University of Virginia Library

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

It was at a critical period when the travellers effected
their escape from the scene of their late
sufferings. The morning was already drawing
nigh, and might, but for the heavy clouds that
prolonged the night of terror, have been seen
shooting its first streaks through the eastern skies.
Another half hour, if for that half hour they
could have maintained their position in the ravine,
would have seen them exposed in all their
helplessness to the gaze, and to the fire of the determined
foe. It became them to improve the
few remaining moments of darkness, and to make
such exertions as might put them, before dawn,
beyond the reach of discovery or pursuit.

Exertions were, accordingly, made; and, although
man and horse were alike exhausted, and
the thick brakes and oozy swamps through which
Roaring Ralph led the way, opposed a thousand
obstructions to rapid motion, they had left the
fatal ruin at least two miles behind them, or so
honest Stackpole averred, when the day at last
broke over the forest. To add to the satisfaction
of the fugitives, it broke in unexpected splendour.
The clouds parted, and, as the floating masses
rolled lazily away before a pleasant morning
breeze, they were seen lighted up and tinted with
a thousand glorious dyes of sunshine.

The appearance of the great luminary was hailed
with joy, as the omen of a happier fate than
had been heralded by the clouds and storms of
evening. Smiles began to beam from the haggard
and care-worn visages of the travellers; the very

horses seemed to feel the inspiring influence of
the change; and as for Roaring Ralph, the sight
of his beautiful benefactress recovering her good
looks, and the exulting consciousness that it was
his hand which had snatched her from misery
and death, produced such a fever of delight in
his brain as was only to be allayed by the most
extravagant expressions and actions. He assured
her a dozen times over, `he was her dog and her
slave, and vowed he would hunt her so many
Injun scalps, and steal her such a 'tarnal chance
of Shawnee hosses, thar should'nt be a gal in all
Kentucky should come up to her for stock and
glory:' and, finally, not content with making a
thousand other promises of an equally extravagant
character, and swearing, that, `if she axed it, he
would go down on his knees, and say his prayers
to her,' he offered, as soon as he had carried her
safely across the river, to `take the back-track,
and lick, single-handed, all the Injun abbregynes
that might be following.' Indeed, to such a pitch
did his enthusiasm run, that, not knowing how
otherwise to give vent to his overcharged feelings,
he suddenly turned upon his heel, and shaking his
fist in the direction whence he had come, as if
against the enemy who had caused his benefactress
so much distress, he pronounced a formal
and emphatic curse upon their whole race `from
the head-chief to the commoner, from the whiskey-soaking
warrior down to the pan-licking squall-a-baby,'
all of whom he anathematized with as much
originality as fervour of expression; after which,
he proceeded with more sedateness, to resume his
post at the head of the travellers, and conduct
them onwards on their way.

Another hour was now consumed in diving
amid cane-brakes and swamps, to which Roaring
Ralph evinced a decidedly greater partiality than

to the open forest, in which the travellers had
found themselves at the dawn; and in this he
seemed to show somewhat more of judgment and
discretion than would have been argued from his
hair-brained conversation; for the danger of
stumbling upon scouting Indians, of which the
country now seemed so full, was manifestly greater
in the open woods than in the dark and almost
unfrequented cane-brakes: and the worthy horse-thief,
with all his apparent love of fight, was not
at all anxious that the angel of his worship should
be alarmed or endangered, while entrusted to his
zealous safe-keeping.

But it happened in this case, as it has happened
with better and wiser men, that Stackpole's cunning
over-reached itself, as was fully shown in the
event; and it would have been happier for himself
and all, if his discretion, instead of plunging
him among difficult and almost impassable bogs,
where a precious hour was wasted in effecting a
mere temporary security and concealment from
observation, had taught him the necessity of pushing
onwards with all possible speed, so as to leave
pursuers, if pursuit should be attempted, far behind.
At the expiration of that hour, so injudiciously
wasted, the fugitives issued from the brake,
and stepping into a narrow path worn by the feet
of bisons among stunted shrubs and parched
grasses, along the face of a lime-stone hill, sparingly
scattered over with a similar barren growth,
began to wind their way downward into a hollow
vale, in which they could hear the murmurs, and
perceive the glimmering waters, of the river, over
which they seemed never destined to pass.

“Thar', 'tarnal death to me!” roared Ralph,
pointing downwards with triumph, “arn't that old
Salt now, looking as sweet and liquorish as a
whole trough-full of sugar-tree? We'll jist take

a dip at him, anngelliferous madam, jist to wash
the mud off our shoes; and then, 'tarnal death to
me, fawwell to old Salt and the abbregynes together,—cock-a-doodle-doo!”

