ANSTICE BOYD SAVES THE LIFE OF A CAPTIVE
While Coacoochee was engaged in his fierce pursuit of the traitor Seminole across the black causeway, Irwin Douglass was led to the village, where he was securely bound to one of the great trees by which it was shaded. Here his captors left him, and seizing their rifles hastened back to the edge of the swamp.
The moment Anstice realized that the young soldier, though a captive, was not doomed to instant death, she flew back to the hut occupied by her brother, whom she found still quietly sleeping in his grass-woven hammock. Roused into a startled wakefulness by her abrupt entrance, the convalescent was for some moments at a loss to comprehend what she was saying or what had caused her excitement.
"Who do you say is captured? and what has happened, dear, to frighten you?" he asked, in a bewildered tone.
"Irwin Douglass, and they are going to kill him, and the village is about to be attacked, and we shall all be murdered!" cried the terrified girl.
"Douglass captured and about to be killed? Impossible!" exclaimed Boyd, rising and starting toward the doorway. "But I will go and see. Surely Coacoochee would never murder a prisoner in cold blood. As for ourselves, you know we are safe so long as we are his guests. Wait here, sister, and I will bring Douglass back with me, if, as you say, he is in the village."
But the frightened girl clung to him and would not be left. So they set forth together, and had hardly gained the outer air before a sound of firing from the causeway warned them that fighting of some sort was begun. The same sounds created vast excitement among the inmates of the village, and the crowd of negroes, who, at the first note of alarm, had come swarming up from the fields. These so occupied the entire foreground that the brother and sister could get no sight of him whom they sought. Neither was their friend the young war-chief to be seen. They attempted to make way through the throng, but were impatiently pushed back, the crowd scowling and muttering at them angrily.
One huge, coal-black negro even advanced upon them with a drawn knife and so ugly an expression, that Ralph Boyd instinctively thrust his sister behind him, and nerved himself to receive an attack. Unarmed and weakened by illness as he was, the outcome of such a struggle could readily be foreseen, and the white man cast a despairing glance about him in search of some weapon. There was none, and the gleaming knife was already uplifted for a deadly stroke, when, with a shrill cry, a black woman sprang betwixt the two, snatched the knife from the negro's hand, and flourishing it in his face, poured out such a furious torrent of angry, scornful, and threatening words, that the brute slunk away from her, completely cowed.
Now, turning and almost pushing Boyd and his sister before her, Letty—for the black Amazon was no other than Anstice's own maid—succeeded in getting them back inside the hut before their assailant had time to rally from his discomfiture. Then, still clutching the knife she had so adroitly captured, the black girl stood guard before the entrance, deaf alike to those of her own color, who taunted her with being a traitor to her race, and to the entreaties of her young mistress, that she should attempt a rescue of the prisoner about whom the crowd of Indian women and negroes still swarmed.
"Cayn't do it, Miss Anstice," replied the black girl, firmly, but without turning her head. "I'se powerful sorry for Marse Douglass, but when it's him or you, I know which one I'se bound to look after."