University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

Harrison was one of those true philosophers who
know always how to keep themselves for better times.
As he knew that resistance, at that moment, must certainly
be without any good result, he quietly enough
suffered himself to be borne to prison. He neither
halted nor hesitated, but went forward, offering no
obstacle, with as much wholesome good-will and compliance
as if the proceeding was perfectly agreeable
to him. He endured, with no little show of patience,
all the blows and buffetings so freely bestowed upon

him by his feminine enemies; and if he did not altogether
smile under the infliction, he at least took good
care to avoid any ebullition of anger, which, as it was
there impotent, must necessarily have been a weakness,
and would most certainly have been entirely
thrown away. Among the Indians, this was by far the
better policy. They can admire the courage, though
they hate the possessor. Looking round amid the
crowd, Harrison thought he could perceive many evidences
of this sentiment. Sympathy and pity he also
made out, in the looks of a few. One thing he did
certainly observe—a generous degree of forbearance,
as well of taunt as of buffet, on the part of all the better
looking among the spectators. Nor did he deceive
himself. The insolent portion of the rabble formed a
class especially for such purposes as the present; and
to them, its duties were left exclusively. The forbearance
of the residue looked to him like kindness,
and with the elasticity of his nature, hope came with
the idea.

Nor was he mistaken. Many eyes in that assembly
looked upon him with regard and commiseration.
The firm but light tread of his step—the upraised,
unabashed, the almost laughing eye—the free play into
liveliness of the muscles of his mouth—sometimes
curled into contempt, and again closely compressed, as
in defiance—together with his fine, manly form and
even carriage—were all calculated to call for the respect,
if for no warmer feeling, of the spectators.
They all knew the bravery of the Coosah-moray-te, or
the Goosaw-killer—many of them had felt his kindness
and liberality, and but for the passionate nationality
of the Indian character, the sympathy of a few
might, at that moment, have worked actively in his
favour, and with the view to his release.

There was one in particular, among the crowd,
who regarded him with a melancholy satisfaction. It
was Matiwan. As the whole nation had gathered to
the sacred town, in which, during the absence of the
warriors, they found shelter, she was now a resident

of Pocota-ligo. One among, but not of the rabble, she
surveyed the prisoner with an emotion which only
the heart of the bereaved mother may define. “How
like,” she muttered to herself in her own language—
“how like to the boy Occonestoga.” And as she
thought thus, she wondered if Harrison had a mother
over the great waters. Sympathy has wings as well
as tears, and her eyes took a long journey in imagination
to that foreign land. She saw the mother of the
captive with a grief at heart like her own; and her
own sorrows grew deeper at the survey. Then came
a strange wish to serve that pale mother—to save her
from an anguish such as hers: then she looked upon the
captive, and her memory grew active; she knew him
—she had seen him before in the great town of the
pale-faces—he appeared a chief among them, and so
had been called by her father, the old warrior Etiwee,
who, always an excellent friend to the English, had
taken her, with the boy Occonestoga—then a mere
boy—on a visit to Charlestown. She had there seen
Harrison, but under another name. He had been kind
to her father—had made him many presents, and the
beautiful little cross of red coral, which, without knowing
any thing of its symbolical associations, she had
continued to wear in her bosom, had been the gift of
him who was now the prisoner to her people. She
knew him through his disguise—her father would have
known—would have saved him—had he been living.
She had heard his doom denounced to take place on
the return of the war-party:—she gazed upon the
manly form, the noble features, the free, fearless
carriage—she thought of Occonestoga—of the pale
mother of the Englishman—of her own bereavement
—and of a thousand other things belonging naturally to
the same topics. The more she thought, the more her
heart grew softened within her—the more aroused her
brain—the more restless and unrestrainable her spirit.

She turned away from the crowd as the prisoner
was hurried into the dungeon. She turned away in anguish
of heart, and a strange commotion of thought.

She sought the shelter of the neighbouring wood,
and rambled unconsciously, as it were, among the old
forests. But she had no peace—she was pursued by
the thought which assailed her from the first. The
image of Occonestoga haunted her footsteps, and she
turned only to see his bloody form and gashed head for
ever at her elbow. He looked appealingly to her, and
she then thought of the English mother over the waters.
He pointed in the direction of Pocota-ligo, and she
then saw the prisoner, Harrison. She saw him in the
dungeon, she saw him on the tumulus—the flames
were gathering around him—a hundred arrows stuck
in his person, and she beheld the descending hatchet,
bringing him the coup de grace. These images were
full of terror, and their contemplation still more phrensied
her intellect. She grew strong and fearless with
the desperation which they brought, and rushing through
the forest, she once more made her way into the
heart of Pocota-ligo.

