard Magawisca exclaim “My father!” at the first onset of the savages. The necessary conclusion was, that the party had been led by the Pequod chief. It was obviously probable that he would return, with his children and captives, to the Mohawks, where, it was well known, he had found refuge; of course, the pursuers were to take a westerly direction. Jennet was of opinion that the party was not numerous; and, encumbered as they must be with their prisoners, the one a child, whom it would be necessary, in a rapid flight, to carry, Mr. Pynchon had sanguine expectations that they might be overtaken.
The fugitives, obliged to avoid the cleared meadows, had, as Mr. Pynchon believed, taken an indirect path through the forest to the Connecticut; which, in pursuance of their probable route, they would of course cross as soon as they could with safety. He selected five of his men, whom he deemed fittest for the expedition, and recommending it to them to be guided by the counsel of Digby, whose impatient zeal was apparent, he directed them to take a direct course to the river. He was to return to the village, and despatch a boat to them, with which they were to ply up the river, in the hope of intercepting the passage of the Indians.
The men departed, led by Digby, to whose agitated spirit every moment’s delay had appeared unnecessary and fatal; and Mr. Pynchon was mounting his horse, when he saw Mr. Fletcher, who had avoided the circuitous road through the village, emerge from the forest, and come in full view of his dwelling. Mr. Pynchon called to Jennet, “Yonder is your master; he must not come hither while this precious blood is on the threshold; I shall take him to my house, and assistance shall be sent to you. In the mean time, watch those bodies faithfully.”
“Oh! I can’t stay here alone,” whimpered Jennet, running after Mr. Pynchon; “I would not stay for all the Promised Land.”
“Back, woman!” cried Mr. Pynchon, in a voice of thunder; and Jennet retreated, the danger of advancing appearing for the moment the greater of the two.
Mr. Fletcher was attended by two Indians, who followed him, bearing on a litter his favourite, Hope Leslie. When they came within sight of Bethel, they shouted the chorus of a native song. Hope inquired its meaning. They told her, and raising herself, and tossing back the bright curls that shaded her eyes, she clapped her hands, and accompanied them with the English words, “The home! the home! the chieftain’s home!” “And my home too, is it not?” she said.
Mr. Fletcher was touched with the joy with which this bright little creature, who had left a palace in England, hailed his rustic dwelling in the wilderness. He turned on her a smile of delight—he could not speak; the sight of his home had opened the floodgates of his heart. “Oh, now,” she continued, with growing animation, “I shall meet my sister. But why does she not come to meet us? Where is your Everell? and the girls? There is no one looking out for us.”
The stillness of the place, and the absence of all living objects, struck Mr. Fletcher with fearful apprehensions, heightened by the sight of his friend, who was coming at full gallop towards him. To an accurate observer, the effects of joy and sorrow on the human figure are easily discriminated; misery depresses, contracts, and paralyzes the body as it does the spirit.
“Remain here for a few moments,” said Mr. Fletcher to his attendants, and he put spurs to his horse and galloped forward.
“Put down the litter,” said Hope Leslie to her bearers. “I cannot stand stock-still here, in sight of the house where my sister is.” The Indians knew their duty, and determining to abide by the letter of their employer’s orders, did not depress the litter.
“There, take that for your sulkiness,” she said, giving each a tap on his ear; and half impatient, half sportive, she leaped from the litter and bounded forward.
The friends met. Mr. Pynchon covered his face and groaned aloud. “What has happened to my family?” demanded Mr. Fletcher. “My wife—my son—my little ones? Oh, speak! God give me grace to hear thee!”
In vain Mr. Pynchon essayed to speak; he could find no words to soften the frightful truth. Mr. Fletcher turned his horse’s head towards Bethel, and was proceeding to end, himself, the insupportable suspense, when his friend, seizing his arm, cried, “Stop! stop! go not thither! thy house is desolate!” and then, half choked with groans and sobs, he unfolded the dismal story.
Not a sound nor a sigh escaped the blasted man. He seemed to be turned into stone till he was roused by the wild shrieks of the little girl, who, unobserved, had listened to the communication of Mr. Pynchon.
“Take the child with you,” he said; “I shall go to my house. If—if my boy returns, send a messenger instantly; otherwise, suffer me to remain alone till to-morrow.”
He passed on without appearing to hear the cries and entreaties of Hope Leslie, who, forcibly detained by Mr. Pynchon, screamed, “Oh! take me, take me with you; there are but us two left; I will not go away from you!” but at last, finding resistance useless, she yielded, and was conveyed to the village, where she was received by her aunt Grafton, whose grief was as noisy and communicative as Mr. Fletcher’s had been silent and unexpressed by any of the ordinary forms of sorrow.
Early on the following morning, Mr. Pynchon, attended by several others, men and women, went to Bethel to offer their sympathy and service. They met Jennet at the door, who, greatly relieved by the sight of human faces, and ears willing to listen, informed them that, immediately after her master’s arrival, he had retired to the apartment that contained the bodies of the deceased, charging her not to intrude on him.
A murmur of apprehension ran around the circle. “It was misjudged to leave him here alone,” whispered one. “It is not every man, though his faith stand as a mountain in his prosperity, that can bear to have the Lord put forth his hand, and touch his bone and his flesh.”
“Ah!” said another, “my heart misgave me when Mr. Pynchon told us how calm he took it; such a calm as that is like the still dead waters that cover the lost cities; quiet is not the nature of the creature, and you may be sure that unseen havoc and ruin are underneath.”
“The poor dear gentleman should have taken something to eat or drink,” said a little, plump, full-fed lady; “there is nothing so feeding to grief as an empty stomach. Madam Holioke, do not you think it would be prudent for us to guard with a little cordial and a bit of spiced cake—if this good girl can give it to us?” looking at Jennet. “The dear lady that’s gone was ever thrifty in her housewifery, and I doubt not she left such witnesses behind.”
Mrs. Holioke shook her head, and a man of a most solemn and owl-like aspect, who sat between the ladies, turned to the last speaker and said, in a deep guttural tone, “Judy, thou shouldst not bring thy carnal propensities to this house of mourning—and perchance of sin. Where the Lord works, Satan worketh also, tempting the wounded. I doubt our brother Fletcher hath done violence to himself. He was ever of a proud—that is to say, a peculiar and silent make, and what won’t bend will break.”
