“God, oh God, my child!” groaned Catharine from between her clenched teeth; “lost, lost!”
When they reached the shore, the savages forced them out of the boat, and with their tomahawks stove it to atoms. Then they rushed off with a whoop that apprised their employer of his triumph.
“This is Butler’s work!” cried Catharine. “They are lost!”
“No, mother; come, we will go on foot—it is not far—there may be a boat near the island.”
They hastened along the shore with frantic speed through the gloom of the coming night, pausing neither for words nor breath, clasping each other’s hands closer as the breeze bore nearer and nearer the sounds of conflict.
The storm of battle was over, but the scenes that followed were more terrible by far than the first shock of arms had been; for now murder ran red-handed over the plains, and the demons of victory were, like wild beasts, ravenous for more blood.
Along that vast plain there was but one hope of escape; a broad swamp, teeming with Indians, lay between them and the mountains, who covered the ground above Forty Fort, and cut off the wretched men who turned that way; but Monockonok Island was almost in a line with the battlefield, and, though the river was swollen from a late freshet, to a good swimmer a passage was not impossible; from thence they escaped up a gully in the hills on the other side; and to this point the patriots made, in the frenzy of desperation.
As Catharine Montour and Tahmeroo came down the river, urged to breathless speed by the shrieks of dying men and the fiendish yells of their captors, fugitive after fugitive fled to the water; some were shot down before their eyes; some making superhuman efforts, swam for the island, and, dashing across, either escaped or perished on the other side; the savages followed them like demons; but their human game was too thick in the bushes of the shore for individual pursuit upon the river and when a man escaped that way the painted hounds sent a derisive yell after him, and turned to other bloody work.
The Tories were more relentless still; to them kindred blood gave zest to murder, and many a brother fell on that awful shore by the hands that had helped rock his cradle.
To this spot Grenville Murray came, while Catharine was toiling towards it in the gathering twilight. He had appealed to the Butlers, and expostulated with the savages, but all in vain; he might as well have attempted to force bloodhounds from their scent as persuade these monsters from their horrid work. So desperately were they urged by insatiate passion that torches were applied to their own fort, that the red glare of conflagration might give them light for more murder when the sun refused to look down upon their sickening cruelties.