Every eye was turned in that direction, and to the awful horror of the settlers, they beheld the half-naked body of an Indian warrior leap upward from the water, but a few rods from the shore, HIS HEAD AND FACE CONCEALED IN A CAP MADE OF THE FEATHERED SKIN OF A WILD DUCK!
The savage had been shot through the head by a bullet from the rifle of Old Tumult, but no sooner did the death-wail peal from his lips, than the whole flock, of what the settlers had supposed to be living wild-ducks, was seen to rise up from the water upon the heads of as many half-naked savages, whose bloody war-whoops, as they dashed aside their feathered caps, and sprung ashore with drawn tomahawks, sent a thrill of terror to the stoutest heart.
CHAPTER V.
OLD TUMULT TO THE RESCUE.
My pen is inadequate to the task now before me—the task of describing that savage surprise, and the horrors that followed.
A desperate conflict at once began. Where peace and the enjoyment of religious exercise prevailed but a few moments previous, now death and carnage ran riot.
The yells of the demoniac savages, the shouts of the brave settlers as with knife and pistol they flew to the conflict, the shrieks of women and children, all mingled in one awful sound, and rolled through the forest like a voice from Pandemonium.
At the beginning of the conflict, Town. Farnesworth seized Madge and attempted to carry her beyond danger; but she tore herself from his arms and bravely dashed into the midst of the combatants. Town. attempted to follow her, but fell unconscious from a blow upon the head.
The armed guards came running in from the woods, and joined their friends in the conflict; and presently another voice was added to those of the combatants, but his was a voice resembling the roar of a maddened bull more than a human voice, and a tall, bony and muscular-looking man, with long, shaggy eyebrows, from beneath which two orbs of fire, a shock of grizzly gray hair, and a mouth so “extensive,” that the upper part of his head seemed set on hinges at the back—made his appearance in behalf of the settlers.
This man of giant frame and cavernous mouth, was Old Tumult, the hunter and scout.
He came like a whirlwind among the savages, his rifle grasped in one hand—a heavy club in the other.