The suggestion in this speech communicated alarm to all present. Several persons gathered about Mr. Pynchon. Some advised him to knock at the door of the adjoining apartment; others counselled forcing it, if necessary. While each one was proffering his opinion, the door opened from within, and Mr. Fletcher came among them.
“Do you bring me any news of my son?” he asked Mr. Pynchon.
Till this question was put and answered, there was a tremulousness of voice, a knitting of the brow, and a variation of colour, that indicated the agitation of the sufferer’s soul; but then a sublime composure overspread his countenance and figure. He noticed every one present with more than his usual attention; and to a superficial observer, one who knew not how to interpret his mortal paleness, the fixed melancholy of his glazed eye, and his rigid muscles, which had the inflexibility of marble, he might have appeared to be suffering less than any person present. Some cried outright; some stared with undisguised and irrepressible curiosity; some were voluble in the expression of their sympathy; while a few were pale, silent, and awe-struck. All these many-coloured feelings fell on Mr. Fletcher like light on a black surface, producing no change, meeting no return. He stood leaning on the mantelpiece till the first burst of feeling was over; till all, insensibly yielding to his example, became quiet, and the apartment was as still as that in which death held his silent dominion.
Mr. Pynchon then whispered to him: “My friend, bear your testimony now; edify us with a seasonable word, showing that you are not amazed at your calamity; that you counted the cost before you undertook to build the Lord’s building in the wilderness. It is suitable that you should turn your affliction to the profit of the Lord’s people.”
Mr. Fletcher felt himself stretched on a rack that he must endure with a martyr’s patience; he lifted up his head, and with much effort spoke one brief sentence—a sentence which contains all that a Christian could feel, or the stores of language could express: “God’s will be done!” he said, and then hurried away to hide his struggles in solitude.
Relieved from the restraint of his presence, the company poured forth such moral, consoling, and pious reflections as usually flow spontaneously from the lips of the spectators of suffering, and which would seem to indicate that each individual has a spare stock of wisdom and patience for his neighbour’s occasions, though, through some strange fatality, they are never applied to his own use.
We hope our readers will not think we have wantonly sported with their feelings, by drawing a picture of calamity that only exists in the fictitious tale. No; such events as we have feebly related were common in our early annals, and attended by horrors that it would be impossible for the imagination to exaggerate. Not only families, but villages, were cut off by the most dreaded of all foes—the ruthless, vengeful savage.
In the quiet possession of the blessings transmitted, we are, perhaps, in danger of forgetting or undervaluing the sufferings by which they were obtained. We forget that the noble Pilgrims lived and endured for us; that when they came to the wilderness, they said truly, though it may be somewhat quaintly, that they turned their backs on Egypt; they did virtually renounce all dependance on earthly supports; they left the land of their birth, of their homes, of their father’s sepulchres; they sacrificed ease and preferment, and all the delights of sense—and for what? To open for themselves an earthly paradise? to dress their bowers of pleasure, and rejoice with their wives and children? No: they came not for themselves, they lived not to themselves. An exiled and suffering people, they came forth in the dignity of the chosen servants of the Lord, to open the forests to the sunbeam, and to the light of the Son of Righteousness; to restore man—man, oppressed and trampled on by his fellow—to religious and civil liberty, and equal rights; to replace the creatures of God on their natural level; to bring down the hills, and make smooth the rough places, which the pride and cruelty of man had wrought on the fair creation of the Father of all.
What was their reward? Fortune? distinctions? the sweet charities of home? No: but their feet were planted on the Mount of Vision, and they saw, with sublime joy, a multitude of people where the solitary savage roamed the forest; the forest vanished, and pleasant villages and busy cities appeared; the tangled footpath expanded to the thronged highway; the consecrated church planted on the rock of heathen sacrifice.
And that we might realize this vision, enter into this promised land of faith, they endured hardship and braved death, deeming, as said one of their company, that “he is not worthy to live at all, who, for fear of danger or death, shunneth his country’s service or his own honour, since death is inevitable, and the fame of virtue immortal.”
If these were the fervours of enthusiasm, it was an enthusiasm kindled and fed by the holy flame that glows on the altar of God; an enthusiasm that never abates, but gathers life and strength as the immortal soul expands in the image of its Creator.
We shall now leave the little community assembled at Bethel to perform the last offices for one who had been among them an example of all the most attractive virtues of woman. The funeral ceremony was then, as it still is among the descendants of the Pilgrims, a simple, affectionate service; a gathering of the people, men, women, and children, as one family, to the house of mourning.
Mononotto and his party in their flight had less than an hour’s advantage of their pursuers, and, retarded by their captives, they would have been compelled to despatch them or have been overtaken, but for their sagacity in traversing the forest; they knew how to wind around morasses, to shape their course to the margin of the rivulets, and to penetrate defiles, while their pursuers, unpractised in that accurate observation of nature by which the savage was guided, were clambering over mountains, arrested by precipices, or half buried in swamps.
After an hour’s silent and rapid flight, the Indians halted to make such arrangements as would best accelerate their retreat. They placed the little Leslie on the back of one of the Mohawks, and attached her there by a happis, or strong wide band, passed several times over her, and around the body of her bearer. She screamed at her separation from Oneco; but, being permitted to stretch out her hand and place it in his, she became quiet and satisfied.
The Mohawk auxiliaries, who so lately had seemed two insatiate bloodhounds, now appeared to regard the reciprocal devotion of the children with complacency; but their amity was not extended to Everell; and Saco in particular, the Indian whom he had wounded, and whose arm was irritated and smarting, eyed him with glances of brooding malignity. Magawisca perceived this, and dreading lest the savage should give way to a sudden impulse of revenge, she placed herself between him and Everell. This movement awakened Mononotto from a sullen revery, and striking his hands together angrily, he bade Magawisca remove from the English boy.
She obeyed, and mournfully resumed her place beside her father, saying as she did so, in a low, thrilling tone, “My father! my father! where are my father’s look and voice? Mononotto has found his daughter, but I have not found my father.”
Mononotto felt her reproach; his features relaxed, and he laid his hand on her head.
