The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757
bitterest enemy is in their hands. Uncas, topmost branch of a noble trunk, call
on the cowards to hasten, or their hearts will soften, and they will change to
women!”
“They look among the fishes for their dead!” returned the low, soft
voice of the youthful chieftain; “the Hurons float with the slimy eels!
They drop from the oaks like fruit that is ready to be eaten! and the Delawares
laugh!”
“Ay, ay,” muttered the scout, who had listened to this peculiar
burst of the natives with deep attention; “they have warmed their Indian
feelings, and they’ll soon provoke the Maquas to give them a speedy end.
As for me, who am of the whole blood of the whites, it is befitting that I
should die as becomes my color, with no words of scoffing in my mouth, and
without bitterness at the heart!”
“Why die at all!” said Cora, advancing from the place where natural
horror had, until this moment, held her riveted to the rock; “the path is
open on every side; fly, then, to the woods, and call on God for succor. Go,
brave men, we owe you too much already; let us no longer involve you in our
hapless fortunes!”
“You but little know the craft of the Iroquois, lady, if you judge they
have left the path open to the woods!” returned Hawkeye, who, however,
immediately added in his simplicity, “the down stream current, it is
certain, might soon sweep us beyond the reach of their rifles or the sound of
their voices.”
“Then try the river. Why linger to add to the number of the victims of
our merciless enemies?”
“Why,” repeated the scout, looking about him proudly;
“because it is better for a man to die at peace with himself than to live
haunted by an evil conscience! What answer could we give Munro, when he asked
us where and how we left his children?”
“Go to him, and say that you left them with a message to hasten to their
aid,” returned Cora, advancing nigher to the scout in her generous ardor;
“that the Hurons bear them into the northern wilds, but that by vigilance
and speed they may yet be rescued; and if, after all, it should please heaven
that his assistance come too late, bear to him,” she continued, her voice
gradually lowering, until it seemed nearly choked, “the love, the
blessings, the final prayers of his daughters, and bid him not mourn their
early fate, but to look forward with humble confidence to the Christian’s
goal to meet his children.” The hard, weather-beaten features of the
scout began to work, and when she had ended, he dropped his chin to his hand,
like a man musing profoundly on the nature of the proposal.
“There is reason in her words!” at length broke from his compressed
and trembling lips; “ay, and they bear the spirit of Christianity; what
might be right and proper in a red-skin, may be sinful in a man who has not
even a cross in blood to plead for his ignorance. Chingachgook! Uncas! hear you
the talk of the dark-eyed woman?”
He now spoke in Delaware to his companions, and his address, though calm and
deliberate, seemed very decided. The elder Mohican heard with deep gravity, and
appeared to ponder on his words, as though he felt the importance of their
import. After a moment of hesitation, he waved his hand in assent, and uttered
the English word “Good!” with the peculiar emphasis of his people.
Then, replacing his knife and tomahawk in his girdle, the warrior moved
silently to the edge of the rock which was most concealed from the banks of the
river. Here he paused a moment, pointed significantly to the woods below, and
saying a few words in his own language, as if indicating his intended route, he
dropped into the water, and sank from before the eyes of the witnesses of his
movements.
The scout delayed his departure to speak to the generous girl, whose breathing
became lighter as she saw the success of her remonstrance.
“Wisdom is sometimes given to the young, as well as to the old,” he
said; “and what you have spoken is wise, not to call it by a better word.
If you are led into the woods, that is such of you as may be spared for awhile,
break the twigs on the bushes as you pass, and make the marks of your trail as
broad as you can, when, if mortal eyes can see them, depend on having a friend
who will follow to the ends of the ’arth afore he desarts you.”
He gave Cora an affectionate shake of the hand, lifted his rifle, and after
regarding it a moment with melancholy solicitude, laid it carefully aside, and
descended to the place where Chingachgook had just disappeared. For an instant
he hung suspended by the rock, and looking about him, with a countenance of
peculiar care, he added bitterly, “Had the powder held out, this disgrace
could never have befallen!” then, loosening his hold, the water closed
above his head, and he also became lost to view.
All eyes now were turned on Uncas, who stood leaning against the ragged rock,
in immovable composure. After waiting a short time, Cora pointed down the
river, and said:
“Your friends have not been seen, and are now, most probably, in safety.
Is it not time for you to follow?”
“Uncas will stay,” the young Mohican calmly answered in English.
“To increase the horror of our capture, and to diminish the chances of
our release! Go, generous young man,” Cora continued, lowering her eyes
under the gaze of the Mohican, and perhaps, with an intuitive consciousness of
her power; “go to my father, as I have said, and be the most confidential
of my messengers. Tell him to trust you with the means to buy the freedom of
his daughters. Go! ’tis my wish, ’tis my prayer, that you will
go!”
The settled, calm look of the young chief changed to an expression of gloom,
but he no longer hesitated. With a noiseless step he crossed the rock, and
dropped into the troubled stream. Hardly a breath was drawn by those he left
behind, until they caught a glimpse of his head emerging for air, far down the
current, when he again sank, and was seen no more.
