Under this heavy load, the unhappy and degraded soldier was compelled to stagger along with his masters; but fortunately for no long-period. The night was fast approaching, and having-soon arrived at a little glade in the forest, where a spring of sweet water bubbled from the grass, they signified their intention to make it their camping ground for the night. A fire was struck, the horse flesh stuck upon a fork and roasted, and a share of it tendered to the prisoner; who, sick at heart and feverish in body, refused it with as much disgust as he had shown at the whisky, expressing his desire only to drink of the spring, which he was allowed to do to his liking.
The savages then collected grass and leaves, with which they spread a couch under a tree beside their fire; and here, having compelled the soldier to lie down, they proceeded to secure him for the night with a cruel care, that showed what value the loss of the horse and fire-water, the only other trophies of victory, led them to attach to him. A stake was cut and laid across his breast, and to the ends of this his outstretched arms were bound at both wrist and elbow. A pole was then laid upon his body, to the extremities of which his feet and neck were also bound; so that he was secured as upon, or rather under, a cross, without the power of moving hand or foot. As if even this were not enough to satisfy his barbarous companions, they attached an additional cord to his neck; and this, when they lay down beside him to sleep, one of the young warriors wrapped several times round his own arm, so that the slightest movement of the prisoner, were such a thing possible, must instantly rouse the jealous savage from his slumbers.
These preparations being completed, the young men lay down, one on each side of the prisoner, and were soon fast asleep.
The old Piankeshaw, meanwhile, sat by the fire, now musing in drunken revery,—"in cogibundity of cogitation,"—now grumbling a lament for his perished son, which, by a natural licence of affliction, he managed to intermingle with regrets for his lost liquor, and occasionally heaping maledictions upon the heads of his wasteful companions, or soliciting the prisoner's attention to an account, that he gave him at least six times over, of the peculiar ceremonies which would be observed in burning him, when once safely bestowed in the Piankeshaw nation. In this manner, the old savage, often nodding, but always rousing again, succeeded in amusing himself nearly half the night long; and it was not until near midnight that he thought fit, after stirring up the fire, and adding a fresh log to it, to stretch himself beside one of the juniors, and grumble himself to sleep. A few explosive and convulsive snorts, such as might have done honour to the nostrils of a war-horse, marked the gradations by which he sank to repose; then came the deep, long-drawn breath of mental annihilation, such as distinguished the slumber of his companions.
To the prisoner, alone, sleep was wholly denied; for which the renewed agonies of his bonds, tied with the supreme contempt for suffering which usually marks the conduct of savages to their captives, would have been sufficient cause, had there even been no superior pangs of spirit to banish the comforter from his eyelids. Of his feelings during the journey from the river,—which, in consequence of numberless delays caused by the old Piankeshaw's drunkenness, could scarce have been left more than eight or ten miles behind,—we have said but little, since imagination can only picture them properly to the reader. Grief, anguish, despair, and the sense of degradation natural to a man of proud spirit, a slave in the hands of coarse barbarians, kept his spirit for a long time wholly subdued and torpid; and it was not until he perceived the old Piankeshaw's repeated potations, and their effects, that he began to wake from his lethargy, and question himself whether he might not yet escape, and, flying to the nearest settlements for assistance, strike a blow for the recovery of his kinswoman. Weak from exhaustion and wounds, entirely unarmed, and closely watched, as he perceived he was, by the young warriors, notwithstanding their affected friendship, it was plain that nothing could be hoped for, except from caution on his part, and the most besotted folly on that of his captors. This folly was already made perceptible in at least one of the party; and as he watched the oft-repeated visitations of the senior to the little keg, he began to anticipate the period when the young men should also betake themselves to the stupefying draught, and give him the opportunity he longed for with frantic, though concealed, impatience. This hope fell when the cask was dashed to pieces; but hope, once excited, did not easily forsake him. He had heard, and read, of escapes, made by captives like himself, from Indians, when encamped by night in the woods,—nay, of escapes made when the number of captors and the feebleness of the captive (for even women and boys had thus obtained their deliverance), rendered the condition of the latter still more wretched than his own. Why might not he, a man and soldier, guarded by only three foemen, succeed, as others had succeeded, in freeing himself?
This question, asked over and over again, and each time answered with greater hope and animation than before, employed his mind until his wary captors had tied him to the stakes, as has been mentioned, leaving him as incapable of motion as if every limb had been solidified into stone. Had the barbarians been able to look into his soul at the moment when he first strove to test the strength of the ligatures, and found them resisting his efforts like bands of brass, they would have beheld deeper and wilder tortures than any they could hope to inflict, ever, at the stake. The effort was repeated once, twice, thrice—a thousand times,—but always in vain: the cords were too securely tied, the stakes too carefully placed, to yield to his puny struggles. He was a prisoner in reality,—without resource, without help, without hope.
And thus he passed the whole of the bitter night, watching the slow progress of moments counted only by the throbbings of his fevered temples, the deep breathings of the Indians, and the motion of the stars creeping over the vista opened to the skies from the little glade, a prey to despair, made so much more poignant by disappointment and self-reproach. Why had he not taken advantage of his temporary release from the cords, to attempt escape by open flight, when the drunkenness of the old Piankeshaw would have increased the chances of success? He had lost his best ally in the cask of liquor; but he resolved,—if the delirious plans of a mind tossed by the most frenzied passions could be called resolutions,—a second day should not pass by without an effort better becoming a soldier, better becoming the only friend and natural protector of the hapless Edith.
In the meanwhile, the night passed slowly away, the moon, diminished to a ghastly crescent, rose over the woods, looking down with a sickly smile upon the prisoner,—an emblem of his decayed fortunes and waning hopes; and a pale streak, the first dull glimmer of dawn, was seen stealing up the skies. But neither moon nor streak of dawn yet threw light upon the little glade. The watch-fire had burned nearly away, and its flames no longer illuminated the scene. The crackling of the embers, with an occasional echo from the wood hard by, as of the rustling of a rabbit, or other small animal, drawn by the unusual appearance of fire near his favourite fountain, to satisfy a timorous curiosity, was the only sound to be heard; for the Indians were in the dead sleep of morning, and their breathing was no longer audible.
The silence and darkness together were doubly painful to Roland, who had marked the streak of dawn, and longed with fierce impatience for the moment when he should be again freed from his bonds, and left to attempt some of those desperate expedients which he had been planning all the night long. In such a frame of mind, even the accidental falling of a half-consumed brand upon the embers, and its sudden kindling into flame, were circumstances of an agreeable nature; and the ruddy glare thrown over the boughs above his head was welcomed as the return of a friend, bringing with it hope, and even a share of his long lost tranquillity.
But tranquillity was not fated to dwell long in his bosom. At that very moment, and while the blaze of the brand was brightest, his ears were stunned by an explosion bursting like a thunderbolt at his very head, but whether coming from earth or air, from the hands of Heaven or the firelock of a human being, he knew not; and immediately after there sprang a huge dark shadow over his body, and there was heard the crash as of an axe falling upon the flesh of the young Indian who slept on his right side. A dismal shriek, the utterance of agony and terror, rose from the barbarian's lips; and then came the sound of his footsteps, as he darted, with a cry still wilder, into the forest, pursued by the sound of other steps; and then all again was silent,—all save groans, and the rustling in the grass of limbs convulsed in the death-throe at the soldier's side.