“My father’s soul awakes!” she cried, exultingly. “Oh, listen to me, listen to me!” She waved her hand to the Mohawks to stop, and they obeyed. “Why,” she continued, in an impassioned voice, “why hath my father’s soul stooped from its ever upward flight? Till this day his knife was never stained with innocent blood. Yonder roof,” and she pointed towards Bethel, “has sheltered thy children; the wing of the mother-bird was spread over us; we ate of the children’s bread; then why hast thou shed their blood? Why art thou leading the son into captivity? Oh, spare him! send him back; leave one light in the darkened habitation!”
“One,” echoed Mononotto; “did they leave me one? No; my people, my children, were swept away like withered leaves before the wind; and there, where our pleasant homes were clustered, are silence and darkness; thistles have sprung up around our hearth-stones, and grass has overgrown our pathways. Magawisca, has thy brother vanished from thy memory? I tell thee, that as Samoset died, that boy shall die. My soul rejoiced when he fought at his mother’s side, to see him thus make himself a worthy victim to offer to thy lion-hearted brother: even so fought Samoset.”
Magawisca felt that her father’s purpose was not to be shaken. She looked at Everell, and already felt the horrors of the captive’s fate—the scorching fires and the torturing knives; and when her father commanded the party to move onward, she uttered a piercing shriek.
“Be silent, girl,” said Mononotto, sternly; “cries and screams are for children and cowards.”
“And I am a coward,” replied Magawisca, reverting to her habitually calm tone, “if to fear my father should do a wrong, even to an enemy, is cowardice.” Again her father’s brow softened; and she ventured to add, “Send back the boy, and our path will be all smooth before us, and light will be upon it, for my mother often said, ‘the sun never sets on the soul of the man that doeth good.’ ”
Magawisca had unwittingly touched the spring of her father’s vindictive passions. “Dost thou use thy mother’s words,” he said, “to plead for one of the race of her murderers? Is not her grave among my enemies? Say no more, I command you, and speak not to the boy; thy kindness but sharpens my revenge.”
There was no alternative. Magawisca must feel or feign submission; and she laid her hand on her heart, and bowed her head in token of obedience. Everell had observed and understood her intercession; for, though her words were uttered in her own tongue, there was no mistaking her significant manner; but he was indifferent to the success of her appeal. He still felt the dying grasp of his mother; still heard his slaughtered sisters cry to him for help; and, in the agony of his mind, he was incapable of an emotion of hope or fear.
The party resumed their march, and, suddenly changing their direction, they came to the shore of the Connecticut. They had chosen a point for their passage where the windings of the river prevented their being exposed to view for any distance; but still they cautiously lingered till the twilight had faded into night. While they were taking their bark canoe from the thicket of underwood in which they had hidden it, Magawisca said, unobserved, to Everell, “Keep an eagle-eye on our pathway; our journey is always towards the setting sun; every turn we make is marked by a dead tree, a lopped branch, or an arrow’s head carved in the bark of a tree; be watchful—the hour of escape may come.” She spoke in the lowest audible tone, and without changing her posture or raising her eyes; and though her last accent caught her father’s ear, when he turned to chide her he suppressed his rebuke, for she sat motionless, and silent as a statue.
The party were swiftly conveyed to the opposite shore. The canoe was then again taken from the river and plunged into the wood; and believing they had eluded pursuit, they prepared to encamp for the night. They selected for this purpose a smooth grassy area, where they were screened and defended on the river side by a natural rampart, formed of intersecting branches of willows, sycamores, and elms.
Oneco collected dead leaves from the little hollows, into which they had been swept by eddies of wind, and, with the addition of some soft ferns, he made a bed and pillow for his little favourite fit for the repose of a wood-nymph. The Mohawks regarded this labour of love with favour, and one of them took from his hollow girdle some pounded corn, and mixing grains of maple-sugar with it, gave it to Oneco, and the little girl received it from him as passively as the young bird takes food from its mother. He then made a sylvan cup of broad leaves, threaded together with delicate twigs, and brought her a draught of water from a fountain that swelled over the green turf, and trickled into the river, drop by drop, as clear and bright as crystal. When she had finished her primitive repast, he laid her on her leafy bed, covered her with skins, and sung her to sleep.
The Indians refreshed themselves with pounded maize and dried fish. A boyish appetite is not fastidious, and, with a mind at ease, Everell might have relished this coarse fare; but now, though repeatedly solicited, he would not even rise from the ground where he had thrown himself in listless despair. No excess of misery can enable a boy of fifteen for any length of time to resist the cravings of nature for sleep. Everell, it may be remembered, had watched the previous night, and he soon sunk into oblivion of his griefs. One after another, the whole party fell asleep, with the exception of Magawisca, who sat apart from the rest, her mantle wrapped closely around her, her head leaning against a tree, and apparently lost in deep meditation. The Mohawks, by way of precaution, had taken a position on each side of Everell, so as to render it next to impossible for their prisoner to move without awakening them. But love, mercy, and hope count nothing impossible, and all were at work in the breast of Magawisca. She warily waited till the depth of the night, when sleep is most profound, and then, with a step as noiseless as the falling dew, she moved round to Everell’s head, stooped down, and putting her lips close to his ear, pronounced his name distinctly. Most persons have experienced the power of a name thus pronounced. Everell awakened instantly and perfectly, and at once understood from Magawisca’s gestures, for speak again she dared not, that she urged his departure.
The love of life and safety is too strong to be paralyzed for any length of time. Hope was kindled; extrication and escape seemed possible; quickening thoughts rushed through his mind. He might be restored to his father; Springfield could not be far distant; his captors would not dare to remain in that vicinity after the dawn of day; one half hour, and he was beyond their pursuit. He rose slowly and cautiously to his feet. All was yet profoundly still. He glanced his eye on Faith Leslie, whom he would gladly have rescued; but Magawisca shook her head, and he felt that to attempt it would be to ensure his own failure.
The moon shone through the branches of the trees, and shed a faint and quivering light on the wild group. Everell looked cautiously about him to see where he should plant his first footsteps. “If I should tread on those skins,” he thought, “that are about them, or on those rustling leaves, it were a gone case with me.” During this instant of deliberation, one of the Indians murmured something of his dreaming thoughts, turned himself over, and grasped Everell’s ankle. The boy bit his quivering lip, and suppressed an instinctive cry, for he perceived it was but the movement of sleep, and he felt the hold gradually relaxing. He exchanged a glance of joy with Magawisca, when a new source of alarm startled them: they heard the dashing of oars. Breathless—immovable—they listened. The strokes were quickly repeated, and the sounds rapidly approached, and a voice spoke, “Not there, boys, not there; a little higher up.”
