The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Despite Raymond’s self-control, he was greatly harried during this speech by the antics of a young tribesman, who had taken up his position on the other side of Mr. Morton and was reproducing in grisly caricature every word and gesture of the British officer—even to the motions of the cocked hat in his hand. The ensign had uncovered in token of his respect and as he talked he gesticulated, in his earnestness, with the hat. In the florid imitation of mockery the Indian permitted Mr. Morton’s hat, which he himself held, to sharply graze, in one of his flourishes, the pallid cheek of the aged minister. It was in effect a buffet, and Raymond gave a quick audible gasp, recovering with difficulty his impassive demeanor.

“My dear young sir,” said the old man, “I have stanch friends among these good people, who will not see me evilly entreated. I cannot put aside—I cannot postpone the Lord’s work to a more convenient season. I must remain—I must repair the damage to the faith of these new Christians done by their chief’s crafty cross-questioning of the commandant to-day. I must not leave my sheep to the lion, the weaklings of all my flock to the ravening wolves of doubt. I must be with them—but have no fears for me. I have twice been bound to the stake, and yet came safely off.”

Raymond was at his wits’ end. There was a shifting in the crowds. They were converging down the sunny slope toward the river-bank. Beyond their heads he caught a gleam of scarlet against the shining current, near the white flashing of the swans’ wings as the great birds rose in flight. The soldiers were embarking. There came to his ears the loud, guttural voice of the chief of the town, Rolloweh, pronouncing the sonorous periods of his official farewell to Captain Howard. Time pressed. The response of the captain would be curt and concise,—there was scant utility to mint phrases for Rolloweh,—and Raymond could well divine that the commandant was sick at heart. On the smooth spaces of the “beloved square” there lingered those inimical plotting groups, still whispering, still casting speculative glances at the missionary and the ensign, still waiting, Raymond faithfully believed, to seize the old man and bear him to his doom, before the English boats should be a furlong down the river.

The ensign’s patience, never a formidable endowment, gave way suddenly. He clapped his hat on his head with a nonchalant flap. He turned a burning eye on two stalwart young soldiers of his escort and spoke but one short phrase, with a significant gesture. The intelligent fellows comprehended the extraordinary order in an instant. With light willing steps they ran forward, bent down, seized the Reverend Mr. Morton in their strong young arms, lifted him bodily, and at a swift, sure, steady run they set out with their captive for the river-bank, their young officer close on their heels calling out in Cherokee, with glad bursts of laughter, “The ‘beloved man’ shall be removed!”

The whole community was in an uproar. The culmination came so suddenly, with no sort of warning, that the crowds by the water-side, remembering the urgency of the chiefs that the “beloved man” should be removed, fell in with the apparent spirit of the exploit and shouted and laughed as at some rude jest and boisterous horse-play. The conspirators of the “beloved square” did not catch the significance of the incident for one brief moment of stunned surprise, roused as they were from the absorptions of their secret plottings, but though they came howling their baffled rage and vengeance and frenzied protests hard upon Raymond’s party, that one moment saved the life of the Reverend Mr. Morton. Their voices were overborne in the joyous clamors of the populace, not yet admitted into the plans of revenge, and chorusing the ensign’s jocular mockeries. Raymond, himself standing in the bow of the pettiaugre and urging his crew,—“Push off—Let fall—Back oars—Row—Pull, lads, pull for your lives!” in a half-stifled undertone of excitement, did not feel that the return trip was a possibility till the pettiaugre reached the centre of the shining stream, then turning southward caught the current and began to slip and glide along as fast as oar could ply, and the momentum of the stream could aid. Even then a rifle ball came whizzing past.

“It is nothing,” said Captain Howard, reassuringly—“some lawless miscreant. The head-men intend no demonstration.”

The plans of the conspirators, divulged in that moment of embarkation, had mightily caught the fancy of the “mad young men” of the assemblage—that class on whom the Cherokee rulers charged the responsibility of all the turmoils and riots, those who fought the battles and endured the hardships, and carried out the treacherous enterprises and marauding massacres which the head-men secretly planned and ordered and abetted. Some who had just been rollicking with laughter came running after the boats along the bank, their breath short, their features swelled with savage rage, their eyes distended with futile ferocity. Some were crying out mockeries, and blasphemies, and furious maledictions on the head of the old missionary, and others, among whom were the conspirators of the “beloved square,” were protesting craftily that the missionary was abducted against his will and was to be carried as a prisoner to Fort Prince George—adjuring the commandant to permit him to return and threatening force to stop the boats if he were not immediately set ashore.

“We shall meet them, sir, when we round the bend,” said Raymond, in a low voice to Captain Howard, for the river made a deep swirling curve around a considerable peninsula, and a swift runner cutting straight across this tongue of land would have little difficulty in anticipating the passing of the pettiaugre, although the men were bending to the oars with every muscle stretched, and the iterative impact of the strokes was like the rapid ticking of a clock.

As the boats came shooting with an arrowy swiftness around the peninsula, an Indian, the foremost runner, was already there, standing high on a rock. His figure on the promontory, distinct against the blue sky with his hands up-stretched, the palms together, ready to spring and dive, was visible from far off. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure that other Cherokees were following, then timing his adventure with incredible precision, he sprang into the water with a great splash, was invisible a few seconds, and came up alongside the pettiaugre, with a hand on the gunwale, near the bow.

A hundred braves, almost all armed, stood at gaze on the lower banks, a trifle blown by the swift pace, a score or two laying aside their weapons, apparently preparatory to entering the water. The soldiers, well within rifle range, all frontier veterans, young though they were, as obedient and as unmoved as parts of a mechanism, rowed steadily on, disregarding their muskets, stowed in the bottom of the pettiaugre. Only the man nearest the Indian, hanging to the boat, contrived in a lengthened stroke to hit the pendulous legs some heavy covert blows with a feathered oar, which, sooth to say, might have broken less stalwart limbs.