Wahpee dropped his oar and attempted to staunch the blood which flowed in a crimson stream down his side.
"Let me die—but save her!" shouted the young man, in his last agony. "Pull for the ship—or never dare to look for your chief up yonder!"
The savage sprang to his oar—and now the strength of fifty men seemed urging the boat forward. It fairly leaped through the water. Panting for breath, straining those sinewy arms till the muscles stood out like whip-cords, the savages bent to their desperate work, and by main strength distanced their pursuers. The ship's crew gathered on the deck watched this pursuit, and stood ready to aid the fugitives. A rope ladder was flung over the side of the vessel. Up its knotted cordage the savages toiled, carrying the rescued woman with them. They laid her on the deck, leaped like wild deer into the boat again, and pulled for the promontory they had left. The good ship, hired to do this merciful work by the last gold Metacomet possessed, was ready, with her anchor up, and with her sails all set. As the savages leaped down her side, she bore on her way, almost sinking the boatful of armed men that had daringly crossed her bows. In a desperate effort to save themselves these men allowed the craft, in which the dying chief lay, to gain a safe distance, and approach the promontory. But now a storm of bullets swept over it from the shore. Two of the oarsmen fell headlong to the water; another lay upon his face in the bottom of the boat. Still the little craft cut its way through all danger.
Abigail Williams stood on a strip of white sand at the extreme point of the promontory. Curving around the inner crescent of the bay, the soldiers were crowding back from the ice which was breaking up under their feet, but with their guns still levelled, and their bayonets flashing like tongues of flame in the sunbeams that slanted across them.
When the fugitives drew near the promontory, Abigail stood directly within range of the guns. Metacomet had lifted himself to a sitting posture, and saw her, through the blinding agonies of death. Then, with his last strength, he pointed her out, and, speaking to a chief who still kept to his oar unharmed, cried with his last breath—
"She is my sister—the daughter of your king; take her to the forest. Obey her—pro—"
He broke off. A shot struck the chief to whom he appealed. Concentrating all the life that was in him in one hoarse shout of defiance, which filled his mouth with blood, the son of King Philip fulfilled the destiny of his race, and fell dead upon the bodies of his slain friends.
Cold as stone, and white as a corpse, Abigail Williams stood upon the beach while this awful scene was enacted, and saw her brother fall. Again the soldiers levelled their guns for another volley, heedless of her danger—heedless of every thing. Right in the pathway of the bullets levelled at the boat, she stood. They flew over her head—they fell like rain in the water; and at last, one more merciful than the rest, pierced her through the heart. She fell without a moan, just as the savages, landing under a shower of hurtling lead, carried the body of their chief from the boat in open defiance, and bore him into the forest.
While the shot that killed that unhappy girl was still ringing in the air, two horsemen rode fiercely into the crowd, scattering it right and left, till their horses dashed out in bold relief on the ice in front of the soldiers. One was a gray-headed old man, who reeled in his saddle, and looked wildly from the soldiers to the water without the power to utter a word. The other, young and strong of purpose but wild with apprehension, called out in a voice so full of horror that it could scarcely be heard:
"Magistrates and soldiers! where is the woman you came here to murder? I bring her full pardon, signed by our governor, Sir William Phipps."