Joy and hope shot through Everell’s heart as he sprang like a startled deer; but the Mohawk, awakened too by the noise, grasped his leg with one hand, and with the other drawing his knife from his girdle, he pointed it at Everell’s heart, in the act to strike if he should make the least movement or sound.
Caution is the instinct of the weaker animals; the Indian cannot be surprised out of his wariness. Mononotto and his companions, thus suddenly awakened, remained as fixed and silent as the trees about them.
The men in the canoes suspended their oars for a moment, and seemed at a loss how to proceed, or whether to proceed at all. “It is a risky business, I can tell you, Digby,” said one of them, “to plunge into those woods; ‘it is ill fighting with wild beasts in their own den;’ they may start out upon us from their holes when we are least looking for them.”
“And if they should,” replied Digby, in the voice of one who would fain enforce reason with persuasion, “if they should, Lawrence, are we not six stout Christian men, with bold hearts, and the Lord on our side to boot?”
“I grant ye, that’s fighting at odds; but I mistrust we have no command from the Lord to come out on this wild-goose chase.”
“I take a known duty,” replied Digby, “always to be a command from the Lord, and you, Lawrence, I am sure, will be as ready as another man to serve under such an order.”
Lawrence was silenced for a moment, and another voice spoke: “Yes, so should we all, Master Digby, if you could make out the order; but I can’t see the sense of risking all our lives, and getting but a ‘thank ye for nothing’ when we get back, if, indeed, we ever get out of the bowels of the forest again into a clearing. To be sure, we’ve tracked them thus far, but now, on the river, we lose scent. You know they thread the forest as handily as my good woman threads her needle; and for us to pursue them is as vain a thing as for my old chimney-corner cat to chase a catamount through the woods. Come, come, let’s head about, and give it up for a bad job.”
“Stop, stop, my friends,” cried Digby, as they were about to put the boat around; “ye surely have not all faint hearts. Feare-naught, you will not so belie your Christian name as to turn your back on danger. And you, John Wilkin, who cut down the Pequods as you were wont to mow the swarth in Suffolk, will you have it thrown up to you that you wanted courage to pursue the caitiffs? Go home, Lawrence, and take your curly-pated boy on your knee, and thank God, with what heart you may, for his spared life; and all, all of you, go to that childless man at Bethel, and say, ‘We could not brave the terrors of the forest to save your child, for we have pleasant homes, and wives, and children.’ For myself, the Lord helping, while I’ve life I’ll not turn back without the boy; and if there’s one among you that hopes for God’s pity, let him go with me.”
“Why, I’m sure it was not I that proposed going back,” said Lawrence.
“And I’m sure,” said the second speaker, “that I’m willing, if the rest are, to try our luck farther.”
“Now God above reward ye, my good fellows!” cried Digby, with renewed life; “I knew it was but trying your metal to find it true. It is not reasonable that you should feel as I do, who have seen my master’s home looking like a slaughter-house. My mistress—the gentlest and the best!—oh! it’s too much to think of. And then that boy, that’s worth a legion of such men as we are—of such as I, I mean. But come, let’s pull away, a little farther up the stream; there’s no landing here, where the bank is so steep.”
“Stay! row a little closer,” cried one of the men; “I see something like a track on the very edge of the bank; its being seemingly impossible is the very reason why the savages would have chosen it.”
They now approached so near the shore that Everell knew they might hear a whisper, and yet to move his lips was certain death. Those who have experienced the agony of a nightmare, when life seemed to depend on a single word, and that word could not be pronounced, may conceive his emotions at this trying moment. Friends and rescue so near, and so unavailing.
“Ye are mistaken,” said another of the pursuing party, after a moment’s investigation, “it’s but a heron’s track,” which it truly was; for the savages had been careful not to leave the slightest trace of their footsteps where they landed. “There’s a cove a little higher up,” continued the speaker; “we’ll put in there, and then, if we don’t get on their trail, Master Digby must tell us what to do.”
“It’s plain what we must do then,” said Digby, “go straight on westerly. I have a compass, you know; there is not, as the hunters tell us, a single smoke between this and the valleys of the Housatonic. There the tribes are friendly, and if we reach them without falling in with our enemy, we will not pursue them farther.”
“Agreed! agreed!” cried all the men; and they again dashed in their oars and made for the cove. Everell’s heart sunk within him as the sounds receded; but hope once admitted will not be again excluded, and with the sanguine temperament of youth, he was already mentally calculating the chances of escape. Not so Magawisca; she knew the dangers that beset him; she was aware of her father’s determined purpose. Her heart had again been rent by a divided duty; one word from her would have rescued Everell, but that word would have been death to her father; and when the boat retired, she sunk to the ground, quite spent with the conflict of her feelings.
It may seem strange that the Indians did not avail themselves of the advantage of their ambush to attack their pursuers; but it will be remembered, the latter were double their number; and, besides, Mononotto’s object now was to make good his retreat with his children; and to effect this, it was essential he should avoid any encounter with his pursuers. After a short consultation with his associates, they determined to remain in their present position till the morning. They were confident they should be able to detect and avoid the track of the enemy, and soon to get in advance of them.
“But the scene
Is lovely round; a beautiful river there
Wanders amid the fresh and fertile meads,
The paradise he made unto himself,
Mining the soil for ages. On each side
The fields swell upward to the hills; beyond,
Above the hills, in the blue distance, rise
The mighty columns with which earth props heaven.
There is a tale about these gray old rocks,
A sad tradition.”
Bryant.
It is not our purpose to describe, step by step, the progress of the Indian fugitives. Their sagacity in traversing their native forests, their skill in following and eluding an enemy, and all their politic devices, have been so well described in a recent popular work, that their usages have become familiar as household words, and nothing remains but to shelter defects of skill and knowledge under the veil of silence, since we hold it to be an immutable maxim, that a thing had better not be done than be ill done.