With this comfortable assurance, and such encouragement
as he could convey in the lustiest
gallicantation ever fetched from lungs of man or
fowl, the worthy Stackpole, who had slackened
his steps, but without stopping, while he spoke,
turned his face again to the descent; when,—as
if that war-cry had conjured up enemies from the
very air,—a rifle bullet, shot from a bush not six
yards off, suddenly whizzed through his hair, scattering
a handful of it to the winds; and while a
dozen more were, at the same instant, poured
upon other members of the unfortunate party,
fourteen or fifteen savages rushed out from their
concealment among the grass and bushes, three
of whom seized upon the rein of the unhappy
Edith, while twice as many sprang upon Captain
Forrester, and, before he could raise an arm in
defence, bore him to the earth, a victim or a prisoner.

So much the astounded horse-thief saw with his
own eyes; but before he could make good any
of the numberless promises he had volunteered
during the morning journey, of killing and eating
the whole family of North American Indians, or
exemplify the unutterable gratitude and devotion
he had as often professed to the fair Virginian,
four brawny barbarians, one of them rising
at his side and from the very bush whence the
bullet had been discharged at his head, rushed
against him, flourishing their guns and knives, and
yelling with transport, “Got you now, Cappin
Stackpole, steal-hoss! No go steal no hoss no
more! roast on great big fire!”

“'Tarnal death to me!” roared Stackpole, forgetting

every thing else in the instinct of self-preservation;
and firing his piece at the nearest enemy,
he suddenly leaped from the path into the
bushes on its lower side, where was a precipitous
descent, down which he went rolling and crashing
with a velocity almost equal to that of the
bullets that were sent after him. Three of the
four assailants immediately darted after in pursuit,
and their shouts growing fainter and fainter
as they descended, were mingled with the loud
yell of victory, now uttered by a dozen savage
voices from the hill-side.

It was a victory, indeed, in every sense, complete,
almost bloodless, as it seemed, to the assailants,
and effected at a moment when the hopes of
the travellers were at the highest: and so sudden
was the attack, so instantaneous the change from
freedom to captivity, so like the juggling transition
of a dream the whole catastrophe, that Forrester,
although overthrown and bleeding from
two several wounds received at the first fire, and
wholly in the power of his enemies, who flourished
their knives and axes in his face, yelling with
exultation; could scarce appreciate his situation,
or understand what dreadful misadventure had
happened, until his eye, wandering among the
dusky arms that grappled him, fell first upon the
body of the negro Emperor, hard by, gored by
numberless wounds, and trampled by the feet of
his slayers, and then upon the apparition, a thousand
times more dismal to his eyes, of his kinswoman
snatched from her horse and struggling in
the arms of her savage captors. The phrensy
with which he was seized at this lamentable sight
endowed him with a giant's strength; but it was
exerted in vain to free himself from his enemies,
all of whom seemed to experience a barbarous delight
at his struggles, some encouraging him with

loud laughter and in broken English, to continue
them, while others taunted and scolded at him
more like shrewish squaws than valiant warriors,
assuring him that they were great Shawnee fighting-men,
and he a little Long-knife dog, entirely
beneath their notice: which expressions, though
at variance with all his preconceived notions of
the stern gravity of the Indian character, and
rather indicative of a roughly jocose than a darkly
ferocious spirit, did not prevent their taking the
surest means to quiet his exertions and secure
their prize, by tying his hands behind him with a
thong of buffalo hide, drawn so tight as to inflict
the most excruciating pain. But pain of body
was then, and for many moments after, lost in
agony of mind, which could be conceived only by
him who, like the young soldier, has been doomed,
once in his life, to see a tender female, the
nearest and dearest object of his affections, in the
hands of enemies, the most heartless, merciless,
and brutal of all the races of men. He saw her
pale visage convulsed with terror and despair,—
he beheld her arms stretched towards him, as if
beseeching the help he no longer had the power
to render,—and expected every instant the fall of
the hatchet, or the flash of the knife, that was to
pour her blood upon the earth before him. He
would have called upon the wretches around for
pity, but his tongue clove to his mouth, his brain
spun round; and such became the intensity of his
feelings, that he was suddenly bereft of sense,
and fell like a dead man to the earth, where he
lay for a time, ignorant of all events passing
around, ignorant also of the duration of his insensibility.