In the meantime an Indian who had come from the camp was talking with low, hurried words to Osceola, who listened to him like one in a dream or who does not fully comprehend what he hears.
Suddenly he sprang forward, his face livid with passion, and crying in a loud voice, "I will sign! I, Osceola the Baton Rouge, will sign this paper of the white man."
IT SUNK DEEP INTO THE WOOD OF THE TABLE AND STOOD QUIVERING AS THOUGH WITH RAGE.
Then stepping up to the table, while both whites and Indians watched him with breathless interest, the fierce warrior plucked the scalping-knife from his girdle and drove it with furious energy through the outspread paper. It sunk deep into the wood of the table, and stood quivering as though with rage.
"There is my signature, General Wiley Thompson," he cried in a voice that trembled with the intensity of his emotion. "There is the signature of Osceola, and I would that it were inscribed on your cowardly heart. Where is my wife? What have you done with her? Give her back to me, I say, and as safe as when I left her in yonder grove. If you do not, I swear by the white man's God, and by the Great Spirit of my people, that not only your own vile life, but that of every white man who comes within reach of Osceola's vengeance, shall be forfeited. As you have shown no mercy, so shall you receive none. The word shall be unknown to the Seminole tongue. You taunt me with being a half-blood. I am one; but I am yet a man, and not a slave. With my white blood I defy you, and with my Indian blood I despise you. Wiley Thompson, where is my wife?"
OSCEOLA SIGNS THE TREATY