Suffice it to say, then, that the savages, after crossing the track of their pursuers, threaded the forest with as little apparent uncertainty as to their path as is now felt by travellers who pass through the same still romantic country in a stagecoach and on a broad turnpike. As they receded from the Connecticut the pine levels disappeared, the country was broken into hills, and rose into high mountains.
They traversed the precipitous sides of a river that, swollen by the vernal rains, wound its way among the hills, foaming and raging like an angry monarch. The river, as they traced its course, dwindled to a mountain rill, but still retaining its impetuous character, leaping and tumbling for miles through a descending defile, between high mountains, whose stillness, grandeur, and immobility contrasted with the noisy, reckless little stream as stern manhood with infancy. In one place, which the Indians called the throat of the mountain, they were obliged to betake themselves to the channel of the brook, there not being room on its margin for a footpath. The branches of the trees that grew from the rocky and precipitous declivities on each side met and interlaced, forming a sylvan canopy over the imprisoned stream. To Magawisca, whose imagination breathed a living spirit into all the objects of Nature, it seemed as if the spirits of the wood had stooped to listen to its sweet music.
After tracing this little sociable rill to its source, they again plunged into the silent forest, waded through marshy ravines, and mounted to the summits of steril hills, till at length, at the close of the third day, after having gradually descended for several miles, the hills on one side receded, and left a little interval of meadow, through which they wound into the lower valley of the Housatonic.
This continued and difficult march had been sustained by Everell with a spirit and fortitude that evidently won the favour of the savages, who always render homage to superiority over physical evil. There was something more than this common feeling in the joy with which Mononotto noted the boy’s silent endurance, and even contempt of pain. One noble victim seemed to him better than a “human hecatomb.” In proportion to his exultation in possessing an object worthy to avenge his son, was his fear that his victim would escape from him. During the march, Everell had twice, aided by Magawisca, nearly achieved his liberty. These detected conspiracies, though defeated, rendered the chief impatient to execute his vengeance, and he secretly resolved that it should not be delayed longer than the morrow.
As the fugitives emerged from the narrow defile, a new scene opened upon them; a scene of valley and hill, river and meadow, surrounded by mountains, whose encircling embrace expressed protection and love to the gentle spirits of the valley. A light summer shower had just fallen, and the clouds, “in thousand liveries dight,” had risen from the western horizon, and hung their rich draperies about the clear sun. The horizontal rays passed over the valley, and flushed the upper branches of the trees, the summits of the hills, and the mountains with a flood of light, while the low grounds, reposing in deep shadow, presented one of those striking and accidental contrasts in nature that a painter would have selected to give effect to his art.
The gentle Housatonic wound through the depths of the valley, in some parts contracted to a narrow channel, and murmuring over the rocks that rippled its surface, and in others spreading wide its clear mirror, and lingering like a lover amid the vines, trees, and flowers that fringed its banks. Thus it flows now; but not, as then, in the sylvan freedom of Nature, when no clattering mills and bustling factories threw their prosaic shadows over the silver waters; when not even a bridge spanned their bosom; when not a trace of man’s art was seen, save the little bark canoe that glided over them, or lay idly moored along the shore. The savage was rather the vassal than the master of nature, obeying her laws, but never usurping her dominion. He only used the land she prepared, and cast in his corn but where she seemed to invite him by mellowing and upheaving the rich mould. He did not presume to hew down her trees, the proud crest of her uplands, and convert them into “russet lawns and fallows gray.” The axeman’s stroke, that music to the settler’s ear, never then violated the peace of Nature, or made discord in her music.
Imagination may be indulged in lingering for a moment in those dusky regions of the past, but it is not permitted to reasonable, instructed man to admire or regret tribes of human beings who lived and died, leaving scarcely a more enduring memorial than the forsaken nest that vanishes before one winter’s storms.
But to return to our wanderers. They had entered the expanded vale by following the windings of the Housatonic around a hill, conical and easy of ascent, excepting on that side which overlooked the river, where, half way from the base to the summit, rose a perpendicular rock, bearing on its beetling front the age of centuries. On every other side the hill was garlanded with laurels, now in full and profuse bloom, here and there surmounted by an intervening pine, spruce, or hemlock, whose seared winter foliage was fringed with the bright, tender sprouts of spring. We believe there is a chord even in the heart of savage man that responds to the voice of Nature. Certain it is, the party paused, as it appeared, from a common instinct, at a little grassy nook, formed by the curve of the hill, to gaze on this singularly beautiful spot. Everell looked on the smoke that curled from the huts of the village, imbosomed in pine-trees on the adjacent plain. The scene to him breathed peace and happiness, and gushing thoughts of home filled his eyes with tears. Oneco plucked clusters of laurels, and decked his little favourite, and the old chief fixed his melancholy eye on a solitary pine, scathed and blasted by tempests, that, rooted in the ground where he stood, lifted its topmost branches to the bare rock, where they seemed, in their wild desolation, to brave the elemental fury that had stripped them of beauty and life.
The leafless tree was truly, as it appeared to the eye of Mononotto, a fit emblem of the chieftain of a ruined tribe. “See you, child,” he said, addressing Magawisca, “those unearthed roots? the tree must fall: hear you the death-song that wails through those blasted branches?”
“Nay, father, listen not to the sad strain; it is but the spirit of the tree mourning over its decay; rather turn thine ear to the glad song of this bright stream, image of the good. She nourishes the aged trees, and cherishes the tender flowerets, and her song is ever of happiness till she reaches the great sea, image of our eternity.”
“Speak not to me of happiness, Magawisca; it has vanished with the smoke of our homes. I tell ye, the spirits of our race are gathered about this blasted tree. Samoset points to that rock—that sacrifice-rock.” His keen glance turned from the rock to Everell.
Magawisca understood its portentous meaning, and she clasped her hands in mute and agonizing supplication. He answered to the silent entreaty. “It is in vain; my purpose is fixed, and here it shall be accomplished. Why hast thou linked thy heart, foolish girl, to this English boy? I have sworn, kneeling on the ashes of our hut, that I would never spare a son of our enemy’s race. The lights of heaven witnessed my vow, and think you that, now this boy is given into my hands to avenge thy brother, I will spare him? no, not to thy prayer, Magawisca. No; though thou lookest on me with thy mother’s eye, and speakest with her voice, I will not break my vow.”
