Whose soft fingers are those I feel playing upon my temples? Oh—the exquisite pleasure imparted by their touch! Bend down, that I may look upon your face, and thank you—“Maümee! Maümee!”
Then I am not dead. I live. I am saved!
It was Haj-Ewa, and not her spirit. It was Maümee herself—whose beautiful, brilliant eyes were looking into mine. No wonder I had believed it to be an angel.
“Carajo!” sounded a voice, that appeared hoarse with rage. “Remove those women!—pile back the fires. Away, mad queen!—go back to your tribe! these my captives—your chief no claim—Carrambo!—you not interfere; pile back the fires!”
“Yamassees!” cried Haj-Ewa, advancing towards the Indians; “Obey him not! or dread the wrath of Wykomé! His spirit will be angry, and follow you in vengeance. Wherever you go the chitta mico will be on your path, and its rattle in your ears. Hulwak! It will bite your heel as you wander in the woods. Speak I not truth, thou king of the Serpents?”
As she uttered the interrogatory, she raised the rattlesnake in her hands, holding it so that it might be distinctly seen by those whom she addressed. The reptile hissed, accompanying the sibilation with a sharp “skirr” of its tail. Who could doubt that it was an answer in the affirmative?
Not the Yamassees, who stood awe-bound and trembling in the presence of the mighty sorceress.
“And you, black runaways and renegades,” she continued to the negro allies—“you who have no god, and fear not Wykomé—dare to rebuild the fires—dare to lift one fagot—and you shall take the place of your captives. A greater than yon yellow monster, your chief, will soon be on the ground. Hinklas! Ho! yonder the Rising Sun! he comes—he comes!”
As she ceased speaking, the hoof-strokes of a horse echoed through the glade, and a hundred voices simultaneously raised the shout: “Osceola! Osceola!” That cry was grateful to my ears. Though already rescued, I had begun to fear it might prove only a short relief. Our delivery from death was still far from certain—our advocates were but weak women. The mulatto king, in the midst of his fierce satellites, would scarce have yielded to their demands. Alike disregarded would have been their entreaties. The fire would have been re-kindled, and the execution carried out to its end.
In all probability this would have been the event, had not Osceola in good time arrived upon the ground.