“The night came on, dark and gloomy as the grave. The whole tribe, even to the women and children, had gone into the forest, and I was alone in the great lodge—almost alone in the village. There was something more appalling than I can describe in the dense gloom that settled on the wilderness, in the whoop and fierce cries of the revelling savages, which surged up through the trees like the roar and rant of a herd of wild beasts wrangling over their prey.
“Not a star was in the sky, not a sound stirred abroad—nothing save the black night and the horrid din of those blood-thirsty savages met my senses. Suddenly, a sharp yell cut through the air like the cry of a thousand famished hyenas, then a spire of flame darted up from the murky forest, and shot into the darkness with a clear, lurid brightness, like the flaming tongue of a dragon, quivering and afire with its own venom. Again that yell rang out—again and again, till the very air seemed alive with savage tongues.
“I could bear no more; my nerves had been too madly excited. I sprang forward with a cry that rang through the darkness almost as wildly as theirs, and rushed into the forest.
“They were congregated there in the light of that lurid fire, dancing and yelling like a troop of carousing demons; their tomahawks and scalping-knives flashed before me, and their fierce eyes glared more fiercely as I rushed through them to the presence of their chief. The dance was stopped by a motion of his war-club, and he listened with grave attention to my frantic offer of beads or blankets or gold to any amount, in ransom for his prisoners. He refused all; but one ransom could purchase the lives of those three human beings, and that I could not pay. It was far better that blood should be shed than that I should force my heart to consummate a union so horrible as mine with this savage.
“I turned from the relentless chief, sorrowing and heart-stricken. The blood of his poor victims seemed clogging my feet as I made my way through the crowd of savage forms that only waited my disappearance to drag them forth to death. Even while I passed the death-fire, fresh pine was heaped upon it, and a smothered cry burst forth from the dusky crowd as a volume of smoke rolled up and revealed the victims.
“They were bound to the trunk of a large pine, which towered within the glare of the death-fire, its heavy limbs reddening and drooping in the cloud of smoke and embers that surged through them to the sky, and its slender leaves falling in scorched and burning showers to the earth, whenever a gust of wind sent the flames directly among its foliage.
“The prisoners were almost entirely stripped of clothing, and the lurid brightness shed over the pine revealed their pale forms with terrible distinctness. The frightened child crouched upon the ground, clinging to the knees of his mother, and quaking in all its tiny limbs as the flames swept their reeking breath more and more hotly upon them. The long, black hair of the mother fell over her bent face; her arms were extended downward towards the boy, and she struggled weakly against the thongs that bound her waist, at every fresh effort which the poor thing made to find shelter in her bosom. There was one other face, pale and stern as marble, yet full of a fixed agony, which spoke of human suffering frightful to behold. That face was Grenville Murray’s.
“My feelings had been excited almost to the verge of renewed insanity, but now they became calm—calm from the force of astonishment, and from the strong resolve of self-sacrifice which settled upon them. I turned and forced my way through the crowd of savage forms, rushing toward that hapless group, and again stood before their chief. I pointed toward the prisoners now concealed by the smoke and eddying flames.
“‘Call away those fiends,’ I said. ‘Give back all that has been taken from the prisoners. Send them to Canada, with a guard of fifty warriors, and I will become your wife.’
“A blaze of exultation swept over that savage face, and the fire kindled it up with wild grandeur. I saw the heaving of his chest, the fierce joy that flashed from his eyes, but in that moment of stern resolve, my heart would not have shrunk from its purpose though the fang of an adder had been fixed in it. The chief lifted his war-club and uttered a long peculiar cry. Instantly the savages that were rushing like so many demons toward their prey fell back and ranged themselves in a broad circle around their chief.