CHAPTER XXVIITHE WARNING AND FLIGHT
All that day Mary Derwent, her grandmother, and sister remained alone in the house. They heard the mustering battle, the sharp strife, and the scattering horrors of the rout that followed. Towards nightfall the plain grew foggy from the smoke which began to rise and spread from the smouldering fort. The yells and sharp rifle-shots came close to the shore and rang with horrible distinctness over the island.
The two girls were on their knees by the window, looking out between the fragments of prayer which fell from their pale lips, and quaking from soul to limb, as the savage yells came nearer and nearer the shore.
Mother Derwent was affected differently, and, bringing down an old rusty rifle that had belonged to her son, set to work and scoured out the lock, and wiped the muzzle with a piece of oiled deer-skin, which she afterwards wrapped around her bullets when she was ready to load; and such a charge it was—what with powder, wadding, buck-shot, and bullets, the old rifle was as good as a cannon, only it was a great deal more likely to beat the old woman’s brains out by vicious recoil than pour all that amount of lead upon the enemy. Still, Mother Derwent waxed valiant as the danger grew near, and, with every war-whoop, put in a new charge, pushing it down with a stick from her swifts, which was the best ramrod to be found, and waited for another whoop to load again.
“Come, gals, don’t be sitting there, scared to death; that ain’t no way to act in wartime. Don’t you seemy ammunition’s give out a’ready? Bring out the pewter tea-pot, and I’ll melt it down. Oh, marcy on us! here they are!”
The girls started up, looking wildly out of the window. A man came up the footpath, bounding towards the house, his clothes dripping wet, and water streaming from his hair.
“It is Edward Clark!” shrieked Jane Derwent, rushing towards the door.
“It is Edward,” whispered Mary, with a throb of exquisite thankfulness.
Mother Derwent only heard footsteps rushing towards her cabin. Planting herself on the hearth, she lifted the rifle to her shoulder, and stood with her face to the door, ready to fire whenever the enemy appeared.
But the door burst open, and while she was tugging at the obstinate trigger, Edward Clark rushed by her, calling out:
“Flee to the east shore, one and all. A horde of savages are making for the river!”
While he spoke, half a dozen more fugitives came rushing up, followed by others, till fifteen or twenty men, too exhausted for swimming, and without other hope, turned at bay, and proceeded to barricade themselves in the cabin.
“You will not let them murder us?” gasped Jane Derwent, clinging to her lover with all the desperation of fear.
The young man strained her to his bosom, pressed a kiss upon her cold lips, and strove to tear himself from her arms; but she clung the more wildly to him in her terror, and he could not free himself.
“Jane,” said a low, calm voice from the inner room, “come and let us stay together. The great God of heaven and earth is above us—He is powerful to save!”
Jane unwound her arms from her lover’s neck, andtottered away to the foot of the bed where her sister was kneeling. There she buried her face in her hands and remained motionless; and none would have believed her alive, save that a shudder ran through her frame whenever a rifle-shot was heard from the river. A few moments of intense stillness—then a loud, fierce howl, appallingly near, and several rifles were discharged in quick succession. A paler hue fell on every stern face in that little phalanx; but they were desperate men, and stood ready for the death—pale and resolute.
The door was barricaded, and Edward Clark stationed himself at the window with his musket, and kept his eye steadily fixed on the path which led to the cove. But with all their precaution, one means of entrance had been forgotten. The window of Mary Derwent’s bedroom remained open; and the basket of roses lay in it, shedding perfume abroad, sweetly as if human blood were not about to drench them.
The hush of expectation holding the pulsations of so many brave hearts caused Jane, paralyzed as she was with fear, to raise her face. Her eyes fell on the window—a scream broke from her, she grasped her sister’s shoulder convulsively, and pointed with her right hand to a young Indian woman who stood looking upon them, with one hand on the window-sill. When she saw those two pale faces looking into hers, Tahmeroo beckoned with her fingers; but Jane only shrieked the more wildly, and again buried her face in the bed-clothes.
Mary arose from her knees, and walked firmly to the window, for she recognized Tahmeroo. A few eager whispers passed between them, and Mary went into the next room. There was a stir, the clang of a rifle striking the hearth, then the valorous woman rushed into the bedroom.
