Acashee, astute, cautious and devoid of all personal fear, was not without a certain natural power over her tribe, which regarded her with some degree of religious awe, inferior in extent but not unakin to that which lent a halo to the brow of the unfortunate Hope Vines.
Acashee was skillful in all the incantations, dances, and magic of her people, and did not scruple to work upon their terrors, or to turn all their faith in her to her own account.
The chamber under the great falls was kept a secret from the people at large, being used mostly for religious purposes, or in periods of great extremity as a last rallying point of the chiefs of the tribe; hence, comparatively few were acquainted with the place of retreat of Acashee, when she retired from the council, and waved back the women who would have importuned her with surmises.
Having plunged under the jutting water, she arose in a gorgeous room, hung with pendants of crystal, and furnished with sacred altars, fashioned in the long ages by that instinct of nature which leads her to indicate in solitary grottos and overhanging woods that intuitive need of worship which is the characteristic of our humanity, even in its rudest shape.
Prominent in the center of this vast chamber was the stone of sacrifice, and caldron, which told plainly its use to immolate human beings, for stains of blood flecked here and there the whiteness of the surrounding stones.
Acashee paused in front of this ghastly object, and seemed to feast her eyes in contemplation of that which so well harmonized with her own cruel and vindictive feelings. Intent upon her long work of vengeance, devoid of all those gentler emotions which lend a grace to the sex, while at the same time they present a barrier to great achievement, she stood with a half-smile upon her lips as if already she beheld the object of her wrathimpaled upon the bloody altar, and sent shrieking to the throne of the appeased deities. At length she turned away, and paced slowly up and down the dim area, which gave out no echo to her restless feet.
Here had for ages been performed those religious rites, so secretly hidden, that to this day we are left in doubt whether or not the northern Indians offered human beings upon the altar of sacrifice. Here were deposited the skulls of great chiefs who had perished in battle, or been tortured by their enemies, and had died as became brave men.
Skins of serpents and reptiles dried in the sun, bones and ivory, vases of terra-cotta, thorns steeped in blood, polished stones and crystals of vast size, were arranged in a niche beneath a stupendous arch; and here, couched in crystal, extending fold beyond fold, dry from the dust of centuries, but vivid with the hues of life, was one of those gigantic lizards, (sauræ,) which might have crept in here before the deluge, and here slept undisturbed, an object of superstitious awe to these devotees of nature.
The grotto of the Pejipscot was not so broad at the entrance as might have been anticipated, but it extended back to a vast distance, widening laterally till it became a gorgeous labyrinth, rising arch beyond arch, spreading itself into interminable vistas, and assuming unexpected shapes of resplendent grace and beauty—columns from which hung the most delicate tracery; pendents reflecting every prismatic hue; vails of network, as if the fairy fingers of the frost had been arrested in their play, and their work rendered eternal in the adamantine stone: as if a thousand gnomes of the mine had here collected their treasury, and here wrought a thousand fantastic shapes into forms of beauty.
It was midday, and the sun, penetrating the sheet of the falls, cast a not uncheerful light into the cave, the size and gloom of which were still further relieved by a fire burning in the center, and one or more torches stuck in the fissures of the rocks. With her back to the fire stood Acashee, gazing intently upon the white, liquid, and tumultuous mass which constituted the door or curtain to this strange habitation. A fierce, cold expression rested upon her face, and the last few weeks of toil and suffering had done the work of years in planting furrows upon her brow.
At one side of the cave, stretched upon skins of a delicate texture, as if prepared to do great honor to whomsoever should apply them to use, appeared what might have been mistaken for a white vail, excepting that a draft of air caused a portion of it to rise and fall, spreading the filaments, and showing it to be a mass of human hair.
So still was the recumbent figure, so motionless the tiny, moccasined foot just perceptible, and so ghostly the hue andabundance of the covering, that all suggested an image of death—a draping for the tomb.
Acashee turned sharply around and surveyed the figure long and silently, a malignant smile growing upon her features. At length she asked:
“How much longer will you sleep, skake (snake)? Get up, I tell thee!”
At this ungracious speech the figure slightly started but did not obey. Acashee laughed bitterly.
“You do not like skake (snake); you will be called Wa-ain (white soul), and be a great medicine-woman; but you are no more than a skake at the best. Get up, I say; the warriors are coming!”
Still there was neither movement nor reply, and the woman continued, in a sharper tone:
“Hope Vines, I bid thee come and eat!”
