"It is impossible," said Roland in despair; "you will only provoke your destruction."
"It may be, friend, as thee says," responded Nathan; "nevertheless, friend, for thee women's sake, I will adventure it; for it is I, miserable sinner that I am, that have brought them to this pass, and that must bring them out of it again, if man can do it."
At a moment of less grief and desperation, Roland would have better appreciated the magnitude of the service which Nathan thus offered to attempt, and even hesitated to permit what must have manifestly seemed the throwing away of a human life. But the emergency was too great to allow the operation of any but selfish feelings. The existence of his companions, the life of his Edith, depended upon procuring relief, and this could be obtained in no other way. If the undertaking was dangerous in the extreme, he saw it with the eyes of a soldier as well as a lover: it was a feat he would himself have dared without hesitation, could it have promised, in his hands, any relief to his followers.
"Go, then, and God be with you," he muttered, eagerly "you have our lives in your hand. But it will be long, long before you can reach the band on foot. Yet do not weary or pause by the way. I have but little wealth; but with what I have I will reward you."
"Friend," said Nathan proudly, "what I do I do for no lucre of reward, but for pity of thee poor women; for truly I have seen the murdering and scalping of poor women before, and the seeing of the same has left blood upon my head, which is a mournful thing to think of."
"Well, be not offended: do what you can—our lives may rest on a single minute."
"I will do what I can, friend," replied Nathan; "and if I can but pass safely through thee foes, there is scarce a horse in thee company, were it even thee war-horse, that shall run to thee friends more fleetly. But, friend, do thee hold out the house: use thee powder charily; keep up the spirits of thee two men, and be of good heart theeself, fighting valiantly, and slaying according to thee conscience; and then, friend, if it be Heaven's will, I will return to thee, and help thee out of thee troubles."
With these words, Nathan turned from the soldier, setting out upon his dangerous duty with a courage and self-devotion of which Roland did not yet know all the merit. He threw himself upon the earth, and muttering to little Peter, "Now, Peter, as thee ever served thee master well and truly, serve him well and truly now," began to glide away amongst the ruins, making his way from log to log, and bush to bush, close behind the animal, who seemed to determine the period and direction of every movement. His course was down the river, the opposite of that by which the party had reached the ruin, in which quarter the woods were highest, and promised the most accessible, as well as the best shelter; though that could be reached only in the event of his successfully avoiding the different barbarians hidden among the bushes on its border. He soon vanished, with his dog, from the eyes of the soldier; who now, in pursuance of instructions previously given him by Nathan, caused his two followers to let fly a volley among the trees, which had the expected effect of drawing another in return from the foes, accompanied by their loudest whoops of menace and defiance. In this manner Nathan, as he drew nigh the wood, was enabled to form correct opinions as to the different positions of the besiegers, and to select that point in the line which seemed the weakest; while the attention of the foe was in a measure drawn off, so as to give him the better opportunity of advancing on them unobserved. With this object in view, a second and third volley were fired by the little garrison; after which they ceased making such feints of hostility, and left him, as he had directed, to his fate.
It was then that, with a beating heart, Roland awaited the event; and as he began to figure to his imagination the perils which Nathan must necessarily encounter in the undertaking, he listened for the shout of triumph that he feared would, each moment, proclaim the capture or death of his messenger. But he listened in vain,—at least, in vain for such sounds as his skill might interpret into evidences of Nathan's fate: he heard nothing but the occasional crack of a rifle aimed at the ruin, with the yell of the savage that fired it, the rush of the breeze, the rumbling of the thunder, and the deep-toned echoes from the river below. There was nothing whatever occurred, at least for a quarter of an hour, by which he might judge what was the issue of the enterprise; and he was beginning to indulge the hope that Nathan had passed safely through the besiegers, when a sudden yell of a peculiarly wild and thrilling character was uttered in the wood in the quarter in which Nathan had fled; and this, exciting, as it seemed to do, a prodigious sensation among his foes, filled him with anxiety and dread. To his ears the shout expressed fury and exultation such as might well be felt at the sudden discovery and capture of the luckless messenger; and his fear that such had been the end of Nathan's undertaking was greatly increased by what followed. The shots and whoops suddenly ceased, and, for ten minutes or more, all was silent, save the roar of the river, and the whispering of the fitful breeze. "They have taken him alive, poor wretch!" muttered the soldier, "and now they are forcing from him a confession of our weakness!"
It seemed as if there might be some foundation for the suspicion; for presently a great shout burst from the enemy, and the next moment a rush was made against the ruin as if by the whole force of the enemy. "Fire!" shouted Roland to his companions: "if we must die, let it be like men;" and no sooner did he behold the dark figures of the assailants leaping among the ruins, than he discharged his rifle and a pair of pistols which he had reserved in his own hands, the other pair having been divided between Dodge and the negro, who used them with equal resolution, and with an effect that Roland had not anticipated; the assailants, apparently daunted by the weight of the volley, seven pieces having been discharged in rapid succession, instantly beat a retreat, resuming their former positions. From these, however, they now maintained an almost incessant fire; and by and by several of them, stealing cautiously up, effected a lodgment in a distant part of the ruins, whence, without betraying any especial desire to come to closer quarters, they began to carry on the war in a manner that greatly increased Roland's alarm, their bullets flying about and into the hovel so thickly that he became afraid lest some of them should reach its hapless inhabitants. He was already debating within himself the propriety of transferring Edith and her companion from this ruinous and now dangerous abode to the ravine, where they might be sheltered from all danger, at least for a time, when a bolt of lightning, as he at first thought it, shot from the nearest group of foes, flashed over his head, and striking what remained of the roof, stood trembling in it, an arrow of blazing fire. The appearance of this missile, followed, as it immediately was, by several others discharged from the same tow, confirmed the soldier's resolution to remove the females, while it greatly increased his anxiety; for although there was little fear that the flames could be communicated from the arrows to the roof so deeply saturated by the late rains, yet each, while burning, served, like a flambeau, to illuminate the ruins below, and must be expected before long to reveal the helplessness of the party, and to light the besiegers to their prey.