A soft, murmuring monotone was audible, and young Waring knew that he was engaged with his Maker. The scene was too impressive, their surroundings too solemn, for them to indulge in conversation, and they preserved a respectful silence; the maiden leaning upon her betrothed, and waiting until her parent was through before she should go to him.
After the lapse of several more minutes, she saw him raise his head, and walking hastily toward him, threw her arms around his neck, and gave way to her tears of sorrow. Her whole soul was in agony, and her grief could not be restrained. Waring, who was accustomed to the suffering of the father, witnessed the emotion of the loving daughter, and was so overcome that he suddenly turned his head, and moved away. It was too much for him.
Hardly conscious of what he was doing, he walked slowly out from the protection of the trees, and stood on the moonlit beach. He placed the stock of his rifle on the hard shingle, and leaning upon it, gave way to the most gloomy meditations.
Directly before him, as motionless as a rock, rested the hulk of the sunken flat-boat. The soft ripple of the Ohio against the sand at his feet, that deep, hollow murmur of the great wilderness, were the only sounds that reached him; and these, from their monotonous continuity, seemed silence itself. The moon was nearly overhead, shining in that peculiar manner, that the river seemed to reflect more light than it received. A few straggling clouds, as white as snow-drifts, now and then floated before the moon, and huge, grotesque shadows glided over the island, across the stream, and into the wood, like phantoms. On either side, the frowning forest rose like a wall of blackness and seemed to close the whites in an impregnable prison.
It was no wonder that the young adventurer felt gloomy and despairing. It could not be otherwise than thus, while within a dozen miles of the settlement, and in the most dangerous portion of the river, an accident should place him and his friends in the most imminent peril, and make the escape of all of them, as it seemed to him, an utter impossibility.
Waring was in the midst of these gloomy forebodings, when the noise of a light footstep startled him, and looking around, he turned to greet his friends:
"Well, what have you discovered?" he added. "Are we alone on the island?"
To his surprise he received no reply.
"What are the prospects of our getting over the mainland"——
As quick as lightning Waring's rifle was at his shoulder, and one of the approaching Shawanoes was shot through the breast. With a wild yell, he sprang high in the air, and fell dead upon the sand. At the same moment the white man saw something cleave the air, and heard a rushing sound close to his face, followed by the splash of the tomahawk in the water behind him. Clubbing his rifle, he stood on the defensive, when he noted that neither of the savages had possessed a rifle, and conscious that he was more than a match for the surviving one, he made a rush at him.