CHAPTER IX
Itwas dawn when Raymond sighted Little Tamotlee, and the early sunshine, of an exquisite crystalline purity, was over all the world—misty mountain, shimmering river, the infinite stretches of the leafless wilderness—as the young officer’s pettiaugre was pulling into the bank, where Captain Howard’s boats were already beached. The Indian town on the shore, an oasis of habitation in the midst of the unpeopled forest, was all astir. Columns of smoke were rising alike from the conical-roofed dwellings of the characteristic Indian architecture and those more modern structures which the Cherokees also affected, and which resembled the log cabins of the European settlers in the provinces to the eastward. The population seemed all afoot, as if some event of moment impended. Knots of braves pressed hither and thither, with feather-crested heads and painted faces, arrayed in buck-skin or fur shirts and leggings with floating fringes, and many tawdry gauds of decorated quivers and bows, carried for ornament only, long ago discarded as a weapon in favor of the British “Brown Bess,” and powder and lead. The chiefs, the cheerataghe or priests, the political head-men, and the warriors of special note were all easily distinguishable to Raymond, as he stood in the bow of the boat, byreason of their splendor of attire, their feather-braided iridescent mantles, or their war bonnets of vertically placed swan’s quills, standing fifteen inches high, above the forehead. On the summit of the tall mound, where the great dome-like rotunda or town-house was perched,—its contour conserved by a thick plaster of the tenacious red clay of the region laid on smoothly, inside and out,—a white flag was flying. Presently a wide sonorous voice sounded thence. The Cherokee town-crier was uttering the “News Hollow.” It was strictly an official demonstration, for the arrival of Captain Howard and his escort in the night, now quartered in the “Stranger house,” was an event that had fallen under the personal observation of all the denizens of Tamotlee. Nevertheless, every man paused where he stood, as if the sound of that great voice possessed gifts of enchantment, and he were bound to the spot.
Raymond, who had caught up some familiarity with the language, was too distant as he stood in the gliding boat, now swiftly approaching the shore, to discriminate the words, but as the proclamation ceased he perceived that all were pressing toward the “beloved square” of the town, a rectangular space, level, and covered with fine white sand, beaten, and trampled, and worn to the hardness and consistency of stone. There was a commodious piazza-like building of logs and bark, having the whole front open, situated at each side of the square, appropriated to the different branches, so to speak, of the primitive government, and these began to fill quickly with theofficials of each department,—the ancient councillors on the east, the cheerataghe on the west, the warriors on the north, clanging with martial accoutrement, and on the south the functionaries that the European traders, called “The Second Men,” these being, as it were, “the city fathers,” having control of all municipal affairs,—the building of houses, the planting and garnering of the public crops, the succor of the poor, the conduct of negotiations with other towns, the care of the entertainment of strangers. It was in their charge that Raymond presently perceived, with that amusement which the methods of the savages always excited in European breasts, Captain Howard and his escort. Very funny, in truth, they looked, their fresh British faces adjusted to a sedulous gravity and inexpressiveness and their manner stiffened to conform to Indian etiquette, and manifest neither curiosity nor amusement. This was difficult for one of the young soldiers, a raw Irish boy, whose teeth now and again gleamed inadvertently, giving the effect of being swallowed, so suddenly did his lips snap together as his orders recurred to his mind. His head seemed set on a pivot when first he took his seat with the others on the benches in the booth-like place, but a sudden stroke upon the cranium from a drum-stick in the seemingly awkward handling of Robin Dorn, sitting beside him and moving the instrument as if for added safety, was a sufficient admonition to foster a creditable degree of discretion. Captain Howard’s typically English face, florid, smooth, steadfast-eyed, evidencing a dignity and self-respectthat coerced a responsive respect, was indeed curiously out of place seen above the bar of the booth-like piazza, where he sat on the lower settee, his men ranged in tiers behind him. When Raymond, who was met at the water’s edge by a messenger for the purpose, was conducted to a place by Captain Howard, he rather wondered that they had not been given seats beside Rolloweh, the prince of the town, in the western cabin, for it was the habit of the Indians to pay almost royal honors to their guests of official station. He took the place assigned him in silence, and he observed that the occasion was indeed one of special importance, for Captain Howard said not a word, made not an inquiry as to his mission, save by a lifted eyebrow. Raymond answered by a debonair smile, intimating that all was well. Then both turned their eyes to the “beloved square,” and this moment the Reverend Mr. Morton was led out in charge of two Indians and stationed before the great white seat of the “holy cabin.” Captain Howard flushed deeply and darkly red, but made no other sign, and such proceedings began as Rolloweh had elected should take place.
