The captain on visiting the cabin, found that Mrs. Spalding had placed her daughter-in-law and the other inmates of the cabin, for safety, in the two state-rooms, filling the berths with the cots and bedding from the outer cabin. She had then taken her station beside the scuttle, which led from the outer cabin to the magazine, with two buckets of water. Having noticed that the two cabin-boys were heedless, she had determined herself to keep watch over the magazine. She did so till the danger was past. The captain took in his light sails, hoisted his boarding nettings, opened his ports, and stood on upon his course. The privateer waited till the ship was within a mile, then fired a gun to windward, and stood on her way. This ruse preserved the ship.
America, like England, has had her Grace Darlings, whose lives have been devoted to the rescue of drowning sailors. Such a life was that of Kate Moore, who some years since resided on a secluded island in the Sound. Disasters frequently occur to vessels which are driven round Montauk Point, and sometimes in the Sound when they are homeward bound; and at such times she was always on the alert. She had so thoroughly cultivated the sense of hearing, that she could distinguish amid the howling storm the shrieks of the drowning mariners, and thus direct a boat, which she had learned to manage most dexterously, in the darkest night, to the spot where a fellow mortal was perishing. Though well educated and refined, she possessed none of the affected delicacy which characterizes too many town-bred misses, but, adapting herself to the peculiar exigencies of her father's humble yet honorable calling, she was ever ready to lend a helping hand, and shrank from no danger if duty pointed that way. In the gloom and terror of the stormy night, amid perils at all hours of the day and all seasons of the year, she launched her barque on the threatening waves, and assisted her aged and feeble father in saving the lives of twenty-one persons during the last fifteen years. Such conduct, like that of Grace Darling, to whom Kate Moore has been justly compared, needs no comment; it stamps its moral at once and indelibly upon the heart of every reader.
That great land ocean which stretches southwestward from Fort Leavenworth on the Missouri, to the fountains of the great rivers of Texas, has its perils to be guarded against as well as the stormy Atlantic. The voyagers over that expanse, as well as the mariners on the ocean, have not seldom owed their safety to the watchfulness of the prairie woman, who possesses, in common with her more cultivated and conventional sisters, a keen insight into character. This enables her to take early note of danger arising from the agency of bad men, and avoid it.
In 1858, a gentleman, accompanied by a Creek Indian as a guide, while escorting his sister to her husband, who was stationed at Fort Wayne, in the Indian Territory, near the southwest corner of Missouri, lost the trail, and the party found themselves, at nightfall, in an immense plain, which showed no signs of any habitation. Riding southward in the darkness, they saw, at last, a light twinkling in the distance, and, directing their course toward it, they discovered that it proceeded from the window of a lonely cabin. Knocking at the door, a man of singularly repulsive appearance responded to the summons—invited them in. Three rough-looking characters were sitting around the fire. The hospitalities of the cabin were bargained for, the horses and Indian being quartered in a shed, while the gentleman and his sister were provided with shakedowns in the two partitions of the loft. The only inmates of the house besides the four whom we have mentioned was a girl some fifteen years of age, the daughter of one of the men. The lady, who was very much fatigued, was waited upon by this girl, who moved about as if she was in a dream. She was very pale, and had a look as if she was repressing some great fear, or was burdened by some terrible secret.
When she accompanied the lady to her sleeping apartment, she whispered to her hurriedly that she wished to speak to her brother, but begged her to call him without making any noise, as their lives depended upon their preserving silence. The lady, though astonished and terrified at such a revelation at that hour and place, checked the exclamation which rose to her lips, and, lifting the partition of cotton cloth which hung between the apartments, in a low tone asked her brother to come and hear what the girl had to say.
Her information was of a terrible character. They were, she said, in a den of murderers. She knew not how they could escape, unless by a miracle. It was the intention of the assassins, she believed, to murder and rob the whole party. Then, telling them to keep awake and be on their guard, she glided down to the room below. The brother and sister, listening sharply for a few minutes, heard the girl say in a loud tone, as if she intended the guests should hear her, that she was going out to the shed to look for her ear-ring, which she believed she had dropped there. They surmised she was going to put the Indian on his guard.
The gentleman had a pair of revolvers, and resolved to sell his life dearly, should he be attacked. Peering down into the room below, he saw, by the dim light, the ruffians making preparations for bloody work. Axes, knives, pistols, and guns had been brought out, and, in low whispers, the miscreants were evidently discussing the plan of attack. Sometime after midnight two of the men stole out of the door, with the obvious intention of killing the Indian, as the first act in the bloody drama. For a few minutes after their disappearance all was still, and then the silence was broken by two pistols shots in quick succession, followed by a triumphant war-whoop, which served to tell the story. The Indian, who was also armed with a revolver, must have shot his two assailants. The gentleman fired down the hatchway of the loft, killing one of the villains as he was running out of the door. The other, after shouting loudly for his partners in murder, took to his heels and fled away.
It appeared that the Indian guide, having been notified of his danger by the girl, rose from his bed and ensconced himself behind the shed. When the two men came out to attack him, he shot them both dead, and then waited, expecting that the others would have come out and furnished him with a new target.
The girl came out of her hiding place, whither she had run on hearing the shots, and looked sharply into the faces of the three dead ruffians, and finding that her father was not among them, expressed her joy that her unworthy parent had escaped the fate he richly deserved.
She told her story to the gentleman and lady while they were standing on guard and waiting for the morning to dawn. It appeared that she had been brought to the den a few days before by her father, and had become knowing to a murder which he and his companions had committed. Her mother, a pious woman, had instructed her daughter in the principles of Christianity, and had checked the evil propensities of her husband as long as she lived, but after her death, which had taken place shortly before the events we have been describing, all constraint had been removed from the evil propensities of the misguided man, and he joined the murderous gang who had just met their fate.