“Back, fiends! back, I say. He is our brother.”
The descending knife recoiled with the fierce hand that grasped it, and the savage darted away, searching for a new victim. That instant Queen Esther sprang upon them, the bloodless grey of her face looking more horrible from a glare of smouldering fire that broke up from the kitchen behind her.
She had just flung her tomahawk, but wrenched the stiletto from her torn robe. It flashed upward, quivered, and fell noiselessly as a blasted leaf descends. Catharine gasped heavily—again the knife descended. Murray felt a sharp pang, but so keen was the agony of feeling that woman on his bosom, so close, and yet so far away, that he was ignorant when the poniard entered his side.
He cleared the door with one spasmodic leap; and, as the dwelling burst into flames behind him, rushed toward the spring with his bleeding burden, nor slackened his speed till her arms relaxed their clasp, and her face fell forward on his breast. He felt the warm blood-drops falling upon his bosom, and pressed her closer to him, but with a shudder, as if they had been dropping upon his bare heart.
Down the tortuous path he staggered growing deathly sick as he sat down, folding her madly in his arms. He thought that it was the beat of her heart against his that made him so faint; but it was his own life ebbing slowly away through the wound Queen Esther had given him.
Meantime Tahmeroo urged her companion forward with an impulse sharpened by the sounds of conflict which followed them. Half-mad with contending feelings, Jane Derwent struggled in her conductor’s hold, and would have rushed back in search of those she had left, could she have freed herself. But the young Indian kept a firm grasp on her arm, and dragged her resolutely toward the boats, regardless of her entreaties. They were too late; the canoes had put off.
When Mary saw her sister on her way to safety, she turned back and went in search of her grandmother, whom she found at bay on the hearthstone. She seized her by the arm, and pointing to the cellar door, dragged her down the ladder, closing the entrance after her. A hatch door opened into the garden, and through this the old woman and the girl fled into the open air.
The savages were rioting there, whirling firebrands snatched from the hearth, and striving to kindle the heavy logs into a conflagration. They saw Mary, in her floating white dress, and fell back, gazing after her with dull awe through the smoke of their smouldering brands. Her deformity saved the old woman, for to them it was a mark from the Great Spirit, and to harm her would be sacrilege.
So the old woman and the angel girl passed through the savages unharmed; but there was more danger from the Tories, who shamed the heathen red men with coarser barbarities than they yet knew, for family ties were sacred to the Indian.
As the two females fled shorewards, many fugitives ran across the outskirts of the island, hiding among the vines and willows, or recklessly aiming for the eastern shore.