Mr. Morton was old, and lank, and pallid, and dreary. No affinity had he with the portly and well-liking type of his profession of his day. Such manna as gave them a repletion of self-satisfaction had been denied him. He had an infinite capacity for hardship, an absolute disdain of danger. Luxury affected his ascetic predilections like sin. He desired but a meditative crust to crunch while he argued the tenets of his religion and refuted the contradictions of hiscatechumen. He was as instant in and out of season as if he were in pursuit of some worldly preferment—one can say no more. He did not need encouragement, and he was so constituted that he could recognize no failure. He had no vain-glory in his courage—to him it was the most natural thing in the world to risk his life to save Rolloweh’s soul. He knew it was rank heresy to think it, but he was willing to trust the salvation of Captain Howard and the garrison of Fort Prince George to their own unassisted efforts, and such mercy as the Lord might see fit to grant their indifference, their ignorance, their folly, and their perversity. But Rolloweh’s soul had had no chances, and he was bound personally to look after it. He even hoped for the conversion of those great chiefs of the upper towns—Yachtino of Chilhowee, Cunigacatgoah of Choté, Moy Toy of Tellico Great, and Quorinnah of Tennessee Town. He was worldly wise in his day and generation, too. He had fastened with the unerring instinct of the born missionary on the propitious moment. Not while prosperity shone upon them, not while their savage religion met every apparent need, not while facile chance answered their ignorant prayer, was the conversion of a people practicable. But the Cherokees were conquered, abased, decimated, the tribe scattered, their towns in ruins, the bones held sacred of their dead unburied, their ancient cherished religion fallen in esteem to a meaningless system of inoperative rites and flimsy delusions. Now was the time to reveal the truth, to voice “the good tidings of great joy.” Hence he had said, “Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel!”
And the common people had been listening to him gladly. Thus the chiefs feared they would never seek to made head against their national enemies under their national rulers. Simple as he stood there in his thread-bare black clothes and his darned hose,—he was wondrously expert with a meditative needle,—he had the political future of a people and the annihilation of a false and barbarous worship in his grasp. Therefore said the Cherokee rulers to Captain Howard—“Your beloved man must remove himself.”
It was an old story to the soldier. He had written to the missionary and remonstrated, for peace was precious. In reply he had in effect been admonished to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and unto God the things that are God’s. A meek address was not among the merits of the Reverend Mr. Morton. The obvious interpretation of this saying seemed to the commandant a recommendation to go about his business. He desisted from advice for a time. He had known a certain luke-warmness in religious matters to ensue upon a surcharge of zeal, and he had waited with patience for the refined and delicately nurtured old man to tire of the hardships of life in that devastated country among the burned towns and the angry, sullen people, and the uncouth savage association. But he had continued to preach, and the tribesmen had continued in hordes to listen, expecting always to discover the secret of the superiority of the British in the arts of war and manufacture,—the reason of their own deplorable desolation anddestruction. They could not separate the ideas of spiritual acceptability and worldly prosperity. The Briton revered his religion, they argued, and therefore he knew how to make gun-powder, and to conquer the bravest of the brave, and to amass much moneys of silver and gold,—for in their enlightenment the roanoke and the wampum were a wofully depreciated currency,—perhaps it was the religion of the British people which made them so strong. Thus the Cherokees lent a willing ear. As they began to discriminate and memorize, certain familiarities in the matters offered for their contemplation were dimly recognized. The archaic figment or fact—whichever it may be—that the ancient Scriptures had once been theirs, and through negligence lost, and through degeneration forgotten, reasserted its hold. The points of similarity in their traditions to the narrations of the old Bible were suggested to Mr. Morton, who accepted them with joy, becoming one of the early converts to the theory of the Hebraic origin of the tribes of American Indians. It was a happy time for the scholarly old man—to find analogies in their barbarous rites with ancient Semitic customs; to reform from the distortions of oral teachings a divine oracle of precious significance; to show in the old stories how the prophecy fore-shadowed the event, how the semblance merged into the substance in the coming of the Christ. In this way he approached their conversion to Christianity from the vantage ground of previous knowledge, however distorted and inadequate, and commingled with profane and barbaric follies. He was convinced—heconvinced many—that they were of an inherited religion, into which he had been adopted, that they were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, that the Scriptures they had had were a part of the Book he revered, and that he would indoctrinate them into the remainder. Perhaps Mr. Morton doubted the account of the teachings of the Roman Catholic captive, Cabeza de Vaca, among the Floridian Indians early in the sixteenth century, or perhaps he disbelieved that any remnants of such precepts had drifted so far to this secluded and inimical tribe, always at war as it was with its southern neighbors and totally without communication with them.
