Chapter Thirty.
“It is better thus.”
Yes, Jill was saved. He soon revived, and was able to follow me down to the toldos.
My hands were badly burned, but I did not feel pain then. Such a gush of happiness had come over my heart when Jill spoke to me again, that I forgot everything else.
Daylight had by this time spread itself right athwart the sky; and I remember the morning was beautiful with one crimson feathery cloud over the eastern horizon, where the sun was soon to show.
By the time we reached the Indian camp, the battle was over and won. The survivors of the Northern Indians had been beaten back to the woods from which they had sallied, and there was but little fear that they would come again. Too many of their saddles had been emptied to encourage a renewal of the warfare.
It was a sad scene. The tents torn and flapping in the morning breeze, some of them down; broken spears and guns and daggers lying here and there; dead and dying horses; dead and dying men, the anguish of the women, the wailing of the children.
I took all this in at a glance. Then my eyes were riveted on a group at some little distance, and I hastened thither, to find Castizo kneeling beside the tall noble form of the prostrate Prince Jeeka.
He holds out his right hand as I approach; Castizo gives place to me, and I kneel where he had knelt. At his other side crouches Nadi. She is bewildered and silent, grief and anguish depicted in every line of her poor drawn, pinched face.
“Jeeka, Jeeka, are you much hurt? Who has done this?”
“Hurt? Yes. Ya shank, ya shank.” (I am tired and sleepy). “So, so.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. I thought he was gone, but he slowly opened them again, and looked at me.
“Poor Nadi!” he said. “It—was—her brother. So, so.”
This, then, was the key to the awful night’s work. Revenge. Verily these Patagonian Indians are men of like passions with ourselves.
“The Great Good Spirit is come. Jeeka goes—home. Tell me—the story of the—world. So, so.”
These were the last words poor Prince Jeeka ever spoke on earth. He had gone to learn the story of the world, in a better world than ours.
We all came away and left Nadi with her dear husband. Her face had fallen forward on his big broad chest, and she appeared convulsed with grief.
“Leave her a little,” Castizo said. “It is ever better thus.”
In about half an hour, or it might have been less, Peter and I returned.
Nadi had never moved from her position.
“Nadi, my poor woman,” said Peter. “Nadi, Nadi.”
She was still.
Peter touched her shoulder, then turned quickly round to me.
“She does not need our consolation, Jack,” he said, solemnly.
“What,” I cried, “is Nadi dead?”
“Nadi is dead!”
If I have any consolation at all in looking back to the events of that morning, it is to think that Jill and I had told to these poor heathens the sad, sweet story of this world.
Jeeka and his wife are buried side by side on the banks of the river that rolls through the forest, close to the spot where our old log-house stood.
“Amidst the forests of the West,
By a dark stream they’re laid;
The Indian knows their place of rest
Far in the cedar shade.”