"The knave has endangered us, and to the value of the scalp on his own foolish head;" muttered Nathan, his indignation speaking in a voice louder than a whisper: "but, truly, he will pay the price: and, truly, his loss is the maiden's redeeming!"
He darted forwards as he spoke; but his words had reached the ears of one, who, cowering like himself among the weeds around Wenonga's hut, now started suddenly forth, and displayed to his eyes the young Virginian, who, rushing eagerly up, clasped the rescued captive in his arms, crying,—"Forward now, for the love of Heaven! forward, forward!"
"Thee has ruined all!" cried Nathan, with bitter reproach, as Edith, rousing from insensibility at the well known voice, opened her eyes upon her kinsman, and, all unmindful of the place of meeting, unconscious of everything but his presence—the presence of him whose supposed death she had so long lamented,—sprang to his embrace with a cry of joy that was heard over the whole square, a tone of happiness, pealing above the rush of the winds and the uproar of men and animals. "Thee has ruined all,—theeself and the maid! Save thee own life!"
With these words, Nathan strove to tear Edith from his grasp, to make one more effort for her rescue; and Roland, yielding her to his superior strength, and perceiving that a dozen Indians were running against them, drew his tomahawk, and, with a self-devotion which marked his love, his consciousness of error, and his heroism of character, waved Nathan away, while he himself rushed, back upon the pursuers, not so much, however, in the vain hope of disputing the path, as, by laying down his life on the spot, to purchase one more hope of escape to his Edith.
The act, so unexpectedly, so audaciously bold, drew a shout of admiration from throats which had before only uttered yells of fury: but it was mingled with fierce laughter, as the savages, without hesitating at, or indeed seeming at all to regard his menacing position, ran upon him in a body, and avoiding the only blow they gave him the power to make, seized and disarmed him,—a result that, notwithstanding his fierce and furious struggles, was effected in less space than we have taken to describe it. Then, leaving him in the hands of two of their number, who proceeded to bind him securely, the others rushed after Nathan, who, though encumbered by his burden, again inanimate, her arms clasped around his neck, as they had been round that of her kinsman, made the most desperate exertions to bear her off, seeming to regard her weight no more than if the burden had been a cushion of thistle-down. He ran for a moment with astonishing activity, leaping over bush and gully, where such crossed his path, with such prodigious strength and suppleness of frame, as to the savages appeared little short of miraculous; and, it is more than probable he might have effected his escape, had he chosen to abandon the helpless Edith. As it was, he, for a time, bade fair to make his retreat good. He reached the low thicket that fringed the river, and one more step would have found him in at least temporary security. But that step was never to be taken. As he approached, two tall barbarians suddenly sprang from the cover, where they had been taking their drunken slumbers; and, responding with exulting whoops to the cries of the others, they leaped forward to secure him. He turned aside, running downwards to where a lonely wigwam, surrounded by trees, offered the concealment of its shadow. But he turned too late; a dozen fierce wolf-like dogs, rushing from the cabin, and emboldened by the cries of the pursuers, rushed upon him, hanging to his skirts, and entangling his legs, rending and tearing all the while, so that he could fly no longer. The Indians were at his heels: their shouts were in his ears; their hands were almost upon his shoulders. He stopped, and turning towards them with a gesture and look of desperate defiance, and still more desperate hatred, exclaimed,—"Here, devils! cut and hack! your time has come, and I am the last of them!" And holding Edith at the length of his arm, he pulled open his garment, as if to invite the death-stroke.
But his death, at least at that moment, was not sought after by the Indians. They seized him, and, Edith being torn from his hands, dragged him, with endless whoops, towards the fire, whither they had previously borne the captured Roland, over whom, as over himself, they yelled their triumph; while screams of rage from those who had clashed among the horses after the daring white man who had been seen among them, and the confusion that still prevailed, showed that he also had fallen into their hands.
The words of defiance which Nathan breathed at the moment of yielding, were the last he uttered. Submitting passively to his fate, he was dragged onwards by a dozen hands, a dozen voices around him vociferating their surprise at his appearance even more energetically than the joy of their triumph. His Indian habiliments and painted body evidently struck them with astonishment, which increased as they drew nearer the fire, and could better distinguish the extraordinary devices he had traced so carefully on his breast and visage. Their looks of inquiry, their questions jabbered freely in broken English as well as in their own tongue, Nathan regarded no more than their taunts and menaces, replying to these, as to all, only with a wild and haggard stare, which seemed to awe several of the younger warriors, who began to exchange looks of peculiar meaning. At last, as they drew nearer the fire, an old Indian staggered among the group, who made way for him with a kind of respect, as was, indeed, his due,—for he was no other than the old Black-Vulture himself. Limping up to the prisoner, with as much ferocity as his drunkenness would permit, he laid one hand upon his shoulder, and with the other aimed a furious hatchet-blow at his head. The blow was arrested by the renegade Doe, or Atkinson, who made his appearance at the same time with Wenonga, and muttered some words in the Shawnee tongue, which seemed meant to soothe the old man's fury.
"Me Injun-man!" said the chief, addressing his words to the prisoner, and therefore in the prisoner's language,—"Me kill all white-man! Me Wenonga: me drink white-mans blood! me no heart!" And to impress the truth of his words on the prisoner's mind, he laid his right hand, from which the axe had been removed, as well as his left, on Nathan's shoulder, in which position supporting himself, he nodded and wagged his head in the other's face, with as savage a look of malice as he could infuse into his drunken features. To this the prisoner replied by bending upon the chief a look more hideous than his own, and indeed so strangely unnatural and revolting, with lips so retracted, features so distorted by some nameless passion, and eyes gleaming with fires so wild and unearthly, that even Wenonga, chief as he was, and then in no condition to be daunted by anything, drew slowly back, removing his hands from the prisoner's shoulder, who immediately fell down in horrible convulsions, the foam flying from his lips, and his fingers clenching like spikes of iron into the flesh of two Indians that had hold of him.
Taunts, questions, and whoops were heard no more among the captors, who drew aside from their wretched prisoner, as if from the darkest of their Manitoes, all looking on with unconcealed wonder and awe. The only person, indeed, who seemed undismayed at the spectacle, was the renegade, who, as Nathan shook and writhed in the fit, beheld the corner of a piece of parchment projecting from the bosom of his shirt, and looking vastly like that identical instrument he had seen but an hour or two before in the hands of Braxley. Stooping down, and making as if he would have raised the convulsed man in his arms, he drew the parchment from its hiding-place, and, unobserved by the Indians, transferred it to a secret place in his own garments. He then rose up, and stood like the rest, looking upon the prisoner, until the fit had passed off, which it did in but a few moments, Nathan starting to his feet, and looking around him in the greatest wildness, as if, for a moment, not only unconscious of what had befallen him, but even of his captivity.
But unconsciousness of the latter calamity was of no great duration, and was dispelled by the old chief saying, but with looks of drunken respect, that had succeeded his insane fury—"Me brudder great-medicine white-man! great white-man medicine! Me Wenonga, great Injun-captain, great kill-man-white-man, kill-all-man, man-man, squaw-man, little papoose-man! Me make medicine-man brudder-man! Medicine-man tell Wenonga all Jibbenainosay?—where find Jibbenainosay? How kill Jibbenainosay? kill white-man's devil-man! Medicine-man tell Injun-man why medicine-man come Injun town? steal Injun prisoner? steal Injun hoss? Me Wenonga,—me good brudder medicine-man."