Though this persuasion took hold on the masses it encountered great disfavor among the chiefs, more especially when the valorous and fearless old man thundered rebukes upon their pagan follies and observances, their superstitions, their methods of appeasing the “Great White Fire.” He knew no moderation in rebuke; intolerance is the good man’s sin. He was especially severe in his denunciation of the pretended powers of necromancy, above all of the supernatural endowment of a certain amulet which they possessed and which by the earlier travellers among them is termed their “Conjuring-Stone.”
This was said to be a great red crystal. According to Adair, the historian, it was a gigantic carbuncle; others have called it a garnet—these gems are still found in the Great Smoky Mountains; more probably it was a red tourmaline of special depth and richness of color.
Mr. Morton had never seen the stone, but Cunigacatgoah of Choté had told him triumphantly that he could never captivate his soul, for he held the precious amulet in his hand whenever the missionary preached, and it dulled the speech, so that he heard nothing. As the aged Cunigacatgoah had been deaf these several years, this miracle had involved little strain on the powers of the stone. These days were close upon the times of witchcraft, of the belief in special obsessions, of all manner of magic. This stubborn and persistent paganism roused the utmost rancor and ingenuity of the Reverend Mr. Morton, and at last he made a solemn statement in the council-house of Choté, in the presence of many witnesses, that if they would show him one miracle wrought by the stone, if they could bring positive testimony of one evil averted by the amulet, he would renounce his religion and his nation, he would become an adopted Cherokee and a pagan; he would poll his hair, and dance in three circles, and sacrifice to the “Ancient White Fire” and the little Thunder men.
In the sullen silence that had ensued upon this declaration he had demanded why had the amulet not stayed the march of the British commander, Colonel Grant, through the Cherokee country? Why had it not checked the slaughters and the burnings? Why had it not saved to the Cherokees the vast extent of country ceded for a punitive measure in the pacification and forced treaties of peace? Where was the luck it had brought? Defend all good people from such a possession!
The old missionary owed his life less to any fear that should he disappear the British government might bethink itself of such a subject as a superannuated and pious old scare-crow in the barren field of the Cherokee country than to the hold he had taken on the predilections of the people. There was scant use in burning him—many among themselves would resent his fate. He, himself, would rejoice in martyrdom, and their utmost deviltries would add to his crown.
The savage leaders had a certain natural sagacity. Wiser than they of eld they cried not upon Baal. They would not accept the challenge of the man of God. They would not produce the amulet at his bidding, lest it be discredited—they said the touch, the evil eye of a stranger were a profanation. Yet they feared that the conversion of the people to Christianity was national annihilation. And they clung to their superstitions, their polytheistic venerations, their ancient necromancies, their pagan observances; to them all other gods were strange gods. They realized the hold which the new faith was taking on the tribesmen. Therefore they had told Mr. Morton that he had long plagued them with many words and they desired him to leave the country. When he refused in terms they despatched a delegation to refer the matter to Captain Howard at Fort Prince George, with a most insistent demand that he should return with it and meet them at Little Tamotlee, a village at no difficult distance from the fort itself, and easily accessible by boat, byreason of the confluence of the Keowee and Tugaloo rivers.
This was one of the smaller towns of the Ayrate district, sending only sixty gun-men to the wars and with a population of women and children in proportion. The inhabitants could by no means muster such an assemblage as had now gathered. Visitors whom Raymond, familiar with the people, recognized as hailing from the towns of the Ottare region had crowded in, making the day in some sort a representative occasion. They had arranged themselves around the “beloved square,” some standing, some seated, others kneeling on one knee, and the proceedings had well begun before Captain Howard realized what manner of part he was expected to sustain. In noting the number of chiefs ranged in state in the “holy cabin” on the “great white seat,” Raymond thought that the lack of space might explain the fact that Captain Howard was not offered a place commensurate with his rank and importance on the frontier. After a few moments, however, he understood that this subsidiary position better accorded with the rôle assigned to the commandant.
