University of Virginia Library

IV. THE CAPTIVES RANSOMED.

OLIVER.
I pray you, sir, who owns the Indian woman
That is chain'd in yonder hut?

CAPE'S-MAN.
What you have seen them,
The she-wolf and her whelps?

OLIVER.
She hath indeed
A strange wild aspect, and the boy appears
Of a fierce nature. I should think her owner
Would find her an unprofitable slave.

CAPE'S-MAN.
Why, sir, you reckon rightly; and, methinks,
Without a conjuror's skill you well may think so:
Those fetters, and the marks upon her skin,
Speak her deserts. On week-days with the whip
We keep her tightly to her work; but thus
Her Sabbath must be spent, or she would put
The wilderness between her and her owner.
An honest dealer never paid good money
For a worse piece: and for that boy of hers,
He is a true-bred savage, blood and bone,
To the marrow and heart's core.

RANDOLPH.
I warrant him!
No mother like your squaw to train a child
In the way she would have him go; she makes him subtler
Than the sly snake, untameable as bear
Or buffalo, fierce as a famish'd wolf,
And crueller than French judges, Spanish friars,
Or Dutchmen in the East. His earliest plaything
Is a green scalp, and then, for lollipop,
The toasted finger of an Englishman!
Young as he is, I dare be sworn he knows
Where is the liveliest part to stick a skewer
Into a prisoner's flesh, and where to scoop
The tenderest mouthful. If the Devil himself
Would learn devices to afflict the damn'd
With sharper torments, he might go to school
To a New England savage.

CAPE'S-MAN.
I perceive, sir,
You know them well. Perhaps you may have heard
Of this young deviling's father;—he was noted
For a most bloody savage in his day:
They called him Kawnacom.

RANDOLPH.
What! Kawnacom,
The Narhaganset Sagamore?

CAPE'S-MAN.
The same;
A sort of captain, or of prince, among them.

RANDOLPH.
A most notorious villain! But I left him
At peace with the English?

CAPE'S-MAN.
And you find him so,—
Under the only bail he would not break;
A bullet through the heart is surety for him.
You have not learnt, I guess, what dreadful work
There is in the back country?—Families
Burnt in their houses; stragglers tomahawk'd
And scalp'd, or dragg'd away that they may die
By piecemeal murder, to make mockery
For these incarnate devils at the stake.
Farms are forsaken; towns are insecure;
Men sleep with one eye open, and the gun
By their bed-side. And, what is worst, they know not
How far the league extends, nor whom to trust
Among these treacherous tribes. Old people say
That things were not so bad in the Pequod war.

RANDOLPH.
What then, have we been idle?

CAPE'S-MAN.
Hitherto
But little has been done. The evil found us
Lapp'd in security, and unprepared:
Nor know we where to strike, nor whom, so darkly
The mischief hath been laid.

RANDOLPH.
Strike where we will,
So we strike hard, we cannot err. The blow
That rids us of an Indian does good service.

OLIVER.
That were a better service which should win
The savage to your friendship.

CAPE'S-MAN.
You are young, sir,
And, I perceive, a stranger in the land;
Or you would know how bootless is the attempt
To tame and civilise these enemies,
Man-beasts, or man-fiends,—call them which you will,—
Their monstrous nature being half brute, half devil,
Nothing about them human but their form.
He, who expends his kindness on a savage
Thinking to win his friendship, might as wisely
Plant thorns and hope to gather grapes at vintage.

OLIVER.
Look but to Martha's vineyard, and behold
On your own shores the impossibility
Achieved—the standing miracle display'd
In public view, apparent to all eyes,
And famous through all countries wheresoe'er
The Gospel truth is known! Many are the hearts
In distant England which have overflow'd
With pious joy to read of Hiacoomes,
Whose prayerful house the pestilence past by;
And blind Wawompek,—he, within whose doors
The glad thanksgiving strain of choral praise
Fails not, at morn and eve, from year to year;
And the Sachem, who rejoiced because the time
Of light was come, and now his countrymen,
Erring and lost, no longer should go down
In ignorance and darkness to the grave;
And poor old Lazarus, that rich poor man,
The child of poverty, but rich in faith
And his assured inheritance in heaven.

RANDOLPH.
Young sir, it is with stories as with men;
That credit oftentimes they gain abroad,
Which, either for misluck or misdesert,
They fail to find at home.

OLIVER.
Are these things false, then?
Is there no truth in Mayhew's life of love?
Hath not the impatient Welshman's zeal, that blazed
Even like a burning and consuming fire,
Refined itself into a steady light
Among the Indians?—and the name of Williams,
The signal once for strife where'er he went,
Become a passport and a word of peace
Through savage nations? Or is this a tale
Set forth to mock our weak credulity;
And all that holy Eliot hath perform'd
Only a fable cunningly devised?

CAPE'S-MAN.
He comes out qualified to lecture us
Upon our own affairs!

RANDOLPH.
The things you talk of
Serve but with us to comfort our old women,
Furnish an elder with some choice discourse
For a dull synod, and sometimes help out
Sir Spintext at a pinch, when he would think it
A sin did he dismiss his hungry flock
Before the second glass be fairly spent.
Much have you read, and have believed as largely;
And yet one week's abode in the colony
Will teach you more than all your English reading.

OLIVER.
Sir, I am easy of belief, for that way
My temper leads me,—liable to err;
And yet, I hope, not obstinate in error;
But ready still to thank the riper judgment
That may correct my inexperienced years.
You paint the Indians to the life, I doubt not:
Children of sin, and therefore heirs of wrath,
The likeness of their Heavenly Sire in them
Seems utterly defaced; and in its stead,
Almost, it might be thought, the Evil Power
Had set his stamp and image. This should move us
The more to deep compassion; men ourselves,
In whom the accident of birth alone
Makes all this awful difference! And remembering,
That from our common parent we derive
Our nature's common malady innate,
For which our common Saviour offers us
The only cure,—oh! ought we not to feel
How good and merciful a deed it were
To bring these poor lost sheep within his fold!

RANDOLPH.
Sheep call you them, forsooth! When you can gather
Bears, wolves, and tigers in a fold, hope then
To tame such sheep as these.

OLIVER.
What is there, sir,
That may not by assiduous care be won
To do our will? Give me a lion's cub,
Torn from the teat, and I will so train up
The noble beast, that he shall fondle me,
And lay his placid head upon my knees,
And lick my hand, and couch my bed-side,
And guard me with a dog's fidelity.

RANDOLPH.
Behold a litter ready to your wish!
Our friend, if I mistake not, will afford
An easy purchase, dam and cubs. What say you,
My lion-tamer?

CAPE'S-MAN.
You shall have them cheap, sir!
A bargain that may tempt you; come, for half
That they would fetch in the Barbadoes market.
I meant to ship them thither, but would rather
Sell at a loss than keep that woman longer.