CHAPTER XVI
THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE
IT does not become an Englishman to make a weak showing before unclad savages; so presently Miles swallowed the sob that was fighting a way up his throat, mastered the other shaky signs of his terror, and put his whole attention to keeping pace with his captors. They were now well in among the trees, where the undergrowth, after the Indian custom, had been thinned by fire, so between the great blackened trunks opened wide vistas, as in an English park.
To Miles each open glade looked like every other one, but the Indians found amid the trees a distinct trail along which they hastened, single file, with the tall warrior who bore Dolly in the lead. Miles kept persistently at his heels, though the breath was short in his throat, and his whole body reeked with perspiration. The sun, all unobscured and yellow, was climbing steadily upward, and, by the fact that it shone on the left hand, he knew that they were going southward ever, southward into the hostile country.
About mid-morning they descended a sandy slope, where pine trees grew, to a brook with a white bottom. Miles gathered his strength, and, making a little spurt ahead, flung himself down by the stream to drink; he felt cooler for the draught, but, when he dragged himself to his feet, he found that, after his little rest, his tired legs ached the more unbearably, so he made no objection when the Indian with the club, lifting him unceremoniously to his back, carried him dry-shod through the brook.
Even on the other side, Miles made no struggle to get down; it would be useless, he judged, and then he was too worn out to tramp farther at such speed. He settled himself comfortably against his bearer's naked shoulders, and offered not half so much protest as Trug, who, trotting at the Indian's side, now and again looked to his master and whined anxiously.
As soon as he was a bit rested, Miles began to take closer note of the country through which they were passing,—a country of spicy pine thickets and of white dust, that powdered beneath the feet of the Indians. From his lofty perch he could pluck tufts of glossy pine needles as they brushed under the lower branches of the trees, and, hungry as he was, he did not find them ill to chew. Presently he tried to converse with his Indian. "Tonokete naum?" he questioned. "Whither go you?"
The savage answered in a pithy phrase, of which Miles made out only the word Ma-no-met. That, he had a vague remembrance of hearing the men say, was a place somewhere to the southward; but, at least, it was not Nauset, where the Indians who had fought the English lived. In quite a cheerful tone, Miles called out to Dolly their destination, and, with something of his former confidence, set himself to watch for the town; he could not help imagining it would be a row of log cabins in a clearing, just like Plymouth.
But, for what to him seemed long hours, he saw no sign of a house, just the monotonous sheen of the pine trees where the sun struck upon them, and the dust that burst whitely through its sprinkling of pine needles. Now and again, through the branches, he caught the glimmer of sunny water, where some little pond lay; and once, when the trail led down into a hollow, sand gave place to the clogging mire of a bog, and the scrub pines yielded to cedars.
The slope beyond, with its pines thickening in again, was like all the rest of the wood, so like that Miles had suffered his eyes to close against the weary glare and the hot dust, when a sudden note of shrill calling made him fling up his head. They were just breasting the ridge that had been before them, and the trees, dwindling down, gave a sight of what lay at the farther side.