The row of chiefs glittered in the brilliant sunlight, in their rich fur shirts, their feather-woven mantles, their plumed crests, their gayly painted faces, their silver bracelets worn above the elbow, their silver head-bands and earrings, their many glancing necklaces of roanoke,—all, however, devoid of any weapon worn in sight. The wind was gentle, yet fresh; the hour was still early,—the Reverend Mr. Morton’sshadow was even longer and lanker than his tall, bony anatomy might seem to warrant. His attendants, or guards, had taken off his shovel hat and clerical wig, and his head was bare, save for its wandering wisps of gray hair, blowing about his face and neck,—and whenever Captain Howard glanced toward him he turned as red as his scarlet coat, his eyes fell, he cleared his throat uneasily. He had long been habituated by the exigencies of his military service to the exercise of self-control, and he had need now of all the restraints of his training.
The preacher opened the session, so to speak, by demanding in a very loud voice, with every assurance of manner and in fluent Cherokee, why he was arraigned thus amongst his friends.
Rolloweh, a man of a fierce, hatchet-shaped face, rendered sinister of expression by the loss of one eye, rose and imperatively bade him be silent.
“I will not hold my peace,” declared the venerable missionary. “I will know why I am brought here, and why these,”—he waved his hand—“have assembled.”
“Because,” said Rolloweh, the Raven, craftily, “you have too many words. You weary our ears waking, and in our dreams you still talk on. We have loved you—have we not listened to you? You are our friend, and you have dwelt in our hearts. We have seen you shed tears for our sorrows. You have lent ears to our plaints and you have eaten our salt. You have given of your goods to the needy and have even wrought with your hands in building again the burned houses. You have paid with Englishmoney for your keep and have been a charge to no man.”
He looked with a steady, observant eye to the right and the left of the rows of eager listening faces. They could but note that he had religiously given the old man his due, for the good missionary was much beloved of the people.
“But your talk is not a straight talk. You have the crooked tongue. You tell lies to mislead the Cherokee people—who are a free people—and to make them slaves to the British. You tell them that these lies are religion—that they are the religion of the British people.”
There was absolute silence as his impassioned tones, voicing the musical, liquid Cherokee words, rolled out on the still morning air.
“You say that the tongue is a fire—it kindles about you, for these lies that you have spoken. You are our friend, but you stretch our hearts to bursting. We have besought you to leave the country and mislead our youth no more. You have been stubborn. You say—‘Woe!’ and you will preach! We have summoned this Capteny Howard, a beloved man of the English king, to question between you and show these men from the towns that what you teach our youth is not the English religion, but a charm to bind the Cherokee.”
Through the interpreter these words were perfectly intelligible to Captain Howard, and for one moment it seemed as if this officer—a stalwart specimen of middle-aged vigor—might faint; then, with a suddenrevulsion of color, as if he might go off in an apoplexy. To be so entrapped! To be caught in the toils of a public religious controversy dismayed him more than an ambush of warriors. But the old missionary’s life might depend upon his answers. They must confirm the “straightness” of Mr. Morton’s talk. He must prove that the teaching of the parson to the Cherokee nation was not a snare for Cherokee liberties, but the familiar religion of the British people, known and practised by all.
It was not to be presumed that with these postulants Mr. Morton had delved very deeply into sacerdotal mysteries and fine and abstruse doctrines of theology, but Captain Howard was so obviously relieved when his interpreter, standing very straight and stiff outside his booth,—a man whom he had employed as a scout,—repeated the words flung at him by the interpreter of Rolloweh, who stood very straight and stiff outside the “holy cabin,” that Raymond, despite his surprise, and agitation, and anxiety could have laughed aloud.
“Did you ever hear of a man called Noah?”
“Yes—oh, yes, indeed,” said Captain Howard, so plumply affirmative and familiar that they might have expected to hear him add that he had served with Noah in the Hastenbeck campaign.
All the eyes of the Cherokees around the vacant square were fixed first upon the questioner, Rolloweh, and then upon Captain Howard, in the incongruous rôle of catechumen. The space was not so large as in the “beloved squares” of towns of greater population,comprising perhaps not more than one acre. Every word could be heard—every facial change discriminated. Mr. Morton stood as if half amused, one thumb thrust in his fob, his grizzled eye-brows elevated, his thin wisps of hair tossed about his bare poll, a smile on his face, listening with an indulgent meditative air to the inquiries of Rolloweh propounded in Cherokee, which, of course, he understood, and the sturdy cautious response of the British commandant. Captain Howard had not thought so much about Biblical matters since he sat and swung his feet in his callow days to be catechised by the nursery governess.
