Kaloomah's knife dropped from his hand as he tried to free himself.
But Brawn had him by the throat now, and had not brave Peggy sprung to the assistance of the savage, the dog would have torn the windpipe from his neck.
But Kaloomah was prisoner, and when the fight was all over, the dog was released from duty, and the chief was bound hand and foot and placed in the other cave beside Peter.
This cave, which had thus been turned into a prison, possessed an entrance at the side, a kind of doorway through the dark rocks, and a great hole at the top, through which daylight, or even moonlight, could stream. At some not very distant date it had evidently been used as a hut, and must have been the scene of many a fearful cannibal orgie, for scores of human skulls were heaped up in corners, and calcined bones were also found. Altogether, therefore, an unhallowed kind of place, and eerie beyond conception.
It is as well to tell the truth concerning the battle on the hill-top, ghastly though it may appear. There were no wounded men there, for even in the thick of the fight the savages not only slew the white men who dropped, but their own maimed as well.
So long as the brave fellows under Roland and Dick held the ramparts, and poured their volleys into the ranks of the enemy beneath, scarcely a white man was hurt; but when the battlements were carried by storm, then the havoc of war commenced in earnest; and at daylight a great deep trench was excavated, and in this no fewer than eleven white men were placed, side by side.
A simple prayer was said, then a hymn was sung--a sad dirge-like hymn to that sacred air called "Martyrdom", which has risen in olden times from many a Scottish battle-field, where the heather was dripping blood. I take my fiddle and play it now, and that mournful scene rises up before me, in which the white men crowd around the long quiet grave, where their late companions lie sleeping in the tomb.
Every head is bared in the morning sunshine, every eye is wet with tears.
It is Bill himself who leads the melody.
Then clods are gently thrown upon the dead, and soon the grave is filled.