"Tell him," said he to Pierre Noir, "that we are all English, and that we are not afraid; and that if we are harmed, the armies of Corlaer will destroy the Iroquois, even as the Iroquois have the Illini. Tell him that we will go back with him to the settlements because we are willing to go that way upon a journey which we had already planned. We could fight forever if we chose, and he can see for himself by the bodies of his young men how well we are able to make war."
"It is well," replied Teganisoris. "You have the word of an Iroquois that this shall be done, as I have said."
"The word of an Iroquois!" cried Pierre Noir, slamming down the butt of his musket. "The word of a snake, say rather! Jean Breboeuf, harken you to what our leaders have agreed! We are to go as prisoners of the Iroquois! Mary, Mother of God, what folly! And there is madame, and la pauvre petite, that infant so young. By God! Were it left to me, Pierre Berthier would stand here, and fight to the end. I know these Iroquois!"
CHAPTER XII
PRISONERS OF THE IROQUOIS
The faith of the Iroquois was worse than Punic, nor was there lacking swift proof of its real nature. Law and Pembroke, the moment they had led their little garrison beyond the gate, found themselves surrounded by a ring of tomahawks and drawn bows. Their weapons were snatched away from them, and on the instant they found themselves beyond all possibility of that resistance whose giving over they now bitterly repented. Teganisoris regarded them with a sardonic smile.
"I see you are all English," said he, "though some of you wear blue coats. These we may perhaps adopt into our tribe, for our boys grow up but slowly, and some of the blue coats are good fighters. These dogs of Illini we shall of course burn. As for your war house, you will no longer need it, since you are now friends of the Iroquois, and are going to their villages. You may say to Corlaer that you well know the Iroquois have no prisoners."
The horrid significance of this threat was all too soon made plain. In an hour the little stockade was but a mass of embers and ashes. In another hour the little valley had become a Gehenna of anguish and lamentations, with whose riot of grief and woe there mingled the savage exultations of a foe whose treachery was but surpassed by his cruelty. Again the planting-ground of the Illini was utterly laid waste, to mark it naught remaining but trampled grain, and heaps of ashes, and remnants of blackened and incinerated bones. By nightfall the party of prisoners had begun a wild journey through the wilderness, whose horrors surpassed any they had supposed to be humanly endurable.