Mononotto had indeed taken a final and fatal resolution; and prompted, as he fancied, by supernatural intimations, and perhaps dreading the relentings of his own heart, he determined on its immediate execution. He announced his decision to the Mohawks. A brief and animated consultation followed, during which they brandished their tomahawks, and cast wild and threatening glances at Everell, who at once comprehended the meaning of these menacing looks and gestures. He turned an appealing glance to Magawisca. She did not speak. “Am I to die now?” he asked; she turned, shuddering, from him.
Everell had expected death from his savage captors, but while it was comparatively distant he thought he was indifferent to it, or, rather, he believed he should welcome it as a release from the horrible recollection of the massacre at Bethel, which haunted him day and night. But, now that his fate seemed inevitable, nature was appalled, and shrunk from it, and the impassive spirit for a moment endured a pang that there cannot be in any “corp’ral sufferance.” The avenues of sense were closed, and past and future were present to the mind, as if it were already invested with the attributes of its eternity. From this agonizing excitement Everell was roused by a command from the savages to move onward. “It is then deferred,” thought Magawisca; and heaving a deep sigh, as if for a moment relieved from a pressure on her overburdened heart, she looked to her father for an explanation; he said nothing, but proceeded in silence towards the village.
The lower valley of the Housatonic, at the period to which our history refers, was inhabited by a peaceful, and, as far as that epithet could ever be applied to our savages, an agricultural tribe, whose territory, situate midway between the Hudson and the Connecticut, was bounded and defended on each side by mountains then deemed impracticable to a foe. These inland people had heard from the hunters of distant tribes, who occasionally visited them, of the aggressions and hostility of the English strangers; but, regarding it as no concern of theirs, they listened much as we listen to news of the Burmese war—Captain Symmes’ theory—or lectures on phrenology. One of their hunters, it is true, had penetrated to Springfield, and another had passed over the hills to the Dutch fort at Albany, and returned with the report that the strangers’ skin was the colour of cowardice; that they served their women, and spoke an unintelligible language. There was little in this account to interest those who were so ignorant as to be scarcely susceptible of curiosity, and they hardly thought of the dangerous strangers at all, or only thought of them as a people from whom they had nothing to hope or fear, when the appearance of the ruined Pequod chief with his English captives roused them from their apathy.
The village was on a level, sandy plain, extending for about half a mile, and raised by a natural and almost perpendicular bank fifty feet above the level of the meadows. At one extremity of the plain was the hill we have described; the other was terminated by a broad green, appropriated to sports and councils.
The huts of the savages were irregularly scattered over the plain: some on cleared ground, and others just peeping out of copses of pine trees; some on the very verge of the plain, overlooking the meadows, and others under the shelter of a high hill that formed the northern boundary of the valley, and seemed stationed there to defend the inhabitants from their natural enemies, cold and wind.
The huts were the simplest structures of human art; but, as in no natural condition of society a perfect equality obtains, some were more spacious and commodious than others. All were made with flexible poles, firmly set in the ground, and drawn and attached together at the top. Those of the more indolent or least skilful were filled in with branches of trees and hung over with coarse mats, while those of the better order were neatly covered with bark, prepared with art and considerable labour for the purpose. Little garden patches adjoined a few of the dwellings, and were planted with beans, pumpkins, and squashes; the seeds of these vegetables, according to an Indian tradition (in which we may perceive the usual admixture of fable and truth), having been sent to them in the bill of a bird from the southwest by the Great Spirit.
The Pequod chief and his retinue passed just at twilight over the plain, by one of the many footpaths that indented it. Many of the women were still at work with their stone-pointed hoes in their gardens. Some of the men and children were at their sports on the green. Here a straggler was coming from the river with a string of fine trout; another fortunate sportsman appeared from the hillside with wild turkeys and partridges; while two emerged from the forest with still more noble game, a fat antlered buck.
This village, as we have described it, and perhaps from the affection its natural beauty inspired, remained the residence of the savages long after they had vanished from the surrounding country. Within the memory of the present generation the remnant of the tribe migrated to the West; and even now some of their families make a summer pilgrimage to this their Jerusalem, and are regarded with a melancholy interest by the present occupants of the soil.
Mononotto directed his steps to the wigwam of the Housatonic chief, which stood on one side of the green. The chief advanced from his hut to receive him, and by the most animated gestures expressed to Mononotto his pleasure in the success of his incursion, from which it seemed that Mononotto had communicated with him on his way to the Connecticut.
A brief and secret consultation succeeded, which appeared to consist of propositions from the Pequod, and assent on the part of the Housatonic chief, and was immediately followed by a motion to separate the travellers. Mononotto and Everell were to remain with the chief, and the rest of the party to be conducted to the hut of his sister.
Magawisca’s prophetic spirit too truly interpreted this arrangement; and thinking or hoping there might be some saving power in her presence, since her father tacitly acknowledged it by the pains he took to remove her, she refused to leave him. He insisted vehemently; but, finding her unyielding, he commanded the Mohawks to force her away.
Resistance was vain, but resistance she would still have made but for the interposition of Everell. “Go with them, Magawisca,” he said, “and leave me to my fate. We shall meet again.”
“Never!” she shrieked; “your fate is death.”
“And after death we shall meet again,” replied Everell, with a calmness that evinced his mind was already in a great degree resigned to the event that now appeared inevitable. “Do not fear for me, Magawisca. Better thoughts have put down my fears. When it is over, think of me.”
“And what am I to do with this scorching fire till then?” she asked, pressing both her hands on her head. “Oh, my father, has your heart become stone?”
Her father turned from her appeal, and motioned to Everell to enter the hut. Everell obeyed; and when the mat dropped over the entrance and separated him from the generous creature whose heart had kept true time with his through all his griefs, who he knew would have redeemed his life with her own, he yielded to a burst of natural and not unmanly tears.
If this could be deemed a weakness, it was his last. Alone with his God, he realized the sufficiency of His presence and favour. He appealed to that mercy which is never refused, nor given in stinted measure to the humble suppliant. Every expression of pious confidence and resignation which he had heard with the heedless ear of childhood, now flashed like an illumination upon his mind.
