Uttering that singular, expressive guttural which seems with the Indian to answer the purpose of every other exclamation, he advanced, and taking the girl’s ice-cold hands in his, tightly bound them with a thong of deer’s hide, and led her unresistingly away. By a circuitous path through the ravine they reached the foot of the mount, where lay a birch canoe, rocking gently on the waters, in which a middle-aged female and a young girl were seated. The females asked no questions, and expressed no word indicative of curiosity or surprise, as the strong arm of the Indian lifted his captive into the canoe, and made signs to the elder squaw to push from the shore. When all had taken their places, the woman, catching up a paddle from the bottom of the little vessel, stood up, and with a few rapid strokes sent it skimming over the lake.
The miserable captive, overpowered with the sense of her calamitous situation, bowed down her head upon her knees, and concealing her agitated face in her garments, wept in silent agony. Visions of horror presented themselves to her bewildered brain—all that Indiana had described of the cruelty of this vindictive race, came vividly before her mind. Poor child, what miserable thoughts were thine during that brief voyage!
Had the Indians also captured her friends? or was she alone to be the victim of their vengeance? What would be the feelings of those I beloved ones on returning to their home and finding it desolate! Was there no hope of release? As these ideas chased each other through her agitated mind, she raised her eyes all streaming with tears to the faces of the Indian and his companions with so piteous a look, that any heart but the stoical one of an Indian would have softened at its sad appeal; but no answering glance of sympathy met hers, no eye gave back its silent look of pity—not a nerve or a muscle moved the cold apathetic features of the Indians, and the woe-stricken girl again resumed her melancholy attitude, burying her face in her heaving bosom to hide its bitter emotions from the heartless strangers.
She was not folly aware that it is part of the Indian’s education to hide the inward feelings of the heart, to check all those soft and tender emotions which distinguish the civilized man from the savage.
It does indeed need the softening influence of that powerful Spirit, which was shed abroad into the world to turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to break down the strongholds of unrighteousness, and to teach man that he is by nature the child of wrath and victim of sin, and that in his unregenerated nature his whole mind is at enmity with God and his fellow-men, and that in his flesh dwelleth no good thing. And the Indian has acknowledged that power,—he has cast his idols of cruelty and revenge, those virtues on which he prided himself in the blindness of his heart, to the moles and the bats; he has bowed and adored at the foot of the Cross;—but it was not so in the days whereof I have spoken. [FN: Appendix K.]
CHAPTER XII.
“Must this sweet new-blown rose find such, a winter
Before her spring be past?”
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER
The little bark touched the stony point of Long Island. The Indian lifted his weeping prisoner from the canoe, and motioned to her to move forward along the narrow path that led to the camp, about twenty yards higher up the bank, where there was a little grassy spot enclosed, with shrubby trees—the squaws tarried at the lake-shore to bring up the paddles and secure the canoe.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an enemy, but doubly so, when that enemy is a stranger to the language in which we would plead for mercy—whose God is not our God, nor his laws those by which we ourselves are governed. Thus felt the poor captive as she stood alone, mute with terror among the half-naked dusky forms with which she now found herself surrounded. She cast a hurried glance round that strange assembly, if by chance her eye might rest upon some dear familiar face, but she saw not the kind but grave face of Hector, nor met the bright sparkling eye of her cousin Louis, nor the soft, subdued, pensive features of the Indian girl, her adopted sister—she stood alone among those wild gloomy-looking men; some turned away their eyes as if they would not meet her woe-stricken countenance, lest they should be moved to pity her sad condition; no wonder that, overcome by the sense of her utter friendliness, she hid her face with her fettered hands and wept in despair. But the Indian’s sympathy is not moved by tears and sighs; calmness, courage, defiance of danger and contempt of death, are what he venerates and admires even in an enemy.