“What—what is it? Grandmother, you make me tremble with these cries. Mary, don’t frighten her so—she’s old.”
“She’s gone—God forgive us two—she’s gone—slipped off—drowned!”
Jane uttered a wild cry, and seizing the timber with both hands, strove madly to hold it back; but the current had them in its power, and mercilessly bore them on.
A cloud of white rose upon the water as they swept downward, sending back cries and shrieks of anguish. It sunk and rose again, this time nearer the shore. Then some human being, Indian or white, dashed through the brushwood, leaped into the stream, striking out for that mass of floating white. A plunge, a long, desperate pull, and the man was struggling up the bank, carrying Mary in his arms.
It was the missionary! He held her close to his heart; he warmed her cold face against his own, searching for life upon her lips, and thanking God with a burst of gratitude when he found it.
Mary stirred in his embrace. The beat of her arms on the waters had forced them to deal tenderly with her; and the breath had not yet left her bosom. For a moment she thought herself in heaven, and smiled pleasantly to know that he was with her. But a prolonged yell from the plain, followed by a slow and appalling death-chant, brought her to consciousness with a shock. She started up, swept back her hair, and looked off towards the sound. There she met a sight that drove all thoughts of heaven from her brain. A huge fragment of stone lay in the centre of a ring, from which the brushwood had been cut away, as an executioner shreds the tresses of a victim, in order to secure a clear blow. Around this rock sixteen prisoners were ranged, and behind them a ring of savages, each holding a victim pressed to the earth. And thus the doomed men sat face to face, waiting for death.
As she gazed, Queen Esther, the terrible priestess of that night, came from her work on Monockonok Island, followed by a train of Indians, savage as herself, and swelled the horrid scene. With her son’s tomahawk gleaming in her hand, she struck into a dance, which had a horrid grace in it. With every third step the tomahawk fell, and a head rolled at her feet! The whole scene was lighted up by a huge fire, built from the brushwood cleared from the circle, and against this red light her figure rose awfully distinct. The folds of her long hair had broken loose and floated behind her, gleaming white and terrible; while the hard profile of her face cut sharply against the flames, like that of a fiend born of the conflagration.
Mary turned her eyes from this scene to the missionary: he understood the appeal.
“I will go,” he said; “it may be to give up my life for theirs.”
“And I,” said Mary, with pale firmness—“God has smitten me with a great power.”