“From her quietness I should think it likely,” said Brant. “When her majesty grows polite and silky, it is a sure proof that she intends to strike. Like a leopard, she never shows her nails in earnest till the paw falls. She is a wonderful woman—the only person in all the Six Nations whose influence can oppose mine!”
“But you cannot really think she intends us any harm,” said Sir John, whose bravery was not always bullet-proof.
“Don’t trust her! If she finds out, or fancies that we have got Butler into this scrape she will make smooth work of it. I have seen her shave off a head, as if it had been an over-ripe thistle, with her own hand. Her tomahawk is sharp, and quick as lightning. It is the only thing she is dainty about: the head is burnished with gold, and the ebony handle worn smooth as glass is richly veined with coral and mother-of-pearl. That which other women lavish on their persons she exhausts upon her arms. But for your comfort, Sir John, if Queen Esther ornaments them like a woman, she wields them like a man. No warrior of her tribe strikes so sure a blow.”
“But she will not dare!”
“I should not wonder if the Earl of Essex said as much when he lay in the Tower; but his faith did not prevent Elizabeth, whom I can’t help thinking a good deal like our savage queen here, chopping off his head.”
“But you are powerful—more powerful among the savages than she can be—and I——”
“Yes, with three thousand warriors at my back; but just now my body-guard is scattered, and if this lady-tiger chooses to tie us up to the next tree, and give her people a human barbecue, I could only fight single-handed like yourself.”
“Hark! they are gathering now,” said Johnson, turning pale. “How quietly she does her work!”
Brant listened, and cast a sharp glance around the encampment. A low, humming noise came from its outer margin, like that of a hive of bees swarming; he began to be really alarmed.
“Surely she is not so mad!” he muttered, grasping the handle of his tomahawk. “A man would not dare—but this creature has enough of her sex to be uncertain, if nothing more.”