Tahmeroo had torn away the sash, and had leapt in—forcing the bewildered girl through the opening. When her charge was on the outer side, the young Indiancleared the window with the bound of an antelope, and dragged her on, calling on the rest to follow.
“Let the fair girl keep a good heart,” whispered the Indian, urging her companion to swifter speed; “if we have a few moments more, all will be saved.”
The words were scarcely uttered, when a blood-thirsty yell broke up from the cove: the war-whoop, the war-whoop!
“The boats are waiting—be quick! more can be done yet,” cried Catharine Montour, as she rushed up from the river towards the house.
Oh, it was a horrid fight—that which raged around Mother Derwent’s dwelling the next moment. A swarm or fiends seemed to have encompassed it, with shouts and yells, and fierce, blood-thirsty howling. The whizz of arrows, the crash of descending tomahawks, and the sharp rifle-shot, mingled horribly with the groans, the cries, and oaths of the murderers and the murdered. The floor of that log-house was heaped with the dying and the dead, yet the fight raged on with a fiercer and more blood-thirsty violence, till the savages prowled among the slain like a host of incarnate fiends, slaking their vengeance on the wounded and the dead, for want of other victims.
Through all this carnage the Moravian missionary passed unscathed, searching for his child. Many a fiery eye glared upon him; many a hatchet flashed over his head; but none descended. Another tall and lordly man there was, who rushed in the midst of the savages and strove in vain to put an end to the massacre. They turned in fury upon him. He snatched arms from a dead Indian, and defended himself bravely. Savage after savage rushed upon him, and he was nearly borne to the ground, when Catharine Montour sprung in the midst, with a bound of a wounded lioness, and flinging her arms about him, shouted:
“Back, fiends! back, I say. He is our brother.”
The descending knife recoiled with the fierce hand that grasped it, and the savage darted away, searching for a new victim. That instant Queen Esther sprang upon them, the bloodless grey of her face looking more horrible from a glare of smouldering fire that broke up from the kitchen behind her.
She had just flung her tomahawk, but wrenched the stiletto from her torn robe. It flashed upward, quivered, and fell noiselessly as a blasted leaf descends. Catharine gasped heavily—again the knife descended. Murray felt a sharp pang, but so keen was the agony of feeling that woman on his bosom, so close, and yet so far away, that he was ignorant when the poniard entered his side.
He cleared the door with one spasmodic leap; and, as the dwelling burst into flames behind him, rushed toward the spring with his bleeding burden, nor slackened his speed till her arms relaxed their clasp, and her face fell forward on his breast. He felt the warm blood-drops falling upon his bosom, and pressed her closer to him, but with a shudder, as if they had been dropping upon his bare heart.
Down the tortuous path he staggered growing deathly sick as he sat down, folding her madly in his arms. He thought that it was the beat of her heart against his that made him so faint; but it was his own life ebbing slowly away through the wound Queen Esther had given him.
Meantime Tahmeroo urged her companion forward with an impulse sharpened by the sounds of conflict which followed them. Half-mad with contending feelings, Jane Derwent struggled in her conductor’s hold, and would have rushed back in search of those she had left, could she have freed herself. But the young Indian kept a firm grasp on her arm, and dragged her resolutely toward the boats, regardless of her entreaties. They were too late; the canoes had put off.
When Mary saw her sister on her way to safety, she turned back and went in search of her grandmother, whom she found at bay on the hearthstone. She seized her by the arm, and pointing to the cellar door, dragged her down the ladder, closing the entrance after her. A hatch door opened into the garden, and through this the old woman and the girl fled into the open air.
The savages were rioting there, whirling firebrands snatched from the hearth, and striving to kindle the heavy logs into a conflagration. They saw Mary, in her floating white dress, and fell back, gazing after her with dull awe through the smoke of their smouldering brands. Her deformity saved the old woman, for to them it was a mark from the Great Spirit, and to harm her would be sacrilege.
So the old woman and the angel girl passed through the savages unharmed; but there was more danger from the Tories, who shamed the heathen red men with coarser barbarities than they yet knew, for family ties were sacred to the Indian.
As the two females fled shorewards, many fugitives ran across the outskirts of the island, hiding among the vines and willows, or recklessly aiming for the eastern shore.