His mother’s counsels and instructions, to which he had often lent a wearied attention; the passages from the Sacred Book he had been compelled to commit to memory when his truant thoughts were ranging forest and field, now returned upon him as if a celestial spirit breathed them into his soul. Stillness and peace stole over him. He was amazed at his own tranquillity. “It may be,” he thought, “that my mother is permitted to minister to me.”
He might have been agitated by the admission of the least ray of hope; but hope was utterly excluded, and it was only when he thought of his bereft father that his courage failed him.
But we must leave him to his solitude and silence, only interrupted by the distant hootings of the owl and the heavy tread of the Pequod chief, who spent the night in slowly pacing before the door of the hut.
Magawisca and her companions were conducted to a wigwam standing on that part of the plain on which they had first entered. It was completely enclosed on three sides by dwarf oaks. In front there was a little plantation of the edible luxuries of the savages. On entering the hut they perceived it had but one occupant, a sick, emaciated old woman, who was stretched on her mat, covered with skins. She raised her head as the strangers entered, and at the sight of Faith Leslie uttered a faint exclamation, deeming the fair creature a messenger from the spirit-land; but, being informed who they were and whence they came, she made every sign and expression of courtesy to them that her feeble strength permitted.
Her hut contained all that was essential to savage hospitality. A few brands were burning on a hearth-stone in the middle of the apartment. The smoke that found egress passed out by a hole in the centre of the roof, over which a mat was skilfully adjusted, and turned to the windward side by a cord that hung within. The old woman, in her long pilgrimage, had accumulated stores of Indian riches: piles of sleeping-mats lay in one corner; nicely-dressed skins garnished the walls; baskets of all shapes and sizes, gayly decorated with rude images of birds and flowers, contained dried fruits, medicinal herbs, Indian corn, nuts, and game. A covered pail, made of folds of birch bark, was filled with a kind of beer—a decoction of various roots and aromatic shrubs. Neatly-turned wooden spoons and bowls, and culinary utensils of clay, supplied all the demands of the inartificial housewifery of savage life.
The travellers, directed by their old hostess, prepared their evening repast—a short and simple process to an Indian; and, having satisfied the cravings of hunger, they were all, with the exception of Magawisca and one of the Mohawks, in a very short time stretched on their mats and fast asleep.
Magawisca seated herself at the feet of the old woman, and had neither spoken nor moved since she entered the hut. She watched anxiously and impatiently the movements of the Indian, whose appointed duty it appeared to be to guard her. He placed a wooden bench against the mat which served for a door, and stuffing his pipe with tobacco from a pouch slung over his shoulder, and then filling a gourd with the liquor in the pail, and placing it beside him, he quietly sat himself down to his night-watch.
The old woman became restless, and her loud and repeated groans at last withdrew Magawisca from her own miserable thoughts. She inquired if she could do aught to allay her pain; the sufferer pointed to a jar that stood on the embers, in which a medicinal preparation was simmering. She motioned to Magawisca to give her a spoonful of the liquor; she did so; and as she took it, “It is made,” she said, “of all the plants on which the spirit of sleep has breathed;” and so it seemed to be, for she had scarcely swallowed it when she fell asleep.
Once or twice she waked and murmured something, and once Magawisca heard her say, “Hark to the wekolis![2] he is perched on the old oak by the sacrifice-rock, and his cry is neither musical nor merry: a bad sign in a bird.”
But all signs and portents were alike to Magawisca; every sound rung a death-peal to her ear, and the hissing silence had in it the mystery and fearfulness of death. The night wore slowly and painfully away, as if, as in the fairy tale, the moments were counted by drops of heart’s blood. But the most wearisome nights will end; the morning approached; the familiar notes of the birds of earliest dawn were heard, and the twilight peeped through the crevices of the hut, when a new sound fell on Magawisca’s startled ear. It was the slow, measured tread of many feet. The poor girl now broke silence, and vehemently entreated the Mohawk to let her pass the door, or at least to raise the mat.
He shook his head with a look of unconcern, as if it were the petulant demand of a child, when the old woman, awakened by the noise, cried out that she was dying; that she must have light and air; and the Mohawk started up, impulsively, to raise the mat. It was held between two poles that formed the door-posts; and, while he was disengaging it, Magawisca, as if inspired, and quick as thought, poured the liquor from the jar on the fire into the hollow of her hand, and dashed it into the gourd which the Mohawk had just replenished. The narcotic was boiling hot, but she did not cringe; she did not even feel it; and she could scarcely repress a cry of joy when the savage turned round and swallowed, at one draught, the contents of the cup.
Magawisca looked eagerly through the aperture, but, though the sound of the footsteps had approached nearer, she saw no one. She saw nothing but a gentle declivity that sloped to the plain, a few yards from the hut, and was covered with a grove of trees; beyond and peering above them were the hill and the sacrifice-rock; the morning star, its rays not yet dimmed in the light of day, shed a soft trembling beam on its summit. This beautiful star, alone in the heavens when all other lights were quenched, spoke to the superstitious, or, rather, the imaginative spirit of Magawisca. “Star of promise,” she thought, “thou dost still linger with us when day is vanished, and now thou art there alone to proclaim the coming sun; thou dost send in upon my soul a ray of hope; and though it be but as the spider’s slender pathway, it shall sustain my courage.” She had scarcely formed this resolution when she needed all its efficacy, for the train whose footsteps she had heard appeared in full view.
First came her father, with the Housatonic chief; next, alone, and walking with a firm, undaunted step, was Everell, his arms folded over his breast, and his head a little inclined upward, so that Magawisca fancied she saw his full eye turned heavenward; after him walked all the men of the tribe, ranged according to their age, and the rank assigned to each by his own exploits.
They were neither painted nor ornamented according to the common usage at festivals and sacrifices, but everything had the air of hasty preparation. Magawisca gazed in speechless despair. The procession entered the wood, and for a few moments disappeared from her sight; again they were visible, mounting the acclivity of the hill by a winding, narrow footpath, shaded on either side by laurels. They now walked singly and slowly, but to Magawisca their progress seemed rapid as a falling avalanche. She felt that, if she were to remain pent in that prison-house, her heart would burst, and she sprang towards the doorway in the hope of clearing her passage; but the Mohawk caught her arm in his iron grasp, and putting her back, calmly retained his station. She threw herself on her knees to him; she entreated, she wept, but in vain: he looked on her with unmoved apathy. Already she saw the foremost of the party had reached the rock, and were forming a semicircle around it: again she appealed to her determined keeper, and again he denied her petition, but with a faltering tongue and a drooping eye.
