The sun began to tinge the sky with its ruddy hue; the birds filled their little space of late autumnal song, and the shrill cicada piped amid the rustling leaves. The rainbow spanned the abyss of waters, while below, drifting in eddies, were fragments of canoes, spears and bows, and still more ghastly fragments, telling of the night’s work.
Upon the headland overlooking the falls, and hidden by the heavy but stunted vegetation of the rocky hight, stood a small group of ancient warriors, the sole remnant of a once powerful band. These, after taking into their unwilling minds the terrible truth of ambush, defeat and death, stole away to the village to hasten the departure of the women and children.
Not so Acashee. She watched intently the group below in the midst of which floated the white, abundant locks of Hope Vines. With jealous rage she saw the sagamore fold the slight form to his breast; with wild, jealous admiration she noted the manly form, the bright, tender eye—so fierce in its last look upon herself, when he cut away her virgin locks, so gentle as it fell upon the face of Hope.
As the extreme of agony merges into a sensation of pleasure, so the malign passions of Acashee were prolonged in this contemplation of the tenderness of the lovers, till she could no more endure, and she drew an arrow to its head, aimed at the heart of her rival.
Hope started, gave one last look of love at the sagamore, and then darted up the bank, up the projecting curve of water that indicated the entrance to the grotto, and thence disappeared. Her path was marked by a long trail of blood, staining the rocks like a slender serpent.
Acashee did not fly. On the contrary, she boldly stood out upon the headland, and it was a grand sight, the tall, fearless woman in her proud attitude, standing there courting the death she had inflicted.
“Acashee is avenged, John Bonyton,” she cried; but her voice was stopped by a hundred arrows, hurtling the air, and penetrating her flesh—“blood from every pore,” as Hope predicted. She did not quail, but, with a buoyant motion of feet and arms, she sung her death-song:
“Look from your misty caves, heroes and warriors!Bend from your storm-clouds—a maiden approaches,Slain by brave warriors—she brave as the best.”
“Look from your misty caves, heroes and warriors!Bend from your storm-clouds—a maiden approaches,Slain by brave warriors—she brave as the best.”
“Look from your misty caves, heroes and warriors!Bend from your storm-clouds—a maiden approaches,Slain by brave warriors—she brave as the best.”
“Look from your misty caves, heroes and warriors!
Bend from your storm-clouds—a maiden approaches,
Slain by brave warriors—she brave as the best.”
Arrow after arrow drank her blood while thus she sung—andat length she toppled headlong into the boiling flood below.
Fierce was the pursuit and desperate the flight of the surviving Androscoggins, and the Sagamore of Saco, with his followers, never rested, day nor night, till the last vestige of the Terrentines was rooted up. To this day, in the village of Lewiston, now a thriving and wealthy manufacturing city, the new settler, digging the foundation for his princely mansion, often unearths half-consumed brands, and, sad to tell, the small skull of the child, thus designating the site of the old Indian village, and attesting to the truth of that tradition, which still preserves the memory of the destruction of the Androscoggins as we have described, and the conflagration of the village above the falls of the Pejipscot.
No white man has ventured to solve the mystery of the grotto under the sheet of water, where rest the ashes of Hope Vines.
A story is still extant to this effect: Many years ago, while Lewiston was a small village, retains its Indian name of Pejipscot, a young man was standing on the shelf of rock, which we have described, and where we have often stood ourselves, spell-bound by the majestic scenery, when suddenly, from amidst the foam and spray, appeared an old man, and stood upon the rocks beside him. His hair was of a snowy whiteness, but his eye flashed with the fires of youth as he beheld the white stranger upon the rock.
Before the latter could recover from his amazement, to inquire of his advent, the old Indian seized him in his arms and dashed him to the earth; when he recovered to look about him, he saw his aggressor rapidly paddling his canoe down the river.
For years John Bonyton lingered about the falls, in the vain desire of seeing once more the pale, spectral beauty of Hope Vines, but she appeared no more in the flesh.
Tradition delights to recall her story, and to this day, men not romantic nor visionary declare to have seen a figure, slight and beautiful, clad in snowy robes, with moccasined feet, and hair covering her form like a vail, moving sorrowfully about the falls, and the strange figure they believe to be the wraith of Hope Vines.
Thus does tradition preserve the memory of the beloved of the Sagamore of Saco.
John Bonyton at length rejoined the Sacos at what is now known as Salmon Falls. (We ought to say that this word is pronounced as if writtenSawco.) He lived to extreme old age, an object of love and veneration to the people who had chosen him for their chief, or sagamore, and reviled, hated and despised by the people of the colony.
At his death he refused to be buried in the “grave-yard” of the decorous Pilgrims of the day, but gave directions for hisrepose not far from the beautiful falls of the Saco, within the sound of those waters which had witnessed his sorrows, his mortifications and his triumphs—whose roar had been to him a perpetual inspiration. Here, for years, was pointed out the rude stone, with its malignant epitaph, which marked the grave of a man born out of place.
The epitaph of John Bonyton ran in this wise:
“Here lies John Bonyton, Sagamore of Saco:He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went to Hobomoko.”
“Here lies John Bonyton, Sagamore of Saco:He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went to Hobomoko.”
“Here lies John Bonyton, Sagamore of Saco:He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went to Hobomoko.”
“Here lies John Bonyton, Sagamore of Saco:
He lived a rogue, and died a knave, and went to Hobomoko.”
This ungracious rhyme was current in the colony of Maine somewhere about 1684, being the epitaph of a man little understood in his own times, and greatly traduced by the pen of novelist, if not of the historian. When the reader understands that Hobomoko, or Hobomok, was the Indian appellation for the father of lies, it will be seen that the sarcasm or slander, whichever it may be, was the more inveterate.
THE END.