Among the rest, two men passed them; both were white and one was pursuing the other with desperate fury. One faltered and fell as he passed her, staggering to his knees as the other came up.
“Brother—brother! In the name of her who bore us, do not kill me!” shrieked the wretched man, looking with horror on the uplifted tomahawk. “I will be your slave—anything, everything, but do not kill me, brother!”
“Infernal traitor!”
The words hissed through his clenched teeth; the tomahawk whirled in the air, and came down with a dullcrash! The fratricide fled onward—a brother’s life had not satiated him.
Mary turned sick with horror.
“On, grandmother, on!” she called; “they will kill her, too, our sister!”
Jane saw them coming, sprang to her sister’s arms, and began to plead in a voice of almost insane agony.
“Oh, Mary, let us go back and try to find him; we may as well all die together—for theywillmurder us!”
Tahmeroo parted them abruptly, and springing into the water, waded to a log which lay imbedded among the rushes, and rolled it into the current. It was scarcely afloat when a party of Indians came in sight, and, with a fierce whoop, rushed towards the little group. Tahmeroo sprang back upon the bank, pointing to the log.
“See, it floats! Fling yourself upon it—I will keep them back!”
She did not wait to see her directions obeyed, but walked firmly towards the savages.
Those three females made their way to the floating timber! Mary and Jane forced the old grandmother on it first, then placed themselves firmly on either side of her, and with a branch of driftwood, which Jane snatched from a thicket, pushed out on the deep river. The current, swift and strong, bore them onward, and with a terrible sense of vastness, they floated off into the night, leaving shrieks, the rattle of shot, and red flames, roaring and quivering where that old home had been.
The night had set in, but that red conflagration kindled up the waters and the dense woods with its lurid glare, which played about the bridal garments of the young girl, and that beautiful head, crowned with flowers, in fantastic contrast. The battle was over, but the yell of some savage, as he sprang on his victim, sounded horribly through the gathered stillness, andmade those hapless females shrink closer together on their frail support.
Shuddering, and half-paralyzed by these horrors, and those they had just escaped, the little group drifted hopelessly on. But now a new fear crept over Mary, for she alone noticed the danger. As the pores of the timber gradually filled, its size became insufficient for their weight; every moment it was sinking lower and lower in the water. At first she was appalled, but after a moment the sublime bravery of her soul came back. The timber was heavy enough for two—the old granddame and that beautiful sister should be saved—as for her——
She looked down into the waters—deep, deep; the crimson of the distant fires warmed them up like blood; she could not give herself to them there; it was like bathing in a new horror. But soon the log floated nearer the shore, and carried them into deep shadows.
“Grandmother—Jane!”
“What, Mary, dear—are you frightened?” said the old woman.
“You speak strangely—has the cold chilled you through, sister?” questioned Jane, shivering herself in the chill night air.
“Grandmother—sister—you know where to go; when you come opposite Kingston, do your best to get on shore; run to Aunt Polly Carter’s tavern, and hide till there is some chance of escape over the mountains. Do you listen, Jane?”
“Yes, yes; but you are with us—you will tell us how to act then.”
Mary did not speak for a moment; a sob rose to her lips, but made no sound.
“It is well to understand,” she said, faintly. “Grandmother?”
“Yes, Mary, but hold on; your arms fall away—you will slip off—hug me closer, Mary.”
This Rock marks the spot where Queen Esther slaughtered the Patriots in the battle of July, 1778.
This Rock marks the spot where Queen Esther slaughtered the Patriots in the battle of July, 1778.
This Rock marks the spot where Queen Esther slaughtered the Patriots in the battle of July, 1778.
The arms clung around her with sudden tightness; that pale face fell upon her shoulder, and a kiss touched her withered neck; one hand groped farther, and caught eagerly at Jane Derwent’s dress.
“Jane—oh, sister Jane!”
“Don’t, Mary; you almost pull me off.”
The hand fell back.
“Mary—Mary—for mercy’s sake, hold tight! Oh, dear—oh, Mary—Mary!”
“What—what is it? Grandmother, you make me tremble with these cries. Mary, don’t frighten her so—she’s old.”
“She’s gone—God forgive us two—she’s gone—slipped off—drowned!”