Magawisca, in the urgency of a necessity that could brook no delay, had forgotten, or regarded as useless, the sleeping potion she had infused into the Mohawk’s draught; she now saw the powerful agent was at work for her, and with that quickness of apprehension that made the operations of her mind as rapid as the impulses of instinct, she perceived that every emotion she excited but hindered the effect of the potion. Suddenly seeming to relinquish all purpose and hope of escape, she threw herself on a mat, and hid her face, burning with agonizing impatience, in her mantle. There we must leave her, and join that fearful company who were gathered together to witness what they believed to be the execution of exact and necessary justice.
Seated around their sacrifice-rock—their holy of holies—they listened to the sad story of the Pequod chief with dejected countenances and downcast eyes, save when an involuntary glance turned on Everell, who stood awaiting his fate, cruelly aggravated by every moment’s delay, with a quiet dignity and calm resignation that would have become a hero or a saint. Surrounded by this dark cloud of savages, his fair countenance kindled by holy inspiration, he looked scarcely like a creature of earth.
There might have been among the spectators some who felt the silent appeal of the helpless, courageous boy; some whose hearts moved them to interpose to save the selected victim; but they were restrained by their interpretation of natural justice, as controlling to them as our artificial codes of laws to us.
Others, of a more cruel or more irritable disposition, when the Pequod described his wrongs and depicted his sufferings, brandished their tomahawks, and would have hurled them at the boy; but the chief said, “Nay, brothers, the work is mine; he dies by my hand—for my first-born—life for life; he dies by a single stroke, for thus was my boy cut off. The blood of sachems is in his veins. He has the skin, but not the soul of that mixed race, whose gratitude is like that vanishing mist,” and he pointed to the vapour that was melting from the mountain tops into the transparent ether; “and their promises like this,” and he snapped a dead branch from the pine beside which he stood, and broke it in fragments. “Boy as he is, he fought for his mother as the eagle fights for its young. I watched him in the mountain-path, when the blood gushed from his torn feet; not a word from his smooth lip betrayed his pain.”
Mononotto embellished his victim with praises, as the ancients wreathed theirs with flowers. He brandished his hatchet over Everell’s head, and cried exultingly, “See, he flinches not. Thus stood my boy when they flashed their sabres before his eyes and bade him betray his father. Brothers: My people have told me I bore a woman’s heart towards the enemy. Ye shall see. I will pour out this English boy’s blood to the last drop, and give his flesh and bones to the dogs and wolves.”
He then motioned to Everell to prostrate himself on the rock, his face downward. In this position the boy would not see the descending stroke. Even at this moment of dire vengeance the instincts of a merciful nature asserted their rights.
Everell sunk calmly on his knees, not to supplicate life, but to commend his soul to God. He clasped his hands together. He did not—he could not speak; his soul was
“Rapt in still communion, that transcends
The imperfect offices of prayer.”
At this moment a sunbeam penetrated the trees that enclosed the area, and fell athwart his brow and hair, kindling it with an almost supernatural brightness. To the savages, this was a token that the victim was accepted, and they sent forth a shout that rent the air. Everell bent forward and pressed his forehead to the rock. The chief raised the deadly weapon, when Magawisca, springing from the precipitous side of the rock, screamed “Forbear!” and interposed her arm. It was too late. The blow was levelled—force and direction given; the stroke, aimed at Everell’s neck, severed his defender’s arm, and left him unharmed. The lopped, quivering member dropped over the precipice. Mononotto staggered and fell senseless, and all the savages, uttering horrible yells, rushed towards the fatal spot.
“Stand back!” cried Magawisca. “I have bought his life with my own. Fly, Everell—nay, speak not, but fly—thither—to the east!” she cried, more vehemently.
Everell’s faculties were paralyzed by a rapid succession of violent emotions. He was conscious only of a feeling of mingled gratitude and admiration for his preserver. He stood motionless, gazing on her. “I die in vain, then,” she cried, in an accent of such despair that he was roused. He threw his arms around her, and pressed her to his heart as he would a sister that had redeemed his life with her own, and then, tearing himself from her, he disappeared. No one offered to follow him. The voice of nature rose from every heart, and, responding to the justice of Magawisca’s claim, bade him “God speed!” To all it seemed that his deliverance had been achieved by miraculous aid. All—the dullest and coldest—paid involuntary homage to the heroic girl, as if she were a superior being, guided and upheld by supernatural power.
Everything short of miracle she had achieved. The moment the opiate dulled the senses of her keeper, she escaped from the hut; and aware that, if she attempted to penetrate to her father through the semicircular line of spectators that enclosed him, she should be repulsed, and probably borne off the ground, she had taken the desperate resolution of mounting the rock where only her approach would be unperceived. She did not stop to ask herself if it were possible; but, impelled by a determined spirit, or rather, we would believe, by that inspiration that teaches the bird its unknown path, and leads the goat, with its young, safely over the mountain crags, she ascended the rock. There were crevices in it, but they seemed scarcely sufficient to support the eagle with his grappling talon; and twigs issuing from the fissures, but so slender that they waved like a blade of grass under the weight of the young birds that made a rest on them; and yet, such is the power of love, stronger than death, that with these inadequate helps Magawisca scaled the rock and achieved her generous purpose.
“Powwow—a priest. These do begin and order their service and invocation of their gods, and all the people follow, and join interchangeably in a laborious bodily service unto sweating, especially of the priest, who spends himself in strange antic gestures and actions even unto fainting. Being once in their houses and beholding what their worship was, I never durst be an eyewitness, spectator, or looker-on, lest I should have been a partaker of Satan’s inventions and worships.”—Roger Williams.
The following letter, written by Hope Leslie, and addressed to Everell Fletcher, then residing in England, will show, briefly, the state of affairs at Bethel seven years subsequent to the date of the events already detailed. Little had occurred, save the changes of the seasons in nature and human life, to mark the progress of time.