“I wish our old ship was here, and I was at one of the guns to help give these beggars a broadside.”
“It is very, very horrible, Jem.”
“Ten times as horrid as that, Mas’ Don. Here was we all as quiet and comf’table as could be—taking our warm baths. I say, shouldn’t I like one now! I’m that stiff and sore I can hardly move.”
“Yes, it would be a comfort, Jem.”
“Yes, and as I was saying, here was we going on as quiet as could be, and interfering with nobody, when these warmints came; and look at things now.”
“Yes,” said Don, sadly, as he looked round; “half the men dead, the others wounded and prisoners, with the women and children.”
“And the village—I s’pose they calls this a village; I don’t, for there arn’t no church—all racked and ruined.”
They sat together, with their hands tightly bound behind them, gazing at the desolation. The prisoners were all huddled together, perfectly silent, and with a dull, sullen, despairing look in their countenances, which seemed to suggest that they were accepting their fate as a matter of course.
It was a horrible scene, so many of the warriors being badly wounded, but they made no complaint; and, truth to tell, most of those who were now helpless prisoners had taken part in raids to inflict the pain they now suffered themselves.
The dead had been dragged away before Don woke that morning, but there were hideous traces on the trampled ground, with broken weapons scattered here and there, while the wounded were lying together perfectly untended, many of them bound, to prevent escape—hardly possible even to an uninjured man, for a guard was keeping watch over them ready to advance threateningly, spear in hand, if a prisoner attempted to move.