The Miko stood like one petrified. Gradually, however, the generous rivalry and self-devotion of the two beautiful beings before him produced its effect on his savage nature. The expression of his features softened.
"Go," said he with bitter scorn; "does Canondah think the Miko a fool, and that his eyes do not see who brought the white spy into the wigwam? It was the foot of Canondah that opened the path, but the treacherous tongue of the White Rose prevailed with her to do it."
"Will my father," said Canondah, folding her hands humbly on her breast—"will my father loosen the tongue of his daughter?"
A long pause ensued, during which anger and paternal feeling held a visible contest in the bosom of the deeply-moved chief. Finally, the latter prevailed.
"Canondah may speak."
"My father, the white youth has sworn to me that he is no spy, and not one of the Yengheese. He is from the island of the foolish chief, the land of which you have told me that it is cold and icy. His people are on the war-path against our foes, the Yengheese. It is but a few suns since he and his friends came across the great salt lake; they will go up the great river and burn the wigwams of our enemies. The chief of the Salt Lake, he says, is a thief, who overpowered him and his brothers whilst they caught oysters and turtle, and took them to his wigwam. He escaped, and for eight suns he suffered hunger. His people will hang the chief of the Salt Lake by the neck to a tree. See, father, thy daughter delivered him from the jaws of the great water-snake, and he was already nearly dead. He has returned to his brothers, to lift the hatchet against your foes. He is no spy; his hands are soft and he was weak."
"Has Canondah more lies to tell her father?" said the old man, in a milder tone. "Her tongue is very nimble."
The abashed maiden cast her eyes to the ground. Her words, however, had visibly made a deep impression upon the Miko, and he remained for a while sunk in reflection. Tokeah was a savage by birth, habit, and education; but he was neither bloodthirsty nor cruel. Under other circumstances, and in a civilized land, he might have been a hero, a benefactor of thousands or millions of his fellow-creatures; but in his wild condition, despised, goaded and insulted as he felt himself, his better feelings blunted, and his whole nature soured by real and fancied injuries, what wonder was it that he raised his knife even against his own daughter, entering the hut as he did with the full persuasion that the young man she had sheltered was a spy and emissary of his bitterest foes?
The account given of himself by the midshipman, and the imputations cast by him on the chief of the Salt Lake, as Lafitte is called by the Indians, receive strong confirmation from two handbills, which Tokeah, who has learned to read English in the course of his long intercourse with the white men, has torn, during his recent expedition, from a wall in one of the new Louisianian settlements. One of these papers is a proclamation by the authorities of Louisiana, enumerating the crimes and cruelties of the pirate of Barataria, and offering a reward of five hundred dollars for his head. The other is an address to the citizens of the state, summoning them to the defence of their country against the British. Notwithstanding this corroborative evidence of the correctness of his daughter's statement, Tokeah, unwilling to remain with the smallest doubt upon his mind, or to risk the discovery of the nook in which, for seven years, he has been unseen by an American eye, sets off with a party of warriors in pursuit of the young Englishman. The ensuing chapter, the last of the first volume, we will translate with small abridgement, and therewith, for the present, conclude our extracts.
The mood of mind in which we left our young Englishman may aptly be compared with that of the assassin neophytes, whom, according to the tale, the Old Man of the Mountain was wont to introduce into an enchanted garden, peopled with ravishing houris, whence, after a short enjoyment of the most voluptuous delights, he again thrust them forth into the dark and dismal night of the desert, with nothing remaining of their past pleasures save a wild confusion of the senses, a chaos of images and visions, and a burning desire to recover the lost paradise. True it is, as our readers know, that the young sailor had no such enjoyments to regret, and equally true that his own wish had driven him from his Eden; but he nevertheless experienced the tumult and confusion of thought, and the longing to return, above described. It seemed as if the nobler and inferior qualities of his nature were striving within him, the two principles alternately, as either got the upper hand, impelling him onwards and calling him back. A full hour elapsed, during which he several times walked away from the shore and then again returned to it, until at last he was surprised by the first beams of the sun, disclosing to him a scene whose sight assisted him to prompt decision.