It was a scene of only a few seconds’ duration. The woman stole close up to the mulatto, and for a moment her arms appeared entwined around his neck. There was the sheen of some object that in the moonlight gleamed like metal. It was a living weapon—it was the dread crotalus!
Its rattle could be heard distinctly, and close following came a wild cry of terror, as its victim felt the cold contact of the reptile around his neck, and its sharp fangs entering his flesh.
The woman was seen suddenly to withdraw the serpent, and holding its glistening body over her head, she cried out:
“Grieve not, Osceola! thou art avenged!—the chitta mico has avenged you!”
Saying this, she glided rapidly away, and before the astonished listeners could intercept her retreat, she had entered among the bushes and disappeared.
The horror-struck wretch tottered over the ground, pale and terrified, his eyes almost starting from their sockets.
Men gathered around and endeavoured to administer remedies. Gunpowder and tobacco were tried, but no one knew the simples that would cure him.
It proved his death-stroke; and before another sun went down, he had ceased to live.
With Osceola’s capture the war did not cease—though I bore no further part in it. Neither did it end with his death, which followed a few weeks after—not by court-martial execution, for he was no rebel, and could claim the privilege of a prisoner of war, but of that disease which he knew had long doomed him. Captivity may have hastened the event. His proud spirit sank under confinement, and with it the noble frame that contained it.