The figure slowly lifted itself up, and looked wistfully, and yet half defiantly, at the speaker.
“Acashee, I will answer only to my own name.”
“As you like. Skake is as good as Acashee. But the spider snares even the snake.”
To this truism Hope replied only by a low moan, and settled herself upon her elbow, amid the masses of luxurious skins woven with wampum, and fringed with purple and pearl-white shells.
To a stranger, Hope might have seemed but a mere child, and yet the mouth showed that a woman’s thoughts and passions had been there and the eye was a well of deep, fathomless emotions, while the grasp of the little hand showed that no child’s fiber restricted its power. The arched foot bespoke the elasticity of the tiger, while the small waist and womanly bust told of a thousand latent charms of character which time had failed to destroy.
Rising from her recumbent posture, she approached the water at the entrance to the cave, till the spray dashed itself upon her long, white locks, and the stronger light falling upon her brow revealed the sharp, beautiful outline of her face, scarcely touched by the lapse of time, and those weird, foreshadowing, Raleigh eyes, kindling in intensity, blue in the light, and nearly black when burning with emotion.
“Water! still water! forever and forever lapsing away, and stealing my soul away—away!”
There was a mournful pathos in the tone, as if the speaker might indeed dissolve into the element upon which she gazed. A moment more and she turned to Acashee in a way which showed our little Hope of years agone was by no means broken in spirit, for she asked, sharply:
“Where have you been, Spider?—and now that I look at you, I see that your people have set a seal upon you.”
Acashee grasped the hair of Hope fiercely, and her form towered and dilated with rage, but Hope was immovable, and with a derisive smile, said:
“You dare not do it, Spider—youdarenot.”
“What should hinder that I should hurl you into the abyss below?” she cried.
“We would only go together, as you well know.”
Acashee unconsciously dropped her hold of Hope, and passed her hand over her own head, which the former observing, asked, lightly:
“Who did it? and why?”
The woman now seized her by the arm, and bending down, hissed through her clenched teeth:
“John Bonyton did it.”
Hope Vines dropped to the floor as if a shot had penetrated her heart, and there she lay with no sign of life, to the evident gratification of the other, who left her to recover as best she might, while she busied herself in preparing a meal over the coals. Seeing Hope rise to her feet, and stand erect and motionless at the mouth of the cave, she called out:
“Skake, come and eat.”
Receiving no answer, and perhaps weary of this useless teasing, she strode across the space, and shaking her by the arm, cried again:
“Come and eat.”
“I will eat,” answered Hope, softly, taking corn and dried venison. There was a strange light in her eye which the woman saw, but did not understand, for she went on in her former vein:
“The Spider caught a bad snake when she wove a net for Hope Vines.”
The latter covered her face with both her hands, and the veins of her forehead swelled above them. Yet when she uncovered her eyes they were red, not with tears, but with the effort to suppress them.
“It is a long, long time that I have been here, Acashee,” she murmured, softly.
“Have you never passed the curtain of water since Samoset brought you here?” asked the net-weaver; and she fixed her eyes searchingly upon the face of the other, who neither quailed nor changed color beneath her gaze, but answered in the same sorrowful accent:
“How should little Hope penetrate the vail of water? Who is left to her now!”
“You remember that I once told you, ‘You had a friend; you have a foe.’ The white boy and girl shouldn’t have scorned the red girl. Acashee is glad down to the bottom of her soul. John Bonyton is more wretched than I am.”
Hope’s eyes dilated and her breast heaved.
“Tell me where you saw John Bonyton, Acashee?”
“Oh, he wears the eagle tuft bravely, and they call him Sagamore of Saco now.” And she laughed in scorn.
“Oh, the long, weary years!” murmured Hope.
“Where is O-ye-ah?” asked the other.
“She died a moon ago.”
“Did she make you a great medicine-woman?”
Hope rose to her feet with dignity, her brow contracted, and her eyes gleaming with unearthly radiance. She pointed upward and said:
“The Great Spirit alone knows the morrow as to-day. He reveals himself to me. Acashee, listen! I behold you pierced, through and through with arrows; I see you bleed at every pore.”
The proud woman was awed at her tone, and felt that Hope had the mastery.
“Who shoots the arrows?” she at length asked.
“John Bonyton, and the warriors.”
The woman’s head fell upon her breast, but a smile, fair as the smiles of the daughter of Samoset in her days of youth and beauty, stole to her lips as she whispered:
“It contents me so to die.”