“Did he have a house that could float?” demanded the interrogator.
“Oh, he did,—he did indeed,” declared Captain Howard, freely.
There was a certain satisfaction perceptible on the face of Rolloweh, despite the enigmatical cast given it by the loss of his eye. The other head-men, too, assisting at this unique literary exercise, showed an animation, a gleam of triumph, at every confirmation of the ancient Biblical stories found by the early missionaries to be curiously, mysteriously familiar to all the pagan Cherokees, distorted in detail sometimes, and sometimes in pristine proportions. When a sudden blight fell upon the smooth progress of this comparative theology and the question awoke from Captain Howard no responsive assurance of knowledge, Raymond was more sensibly impressed by the gloom, the disappointment that settled upon the faces of thehead-men on the “great white seat.” He could not understand it. The Indians were very subtle—or did they really desire the verification of what they had been taught by the missionary.
The “beloved square” was absolutely silent. The shadow of a white cloud high in the blue zenith crossed the smooth sanded space; they could hear the Tugaloo River fretting on the rocks a mile down-stream. The bare branches of the encompassing forests, with no sign that the spring of the year pulsed in their fibres, that the sap was rising, clashed lightly together in a vagrant gust and fell still again.
Captain Howard knitted a puzzled brow, and his men, ranged in tiers of seats back of him, who had been startled and amazed beyond expression by the unexpected developments, gazed down upon him with a ludicrous anxiety lest he fail to acquit himself smartly and do himself and the command credit, and with anesprit de corpswholly at variance with the subject-matter of the examination.
“Why, no,” the officer said at last, “I don’t think I ever before heard of the dogs.”
He cast a furtive glance of deprecation at the missionary, who still stood, listening unmoved and immovable, fixing his eyes with a look of whimsical self-communing on the ground as if waiting, steeling himself in patience till this folly should wear itself out of its own fatuity.
“Never heard of the Dogs of Hell?” Rolloweh at last asked with a tone insistently calculated to jog the refractory memory. Raymond marked with arenewal of surprise his eagerness that the officer should retract. Captain Howard frowned with impatience. What an ordeal was this! That the life of a blatant and persistent preacher—yet an old and a saintly man—should depend upon the accuracy of his recollection of Scriptural details to which he had not given more than a passing thought for thirty years. What strange unimagined whim could be actuating the Indians? He might have prevaricated had he but a serviceable phrase to fill the breach. He could not foresee the result, and he dubiously adhered to the truth.
“I have heard of Cerberus, the three-headed classical dog, you know, Mr. Morton. But I don’t remember any religious dog at all.”
There was silence for a time. Then Rolloweh began to speak again, and the voice of Captain Howard’s interpreter quavered as he proceeded to instruct his sturdy commander.
“You surely know that as you go to hell you reach a deep gulf full of fire. A pole is stretched across it, with a dog at each end. The beloved man of the king of England must know that pole right well?”
Captain Howard doggedly shook his head.
“Never heard of the pole.”
Rolloweh persisted, and the interpreter quavered after.
“The wicked—the great Capteny, precious to the hearts of the Cherokees, cannot be considered of the number—the wicked are chased by one of the dogs on to this pole, and while crossing the fiery gulf thedog at the other end shakes the pole and they fall off into Hell. Now surely the great Capteny remembers the Dogs of Hell?”
Surely Captain Howard’s face seemed incapable of such a look of supplication as he sent toward Mr. Morton, who was gazing smilingly straight at him, as if the whole session were an invented diversion for the day. The clergyman gave no intimation as to how to meet the situation, and Captain Howard reiterated sturdily—“Never heard of any religious dogs,” and lapsed into silence.
