My scout of four and I passed in wearily between the rough, low redoubts at Fish House, after sunset, and gave an account to Peter Wayland, the captain commanding the post, that the northward war-trail was now clean as far as Silver Lake, and that I proposed to block it and watch it above and below.
Twilight was deepening when we came to John Howell's deserted log-house on the Vlaie, and heard the owls very mournful in the tamarack forests eastward.
A few rods farther on the hard ridge and one of my men challenged smartly. In thick darkness he led us over hard ground along the vast wastes of bushes and reeds, to where a new ditch had been dug down to the Vlaie Water.
Thence he guided us through our chevaux-de-frise; and I saw my own people lying in the shadowy gleam of a watch-fire; and an Oneida slowly moving around the smouldering coals, chanting the refrain of his first scalp-dance:
SCALP SONG
"Chiefs in your white plumes!
When your Tall Cloud glooms,
And we Oneidas wonder
To hear your thunder—
And the moon pales,
And the Seven Dancers wear veils,
Is it your rain that wails?
Is it the noise of hail?
Is it the rush of frightened deer
That we Oneidas hear?"
And the others chanted in sombre answer:
"It is the weeping of the Mohawk Nation,
Mourning amid their desolation,
For the scalpless head
Of each young warrior dead.
A Voice from the Dark
"It is the cry of their women, who bewail
Their warriors dead,
Not the east wind we hear!
It is the noise of their women, who rail
At those who fled,
Not whistling hail we hear!
It is the rush of feet that are afraid,
Not the swift flight of deer!"