These sudden and apparently successful experiments had all taken place in a few
minutes of that time which had now become so precious. After a last look at
Uncas, Cora turned and with a quivering lip, addressed herself to Heyward:
“I have heard of your boasted skill in the water, too, Duncan,” she
said; “follow, then, the wise example set you by these simple and
faithful beings.”
“Is such the faith that Cora Munro would exact from her protector?”
said the young man, smiling mournfully, but with bitterness.
“This is not a time for idle subtleties and false opinions,” she
answered; “but a moment when every duty should be equally considered. To
us you can be of no further service here, but your precious life may be saved
for other and nearer friends.”
He made no reply, though his eye fell wistfully on the beautiful form of Alice,
who was clinging to his arm with the dependency of an infant.
“Consider,” continued Cora, after a pause, during which she seemed
to struggle with a pang even more acute than any that her fears had excited,
“that the worst to us can be but death; a tribute that all must pay at
the good time of God’s appointment.”
“There are evils worse than death,” said Duncan, speaking hoarsely,
and as if fretful at her importunity, “but which the presence of one who
would die in your behalf may avert.”
Cora ceased her entreaties; and veiling her face in her shawl, drew the nearly
insensible Alice after her into the deepest recess of the inner cavern.
CHAPTER IX.
“Be gay securely;
Dispel, my fair, with smiles, the tim’rous clouds,
That hang on thy clear brow.”—Death of Agrippina
The sudden and almost magical change, from the stirring incidents of the combat
to the stillness that now reigned around him, acted on the heated imagination
of Heyward like some exciting dream. While all the images and events he had
witnessed remained deeply impressed on his memory, he felt a difficulty in
persuading him of their truth. Still ignorant of the fate of those who had
trusted to the aid of the swift current, he at first listened intently to any
signal or sounds of alarm, which might announce the good or evil fortune of
their hazardous undertaking. His attention was, however, bestowed in vain; for
with the disappearance of Uncas, every sign of the adventurers had been lost,
leaving him in total uncertainty of their fate.
In a moment of such painful doubt, Duncan did not hesitate to look around him,
without consulting that protection from the rocks which just before had been so
necessary to his safety. Every effort, however, to detect the least evidence of
the approach of their hidden enemies was as fruitless as the inquiry after his
late companions. The wooded banks of the river seemed again deserted by
everything possessing animal life. The uproar which had so lately echoed
through the vaults of the forest was gone, leaving the rush of the waters to
swell and sink on the currents of the air, in the unmingled sweetness of
nature. A fish-hawk, which, secure on the topmost branches of a dead pine, had
been a distant spectator of the fray, now swooped from his high and ragged
perch, and soared, in wide sweeps, above his prey; while a jay, whose noisy
voice had been stilled by the hoarser cries of the savages, ventured again to
open his discordant throat, as though once more in undisturbed possession of
his wild domains. Duncan caught from these natural accompaniments of the
solitary scene a glimmering of hope; and he began to rally his faculties to
renewed exertions, with something like a reviving confidence of success.
“The Hurons are not to be seen,” he said, addressing David, who had
by no means recovered from the effects of the stunning blow he had received;
“let us conceal ourselves in the cavern, and trust the rest to
Providence.”
“I remember to have united with two comely maidens, in lifting up our
voices in praise and thanksgiving,” returned the bewildered
singing-master; “since which time I have been visited by a heavy judgment
for my sins. I have been mocked with the likeness of sleep, while sounds of
discord have rent my ears, such as might manifest the fullness of time, and
that nature had forgotten her harmony.”
“Poor fellow! thine own period was, in truth, near its accomplishment!
But arouse, and come with me; I will lead you where all other sounds but those
of your own psalmody shall be excluded.”
“There is melody in the fall of the cataract, and the rushing of many
waters is sweet to the senses!” said David, pressing his hand confusedly
on his brow. “Is not the air yet filled with shrieks and cries, as though
the departed spirits of the damned—”
“Not now, not now,” interrupted the impatient Heyward, “they
have ceased, and they who raised them, I trust in God, they are gone, too!
everything but the water is still and at peace; in, then, where you may create
those sounds you love so well to hear.”
David smiled sadly, though not without a momentary gleam of pleasure, at this
allusion to his beloved vocation. He no longer hesitated to be led to a spot
which promised such unalloyed gratification to his wearied senses; and leaning
on the arm of his companion, he entered the narrow mouth of the cave. Duncan
seized a pile of the sassafras, which he drew before the passage, studiously
concealing every appearance of an aperture. Within this fragile barrier he
arranged the blankets abandoned by the foresters, darkening the inner extremity
of the cavern, while its outer received a chastened light from the narrow
ravine, through which one arm of the river rushed to form the junction with its
sister branch a few rods below.
“I like not the principle of the natives, which teaches them to submit
without a struggle, in emergencies that appear desperate,” he said, while
busied in this employment; “our own maxim, which says, ‘while life