He was beginning to grow extremely disquieted, to doubt his wisdom in coming in response to their summons, and sooth to say if he had dreamed of the intention animating it he would have considered twice ere he consented. He had thought only of soothing their rancors and smoking the “friend pipe.” The freakish fierce temper of the Cherokees could not be trusted, and they felt aggrieved in a certain sort that they were not left to such solace as they might find in their polytheism, or Great Spirit worship, or the necromancy of their Conjuring-Stone, but must needs be converted or regenerated on the plan of salvation which the missionary set forth with such ruthless logic. It was evident that they had found it necessary to discredit the preacher, and with this view the assemblage had been gathered as witnesses. Albeit Captain Howard did not understand its trend, he saw the investigation was going amiss,—Mr. Morton’s life would prove the forfeit. He trembled, too, for the lives of his escort—they were but a handfulamong some hundreds of vigorous braves. His were troops flushed with recent victories, and if he had found it hard to witness unmoved the venerable missionary before such a tribunal, how must the scene strike the young, ardent, impulsive soldiers? Some thoughtless action, some inconsiderate word or look, and the lives of all would not be worth a moment’s purchase.
The investigation fared little better when it quitted the infernal regions. Captain Howard, troubled, flushed, with an unsteady eye and an uncertain manner, watched disconsolately by his whole escort, knew nothing about a multiplicity of heavens.
He had heard the phrase “seven heavens” in ordinary conversation, but he had never been taught it was Scriptural. He was prompted, urged, goaded to a modification of this statement. Did he not know that the first heaven was little higher than the tops of the Great Smoky Mountains, but this proved too warm—therefore God created a second heaven, and then others until the ideal temperature was reached in the seventh heaven, where the Great Spirit dwelt, which was the reason that in prayer all should raise the hands seven times before speaking? No, the Capteny knew none of these things. And Rolloweh’s eye, resting on him with an access of rancor, suggested a doubt of the officer’s ignorance of such simple and obvious lore. He was found deficient, too, in any knowledge of a statement made by Rolloweh that one of the most significant warnings given rebellious man before the Deluge was the unprecedented factthat several infants were born with whole sets of teeth.
This ignorance vanished in the meeting with Moses. The officer knew him well and was even able to recognize him under the name of Wasi. In the wilderness Captain Howard, in the phrase of to-day, was “all there.” Never did pilgrims so gayly fare through benighted wastes as he and Rolloweh, while they traced all the consecutive steps toward the Promised Land and lived anew the familiar incidents of the wanderings. True, he gave a lamentably uncertain sound as to the tint of the standards, and did not believe that the Holy Scriptures stated that one was white and one was red, but Rolloweh so slurred this matter that it was obvious to all observers that the two men were practically of one mind and one source of information thus far.
The escort had taken heart of grace at perceiving their commander’s feet once more on solid ground—so to speak—in fact, they waxed so insolently confident as to grow drearily tired and absent-minded, as if at prolonged Sunday prayers in garrison or a lengthy sermon, but the attention of the Indians never flagged. Suddenly the crisis came when Rolloweh demanded:—
“The Capteny is a Christian?”
Captain Howard stanchly declared that he was.
“If a man should strike you on one cheek, Capteny, would you turn the other?”
The blow had fallen—the bomb had burst. Yet Captain Howard, somewhat blown, perhaps from hisbrisk jaunt through the wilderness, did not realize its full significance. He sat silent for a moment, blankly staring.
There was a stir in the great white seat of the “holy cabin,” sinister, inimical. An answer must be forthcoming. Captain Howard hesitated, a vicarious fear in his eyes—a fear for the missionary who suddenly called out—“Oh, man of blood! Would you forswear yourself?”
“No,” he said, glad to rely on his sturdy veracity; “I would not turn the other cheek.”
“And this,” cried Rolloweh, addressing the assemblage with sudden passion, “the forked tongue of this old serpent of the provinces”—he waved his hand at arm’s length toward the missionary, “teaches is religion for the Cherokee. Not for the British! The religion that has been the same road till now branches with a white, smooth path for the British, and a bloody, rocky, dark path for the Cherokee.”
A visible sensation swayed the crowd. The Indians exchanged glances of doubt, surprise, excitement, or triumph as the individual sentiment of congratulation or disappointment or indignation predominated. The soldiers looked at one another in dismay. Captain Howard, fairly ambushed, hardly knew which way to turn. Only the missionary stood unmoved, still gazing smilingly, indulgently, at the officer who had begun to fear that he had unwittingly compassed the old man’s ruin.
“Did the Capteny ever see any other Christian Briton who was struck and who turned the othercheek?”—Rolloweh demanded, pushing his advantage. Even the interpreter’s voice faltered as he put the query into English.
