He had been a preacher at Salem till after the death of his first wife, where he had a few praying Indians and a few score of white people under his charge. They were fond of him, and very proud of him (for he was the talk of the whole country) till, after her death, being seized with a desire to go away—to escape for a time, he cared not how nor whither, from the place where he had been so very happy and for so short a period, he left his flock; and went eastward, and married anew—and was a widower again—burying a second wife; the second he had so loved, and so parted from, without a wish to outlive her—and then he crossed the sea, and traversed the whole of Europe, and after much trial and a series of strange vicissitude, came back—though not to the church he had left, but to the guardianship of another a great way off.
He could bear to live—and that was all; he could not bear to stay, year after year, by the grave where the women that he so loved were both asleep in their youth and beauty—and he forbidden to go near them. But he prospered no more—so say the flock he deserted, when he went away forever from the church he had built up, and took refuge again among the people of Casco Bay, at Falmouth—a sweet place, if one may judge by what it is now, with its great green hill and smooth blue water, and a scattered group of huge pine trees on the north side. It was a time of war when he arrived at Falmouth, and the Indians were out, backed by a large body of the French and commanded by a French officer, the Sieur Hertel, a man of tried valor and great experience in the warfare of the woods. At the village of Casco Bay, there was a little fort, or block house, into which about a hundred men with their wives and little ones were gathered together, waiting the attack of their formidable and crafty foe, when the preacher appeared.
There was no time to throw away—they were but a handful to the foe, afar from succor and beyond the reach of sympathy. He saw this, and he told them there was no hope, save that which pious men feel, however they may be situated, and that nothing on earth could save them but their own courage and a prayerful assiduity. They were amazed at his look, for he shewed no sign of fear when he said this, and they gathered about him and hailed him as their hope and refuge; the servant of the Lord, their Joshua, and the captain of their salvation, while he proceeded to speak as if he had been familiar with war from his boyhood.
For weeks before the affair came to issue, he and they slept upon their arms. They never had their clothes off by night nor by day, nor did they move beyond the reach of their loaded guns. If they prayed now, it was not as it had been before his arrival in a large meeting-house and all together, with their arms piled or stacked at the door, and the bullet-pouch and powder-horn, wherever it might please the Lord,—but they prayed together, a few at a time, with sentries on the watch now, with every gun loaded and every knife sharpened, with every bullet-pouch and every powder-horn slung where it should be; and they prayed now as they had never prayed before—as if they knew that when they rose up, it would be to grapple man to man with the savages.
At last on a very still night in the month of May, one of the two most beautiful months of the year in that country of rude weather, a horseman who was out on the watch, perceived a solitary canoe floating by in the deep shadow of the rocks, which overhung the sea beneath his feet. Before he had time to speak, or to recollect himself, he heard a slight whizzing in the air, and something which he took for a bird flew past him—it was immediately followed by another, at which his horse reared—and the next moment a large arrow struck in a tree just over his head. Perceiving the truth now, the horseman set off at full speed for the fort, firing into the canoe as he darted away, and wondering at his narrow escape after the flight of two such birds, and the twang of a bowstring at his very ear.
CHAPTER XIII.
He had a narrow escape—for the shore was lined with canoes that had come in one by one with the tide, stealing along in the shadow that lay upon the edge of the water, and the woods were alive with wild men preparing to lay an ambuscade. They were not quite ready for the attack however, and so they lay still on both sides of the narrow path he took, and suffered him to ride away in safety when he was within the reach, not only of their balls and arrows but of their knives. They knew with whom they had to deal, and the issue proved their sagacity, for when the poor fellow arrived at the fort and related what he had seen, there was nobody to believe the story but Burroughs, and he would not put much faith in it, although he had reason to think well of the man; for how were the savages to get across the Bay in such a clear still night—with a sea like the sky, and a sky like the air that men breathe in their boyhood or when they are happy—without being discovered by the boats? And how were they to approach from the woods, without coming over a wide smooth level of water, seldom deep enough to float a large canoe, nor ever shoal enough to be forded without much risk on account of the mud?
No attack followed for three nights and for three days, and already the garrison were beginning to be weary of the watch, and to murmur at the restraint he had imposed. It grieved him to the soul to see their fright passing off and their vigilance with it. I beseech you said he, on the afternoon of the fourth day, toward night-fall, as he saw them lying about under the trees, and a full fourth of their number asleep in the rich warm grass, with hardly a knife or a gun where it should be, a pike or a powder-horn—I do beseech you to hear me. You are in jeopardy, in great jeopardy—I know it; I am sure of it—
So you said a week ago, answered one of the men, stretching himself out, with a rude laugh, and resting his chin on both hands, with his elbows fixed in the turf.
Ah, you may laugh, Mark Smith, but I am satisfied of what I say—the woods are much too still for the time o’ the year—