The scene was changed. The torches were either
burnt out or decaying, and scattered over the ground.
The noise was over—the crowd dispersed and gone.
Silence and sleep had resumed their ancient empire.
She trod, alone, along the great thoroughfare of the
town. A single dog ran at her heels, baying at intervals;
but him she hushed with a word of unconscious
soothing—ignorant when she uttered it. There were
burning feelings in her bosom, at variance with reason
—at variance with the limited duty which she owed
to society—at variance with her own safety. But
what of these? There is a holy instinct that helps
us, sometimes, in the face of our common standards.
Humanity is earlier in its origin, and holier in its claims
than society. She felt the one, and forgot to obey the
other.

She went forward, and the prison-house of the Englishman,
under the shelter of a father-oak—the growth
of a silent century—rose dimly before her. Securely
fastened with stout thongs on the outside, the door was
still farther guarded by a couple of warriors lying upon

the grass before it. One of them seemed to sleep
soundly, but the other was wakeful. He lay at length,
however, his head upraised, and resting upon one of
his palms—his elbow lifting it from the ground. The
other hand grasped the hatchet, which he employed
occasionally in chopping the earth just before him.
He was musing rather than meditative, and the action
of his hand and hatchet, capricious and fitful, indicated
a want of concentration in his thought. This was in
her favour. Still there was no possibility of present
approach unperceived; and to succeed in a determination
only half-formed in her bosom, and in fact, undesigned
in her head, the gentle but fearless woman
had resource to some of those highly ingenious arts,
so well known to the savage, and which he borrows in
most part from the nature around him. Receding,
therefore, to a little distance, she carefully sheltered
herself in a small clustering clump of bush and brush,
at a convenient distance for her purpose, and proceeded
more definitely to the adjustment of her design.

Meanwhile, the yet wakeful warrior looked round
upon his comrade, who lay in a deep slumber between
himself and the dungeon entrance. Fatigue and previous
watchfulness had done their work with the veteran.
The watcher himself began to feel these influences
stealing upon him, though not in the same degree,
perhaps, and with less rapidity. But, as he looked
around, and witnessed the general silence, his ear
detecting with difficulty the drowsy motion of the
zephyr among the thick branches over head, as if that
slept also—his own drowsiness crept more and more
upon his senses. Nature is thronged with sympathies,
and the undiseased sense finds its kindred at all hours
and in every situation.

Suddenly, as he mused, a faint chirp, that of a single
cricket, swelled upon his ear from the neighbouring
grove. He answered it, for great were his imitative
faculties. He answered it, and from an occasional
note, it broke out into a regular succession of chirpings,
sweetly timed, and breaking the general silence

of the night with an effect utterly indescribable, except
to watchers blessed with a quick imagination.
To these, still musing and won by the interruption, he
sent back a similar response; and his attention was
suspended, as if for some return. But the chirping died
away in a click scarcely perceptible. It was succeeded,
after a brief interval, by the faint note of a mock-bird
—a sudden note, as if the minstrel, starting from sleep,
had sent it forth unconsciously, or, in a dream, had
thus given utterance to some sleepless emotion. It
was soft and gentle as the breathings of a flower.
Again came the chirping of the cricket—a broken
strain—capricious in time, and now seeming near at
hand, now remote and flying. Then rose the whizzing
hum, as of a tribe of bees suddenly issuing from
the hollow of some neighbouring tree; and then, the
clear, distinct tap of the woodpecker—once, twice,
and thrice. Silence, then,—and the burden of the
cricket was resumed, at the moment when a lazy stir
of the breeze in the branches above him seemed to
solicit the torpor from which it occasionally started.
Gradually, the successive sounds, so natural to the
situation, and so grateful and congenial to the ear of
the hunter, hummed his senses into slumber. For a
moment, his eyes were half re-opened, and he looked
round vacantly upon the woods, and upon the dying
flame of the scattered torches—and then upon his fast
sleeping comrade. The prospect gave additional stimulant
to the dreamy nature of the influences growing
about and gathering upon him. Finally, the trees danced
away from before his vision—the clouds came down
close to his face; and, gently accommodating his arm
to the support of his dizzy and sinking head, he gradually
and unconsciously sunk beside his companion,
and, in a few moments, enjoyed a slumber as oblivious.