The audacious savages, having made two or three circuits to avoid the American outpost, set their faces due north-east, then pursued their course without swerving to right or left. The sun went down, the moon came up, on those Canadian wilds. Ever and anon, as swiftly held they onward, other Indians, singly or in squads, would fall into the file, gliding from out the mingled gloom of forest shade and night, as suddenly and silently as the shapes which flit through troubled dreams. Among these, by and by, appeared a warrior of gigantic stature, who putting himself at the head of the file, stalked on a little in advance, and seemed to be their leader.
Captain Reynolds now felt convinced that they had fallen into the hands of some of Tecumseh's scouts, through whom that vigilant leader kept himself continually informed of the enemy's movements, if, peradventure, at some moment he might find them off their guard, either to be drawn into an ambuscade by day or surprised in camp by night. Unswervingly due north-east the night-marchers held their course for several miles, the warrior gliding on before them, like a gigantic specter there to lead them over the shadowy borders of another world. So it seemed to Burl, who felt his spirit strangely troubled within him whenever an opening through the forest, letting in the hazy glimmer of the moon, brought that huge bulk less vaguely before his eyes; and once in particular, as they neared the summit of a big bald hill, when the warrior for an instant towered in lofty, dim relief against the starry sky. Toward midnight, the party descended from the upland forest into the valley of the Thames, and shortly afterward reached the Indian camp. Here the prisoners were placed in the custody of fresh keepers, and all lay down to rest, stretched out on the ground near one of the numerous camp-fires which, by this time burning low, shone like great glow-worms along the side of the valley.
The dim light of another hazy October day was creeping chillily over those forest wilds, when a heavy hand shaking him roughly by the shoulder roused Big Black Burl from his slumbers. Scrambling to his feet, and drowsily looking around him through that foggy confusion of thought and perception through which sons of ebony after a sound sleep needs must pass in getting back to their waking senses, the black hunter caught a broad, vague view of something which made him fancy that he was still flat of his back on the ground and dreaming of the giant warrior who had led in the night-march. The moment after, more at himself, yet lingering still on the misty borders of nod-land, he fancied that what he saw just there before him must surely be a ghost; and at this horrible thought the negro gave a big start, which brought him by a shorter cut than usual out of his sleepy fog into the clear light of his wide-awake senses. All but within reach of his hand, there stood before him in bodily form that terrible Wyandot giant Black Thunder—that redoubtable warrior whom the Fighting Nigger had so long and fondly fancied he had slain in valiant fight, and his victory over whom he had ever since held up and trumpeted abroad as the crowning glory of all his martial exploits. The recognition was mutual, for never had either seen the other's like but once before, and that, too, under circumstances which neither was ever likely to forget. If the recognition was mutual, so was the surprise.
"Ugh!" exclaimed the Indian, as he bent his wild, panther-like eye on the black giant with a look of undisguised astonishment, which gradually darkened into a smile of ferocious joy and triumph.
"U-gooh!" exclaimed the negro, as he fixed his wild, ox-like eye unflinchingly on the red giant, but with a look of unspeakable amazement, which gradually vanished, leaving his face with a cast as impenetrable as black marble.
Having surveyed his captive from top to toe in exulting silence for some moments, Black Thunder turned abruptly on his heel and strode away, to be seen no more that morning. Burl was still staring after his old acquaintance when his young master, who had with some surprise witnessed the dumb-show of mutual recognition, came up and inquired what it meant. Burl explained, and having noticed the ugly smile with which he had been regarded, could not help foreboding the terrible fate that must await them if their lives lay at the mercy of that revengeful savage whom he had once made bite the dust.
By this time the allied English and Indian armies were all astir, and the disorderly retreat began afresh, Tecumseh keeping his Indian brigade half a mile in the rear of the regulars. Toward the middle of the afternoon the party that had the white prisoners in keeping, having gradually fallen behind the line of march, abruptly turned into the mouth of a dingle which, deep and shadowy, opened gloomily into the valley of the Thames. Here, for the first time since morning, our luckless hunters spied Black Thunder, where a little farther within the dingle, as if there in waiting for them, he was vehemently, though not loudly, haranguing some fifteen or twenty of his warriors who, clustered in a close red knot before him, were taking in with ravenous ears his every word. Evidently the evil, foreboded by Burl in the morning, was in some shape near at hand, for a fierce gesture flung toward them from time to time by the speaker, with the vengeful glances of his listeners in the same direction, told but too plainly the drift of the harangue. At length, as if to make the surer of their savage sympathies and give the climax to his barbarous appeal, Black Thunder suddenly threw back his robe and disclosed to view two scars—a deep and ugly one in the arm, a long and ghastly one athwart the breast. Whereat uprose a chorus of yells expressive not so much of savage sympathy as of savage delight. The moment after, seized foot, with brush-wood to feed the devouring flames heaped up against him to his shoulders, there stood Big Black Burl, a victim doomed to the fiery tortures of the death-stake.
Helpless himself, Captain Reynolds could not choose but stand where he was and become a witness of the harrowing spectacle—too harrowing for any Christian eye to behold, even were the victim but the poor dumb brute, who has only his howlings to tell of his agony; but that his affectionate, faithful, brave old Burl should ever have come to a fate so terrible, wrung his heart with unshakable anguish—anguish the keener, when he reflected that this had never been but for that very heroism which, on a beautiful summer morning in the days long gone, had wrought deliverance to him, a forlorn little captive, and restored him to the love of a lone and widowed mother. O that ever this should be! And the strong man wept, as wept had he never till that sad day.
"O Mars'er Bushie!" cried Burl, in a firm, even comforting voice, "don't you cry for yo' pore ol' nigger. 'T won't be long 'fore he'll be turnin' up all right in de kingdom. Soon or late, we mus' all come to de end uf our journey; an' dis arter all's but a short cut to glory. Ef you eber slips de clutches uf dese wretches, Mars'er Bushie, an' libes to git back home, tell eb'rybody good-by fur me. Tell Miss Jemimy her ol' nigger never forgot, de longes' day he eber libed, how much she wanted to give him his freedom. An' tell Sinar, my wife, how her ol' man tried to die like a Chrischun gwine to glory. An' tell her, too, when de time will come fur her to cross de Jordan water she'll fin' her ol' man waitin' to meet her on de odder side, wid a cabin snug an' ready, all happy an' safe in de promis' lan'."
Here, as if the closing words had suggested it to his mind, the poor old fellow lifted up his powerful and melodious voice and began singing a simple negro hymn, which, with a plaintive melody, had for its burden the following words: