The American family Robinson

by D. W. Belisle

This they gladly acceded to, and when the sun again set she lay tossing in feverish delirium on a couch of skins within the tent of Minawanda their benevolent guide.

Cooling drinks were given her, and her throbbing, burning temples laved with cold water, fresh from the fountain. This soothed the pain, but it did not arrest the raging fever that burned in her veins, wasting her strength, and reducing her to a state as helpless as that of infancy.

The women in the village were untiring in their exertions to alleviate her suffering, and although they rendered her condition comparatively comfortable, yet the fever grew higher and stronger each day, until she became deprived of both reason and strength. The chief stood by the door of her lodge day and night, apparently without observing anything that was passing around him, and with the one feeling filling his entire soul—that of the antelope lying at the point of death, and he could do nothing to save her. Sidney was more active, and never left her couch, save to procure something for her. He, with Edward by her side, caressed her in her wild ravings until the excitement passed, and she was again calm. Then they would renew their exertions to assuage the fever, and cool the brain by laving it with water. It was all the remedy they had, and they used this freely. The ninth day of her illness the fever suddenly died away, and closing her eyes she slept as peacefully as the sleep of infancy for half an hour, when her breathing grew shorter, her chest heaved laboriously, and she unclosed her eyes, from which the light of reason once more shone. She whispered faintly, "Edward, come nearer; where are the rest of you? I feel so strangely! is this death?"

"We are here—all here!" cried Sidney, with a broken voice; "and you know us now, do you not, sister?"

"Yes, I know you now; but I feel so weak, and so strangely! have I been sick long? I remember now," she added, "the snake bit me, and I am poisoned, and shall die!"

"No, oh! no, you will not," said Howe, in his cheering tones; "you will not do any such thing. You are a brave girl, and will live many a long year yet. Here is a good draught for you, take it and keep quiet, and you will be well in a few days," he added, as he presented her some whey he had made from goats' milk and ripe grapes. Then ordering every one from the lodge, he shut out the light, and stationing himself by her side, bade her sleep, taking the precaution to arouse her every few minutes to administer to her the whey. She slept at intervals till sunset, when she again awakened perfectly conscious, and declared she felt much better. She now improved rapidly, and in a week's time was enabled to walk with assistance in the open air. Her appetite returned which, together with the pure air, caused her rapidly to improve, and regain her strength again; but they were at a loss in what manner to prosecute their fatiguing journey with her. To set out on foot was out of the question, as she would probably give out the first day, and to be carried on a litter she would not consent to, as she rightly argued it was as much as one was able to do to get himself along, without carrying a burthen.

There was not a horse or a mule in the village, although the Indians insisted that the hunting parties that had gone out had some with them, and if they would await their return, they could obtain one for her. While hesitating what course to pursue, shouts of the returning party were heard from the summit of the hill, and were recognized as those that betokened a great victory. The answer was taken up by every inhabitant of the village, and echoed back in full chorus.

In half an hour, the Indians, in admirable confusion, came galloping into the village, decorated in all the savage panoply of war; their grotesque features made still more repulsive and hideous by the paint with which they were besmeared. This, together with the shouts of the women, and wild yells of the children, constituted a more vivid picture of pandemonium than anything earthly.

One group of the returning party seemed to concentrate the curiosity of the Indians in the village more than another, and going thither they saw with surprise two white men confined as prisoners, their hands bound behind them with leather thongs. They looked almost worn out with fatigue and anxiety. Apprehensive for their own safety, they retreated to the lodge of their guide, and there learned that these two men had been captured three hundred miles south, and that they belonged to an overland emigrant party, who, in a battle with the Indians, had all been killed, with the exception of the two, and these, with the oxen, horses, and baggage, had fallen into the hands of the savages, and were conveyed to their village.

"This does not look well for our own safety," said Sidney.