Jane uttered a wild cry, and seizing the timber with both hands, strove madly to hold it back; but the current had them in its power, and mercilessly bore them on.
A cloud of white rose upon the water as they swept downward, sending back cries and shrieks of anguish. It sunk and rose again, this time nearer the shore. Then some human being, Indian or white, dashed through the brushwood, leaped into the stream, striking out for that mass of floating white. A plunge, a long, desperate pull, and the man was struggling up the bank, carrying Mary in his arms.
It was the missionary! He held her close to his heart; he warmed her cold face against his own, searching for life upon her lips, and thanking God with a burst of gratitude when he found it.
Mary stirred in his embrace. The beat of her arms on the waters had forced them to deal tenderly with her; and the breath had not yet left her bosom. For a moment she thought herself in heaven, and smiled pleasantly to know that he was with her. But a prolonged yell from the plain, followed by a slow and appalling death-chant, brought her to consciousness with a shock.She started up, swept back her hair, and looked off towards the sound. There she met a sight that drove all thoughts of heaven from her brain. A huge fragment of stone lay in the centre of a ring, from which the brushwood had been cut away, as an executioner shreds the tresses of a victim, in order to secure a clear blow. Around this rock sixteen prisoners were ranged, and behind them a ring of savages, each holding a victim pressed to the earth. And thus the doomed men sat face to face, waiting for death.
As she gazed, Queen Esther, the terrible priestess of that night, came from her work on Monockonok Island, followed by a train of Indians, savage as herself, and swelled the horrid scene. With her son’s tomahawk gleaming in her hand, she struck into a dance, which had a horrid grace in it. With every third step the tomahawk fell, and a head rolled at her feet! The whole scene was lighted up by a huge fire, built from the brushwood cleared from the circle, and against this red light her figure rose awfully distinct. The folds of her long hair had broken loose and floated behind her, gleaming white and terrible; while the hard profile of her face cut sharply against the flames, like that of a fiend born of the conflagration.
Mary turned her eyes from this scene to the missionary: he understood the appeal.
“I will go,” he said; “it may be to give up my life for theirs.”
“And I,” said Mary, with pale firmness—“God has smitten me with a great power.”
She touched her deformed shoulder, as an angel might have pointed out its wings, and sped onward towards the scene of slaughter—her feet scarcely touched the earth. The missionary, with all his zeal, could hardly keep pace with her.
Queen Esther’s death-chant increased in volume and fury as the chain of bleeding heads lengthened andcircled along her tracks. Life after life had dropped before her, and but two were left when Mary Derwent forced herself through the belt of savages and sprang upon the rock.
“Warriors, stop the massacre—in the name of the Great Spirit, I command you!”
She spoke in the Indian tongue, which had been a familiar language since her childhood; her hand was uplifted; her eyes bright with inspiration; around her limbs the white garments clung like marble folds to a statue.
Queen Esther paused and looked up with the sneer of a demon in her eyes. But the Indians who held the men yet alive withdrew their hold, and fell upon their faces to the earth.
The two men crouched on the ground, numb with horror; they did not even see the being who had come to save them.
The missionary bent over them and whispered:
“Up and flee towards Forty Fort.”
They sprang up and away. The Indians saw them, but did not move. Queen Esther heard their leap, and ended her chant in a long, low wail. Then she turned in her rage, and would have flung her tomahawk at the angel girl, but the Indians sprang upon the rock and guarded her with their uplifted weapons. Superstition, with them, was stronger than reverence for their demon queen.
The rage of that old woman was horrible. She prowled around the phalanx of savages like a tigress; menaced them with her weapons with impotent fury, and, springing on her horse, galloped through the forest by the smouldering fort and across the plain, until she came out opposite the little island where her son was buried. Her horse paused on the brink of the stream, white with foam and dripping with sweat, but she struck him with the flat of her tomahawk and he plunged in,bearing her to the island. Here she cast her steed loose, staggered up to the new-made grave, dropped a reeking tomahawk upon it, and fell down from pure physical exhaustion, bathed with blood, as a fiend is draped in flame.
As the aged demon took her way to that grave, the angel girl turned to her path of mercy. For that night the massacre was stayed. To the Indians she had appeared as a prophetess from the Great Spirit, who had laid his hand heavily upon her shoulder as a symbol of divine authority.