Captain Howard was minded to vouchsafe no reply. He had already been entrapped, it was true, through too anxious a desire to placate the savages, to conserve the peace of the frontier, and save the life of the old missionary. He might have done harm, rather than good, so impossible was it to forecast the event under circumstances so unprecedented. Then he resolutely swallowed his pride. The safety of his men was his primal consideration.
“No,” he replied, albeit a trifle sullenly, “I never saw a Christian struck who turned the other cheek.”
Rolloweh rose, with a fierce smile, bending to the crowd, waving both arms with the palms outward.
“If a man took your cloak, O Christian Capteny, would you give him your coat also?” he demanded.
“No,” snarled the Christian captain, “I’d give him a beating.”
There was a guttural sarcastic laugh around the square, ceasing as Rolloweh resumed:
“But this is the religion for the Cherokees—that they may be meek and broken, and after the land fling the weapon, and wear the yoke and drag the chain. Men and brothers, the spirits of the dead will rise against you if you suffer this. It is not agreeable to the old beloved rites that we tolerate this serpent of the forked tongue to scoff at our ancient worship and bring in a new religion, manufactured for the freeand independent Cherokee, which means British rule.”
There is something strangely daunting in the half-suppressed tumult of an angry crowd. It was not merely that an imprecation was heard here and the sibilance of whispered conspiracy there, or that restless gestures betokened a rising menace,—it was that a total change had come upon the aspect of the assemblage, as unmistakable as if a storm-cloud had blighted the day. The people were convinced. The work of the missionary was annihilated in this masterstroke of craft. To him it was only a reason for a renewal of his labors. When Captain Howard, tearing a leaf from his note-book, wrote a few words upon it and sent it into the “beloved square” by the interpreter, the clergyman merely glanced at it with a shaking head, and tossed it aside, saying with a smile, “No—my place is here. Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel!”
Rolloweh had watched the communication with jealous disfavor, but as the familiar words resounded on the air his eye glittered, his long, cruel, flat lips were sternly compressed; he glanced over to the booth where the English officer so incongruously was stationed, and enunciated the fatal words,—“Your beloved man will be removed.”
The attentive crowd caught the phrase, and a keen, savage cry of triumph suddenly broke forth, unlike anything ever voiced by civilized man—an utterance blended of the shrill exultation of a beast of prey, and the guttural human halloo, indescribable,nerve-thrilling, never to be forgotten, once heard. The transformation was complete. They were no more men—not even savages; they had entered upon that peculiar phase of their being which seems to those of different standards absolutely demoniac and demented. There was no right reason in some of the faces gazing at the impassive, unmoved old man in the centre of the square. They were waiting only the word for an act from which the imagination shrinks appalled. Captain Howard’s fears were intensified for his stalwart young soldiers, despite the terrors of the retributive power of England which the recent Cherokee war against the British government had served to induce in the tribe. As the swaying of the crowd and the gaudily decorated figures of the head-men in the “holy white cabin” betokened the breaking-up of the assemblage, he ordered a young sergeant to have the men fall in quietly and keep them together. Captain Howard’s attention was suddenly bespoken by the appearance of two or three chiefs who claimed a personal acquaintance, and who were approaching across the square to meet him. They were wreathing their harsh countenances into sardonic smiles, but they called out: “How! How!” very pleasantly by way of salutation.
Constrained to await their greeting, he bethought himself that perhaps some new influence, a fresh urgency, might avail with the stubborn old missionary.
“Raymond,” he said in a low voice to the ensign, “do you go to the Reverend Mr. Morton and use your best endeavors to persuade him to embark with us.If he remains here after our departure I fear me much these damn scoundrels will burn him alive.”
“I think I can persuade him, sir,” said the capable and confident ensign.
Captain Howard looked hard at the dashing and debonair young officer, erect, stalwart, alert, clear-eyed, as he lifted his hand to the brim of his cocked hat and turned away, jostled considerably in his movements, and perhaps intentionally, by a dozen or more contumacious looking tribesmen, who were awkwardly crowding about the booth assigned to the soldiers.
“Take three men with you, Ensign,” added Captain Howard. He had a positive fear that alone the subaltern might be attacked in the press, throttled, whisked away, tortured on the sly, and mysteriously disappearing, be lost to the service forever. “A trio of wide red Irish mouths,” he thought, “could not easily be silenced.”
And with this preparation for the graces of social intercourse he turned to greet the three chiefs who now came up with acclamations of pleasure, desirous of showing their companions the degree of consideration they enjoyed on the part of the commander of his Majesty’s fort.