“The wounded,” cried the maidens together. “We must care for them.”
“Only the dead lie here,” she told them with terrible composure. “Did ye not hear the order to spare none? There was no quarter given after the surrender. ’Tis that which makes me fearful for my son.”
With that she sat down upon the bank of the river, and bowed her head upon her hands. One by one the women stole back from the forest. Each went first to those still forms lying so quietly, searching for father, husband, son or brother among them; then silently sat down among the ashes, and bowed her head. The little children stifled the sobs that rose in their throats, awed by this voiceless grief, and crept softly to the sides of their mothers, hiding their faces against them. More than a hundred women and children were stripped of everything, and rendered homeless, widowed and orphaned by the attack.
As though unable to bear the sight of such sorrow, the sun hid his face behind a cloud, and the forest lay in shadow. The waters of the bay sobbed in their ebb and flow upon the sands, and the wind that sighed through the pines echoed the wail of the grief-stricken women:
“Desolate! Desolate! Desolate!”
CHAPTER XVI
“OF WHAT WAS HE GUILTY?”
“Close his eyes; his work is done!
What to him is friend or foeman,
Rise of moon, or set of sun,
Hand of man, or kiss of woman?
“Fold him in his country’s stars,
Roll the drum and fire the volley!
What to him are all our wars,
What but death bemocking folly?”