The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757
remains there is hope’, is more consoling, and better suited to a
soldier’s temperament. To you, Cora, I will urge no words of idle
encouragement; your own fortitude and undisturbed reason will teach you all
that may become your sex; but cannot we dry the tears of that trembling weeper
on your bosom?”
“I am calmer, Duncan,” said Alice, raising herself from the arms of
her sister, and forcing an appearance of composure through her tears;
“much calmer, now. Surely, in this hidden spot we are safe, we are
secret, free from injury; we will hope everything from those generous men who
have risked so much already in our behalf.”
“Now does our gentle Alice speak like a daughter of Munro!” said
Heyward, pausing to press her hand as he passed toward the outer entrance of
the cavern. “With two such examples of courage before him, a man would be
ashamed to prove other than a hero.” He then seated himself in the center
of the cavern, grasping his remaining pistol with a hand convulsively clenched,
while his contracted and frowning eye announced the sullen desperation of his
purpose. “The Hurons, if they come, may not gain our position so easily
as they think,” he slowly muttered; and propping his head back against
the rock, he seemed to await the result in patience, though his gaze was
unceasingly bent on the open avenue to their place of retreat.
With the last sound of his voice, a deep, a long, and almost breathless silence
succeeded. The fresh air of the morning had penetrated the recess, and its
influence was gradually felt on the spirits of its inmates. As minute after
minute passed by, leaving them in undisturbed security, the insinuating feeling
of hope was gradually gaining possession of every bosom, though each one felt
reluctant to give utterance to expectations that the next moment might so
fearfully destroy.
David alone formed an exception to these varying emotions. A gleam of light
from the opening crossed his wan countenance, and fell upon the pages of the
little volume, whose leaves he was again occupied in turning, as if searching
for some song more fitted to their condition than any that had yet met their
eye. He was, most probably, acting all this time under a confused recollection
of the promised consolation of Duncan. At length, it would seem, his patient
industry found its reward; for, without explanation or apology, he pronounced
aloud the words “Isle of Wight,” drew a long, sweet sound from his
pitch-pipe, and then ran through the preliminary modulations of the air whose
name he had just mentioned, with the sweeter tones of his own musical voice.
“May not this prove dangerous?” asked Cora, glancing her dark eye
at Major Heyward.
“Poor fellow! his voice is too feeble to be heard above the din of the
falls,” was the answer; “beside, the cavern will prove his friend.
Let him indulge his passions since it may be done without hazard.”
“Isle of Wight!” repeated David, looking about him with that
dignity with which he had long been wont to silence the whispering echoes of
his school; “’tis a brave tune, and set to solemn words! let it be
sung with meet respect!”
After allowing a moment of stillness to enforce his discipline, the voice of
the singer was heard, in low, murmuring syllables, gradually stealing on the
ear, until it filled the narrow vault with sounds rendered trebly thrilling by
the feeble and tremulous utterance produced by his debility. The melody, which
no weakness could destroy, gradually wrought its sweet influence on the senses
of those who heard it. It even prevailed over the miserable travesty of the
song of David which the singer had selected from a volume of similar effusions,
and caused the sense to be forgotten in the insinuating harmony of the sounds.
Alice unconsciously dried her tears, and bent her melting eyes on the pallid
features of Gamut, with an expression of chastened delight that she neither
affected or wished to conceal. Cora bestowed an approving smile on the pious
efforts of the namesake of the Jewish prince, and Heyward soon turned his
steady, stern look from the outlet of the cavern, to fasten it, with a milder
character, on the face of David, or to meet the wandering beams which at
moments strayed from the humid eyes of Alice. The open sympathy of the
listeners stirred the spirit of the votary of music, whose voice regained its
richness and volume, without losing that touching softness which proved its
secret charm. Exerting his renovated powers to their utmost, he was yet filling
the arches of the cave with long and full tones, when a yell burst into the air
without, that instantly stilled his pious strains, choking his voice suddenly,
as though his heart had literally bounded into the passage of his throat.
“We are lost!” exclaimed Alice, throwing herself into the arms of
Cora.
“Not yet, not yet,” returned the agitated but undaunted Heyward:
“the sound came from the center of the island, and it has been produced
by the sight of their dead companions. We are not yet discovered, and there is
still hope.”
Faint and almost despairing as was the prospect of escape, the words of Duncan
were not thrown away, for it awakened the powers of the sisters in such a
manner that they awaited the results in silence. A second yell soon followed
the first, when a rush of voices was heard pouring down the island, from its
upper to its lower extremity, until they reached the naked rock above the
caverns, where, after a shout of savage triumph, the air continued full of
horrible cries and screams, such as man alone can utter, and he only when in a
state of the fiercest barbarity.
The sounds quickly spread around them in every direction. Some called to their
fellows from the water’s edge, and were answered from the heights above.
Cries were heard in the startling vicinity of the chasm between the two caves,
which mingled with hoarser yells that arose out of the abyss of the deep
ravine. In short, so rapidly had the savage sounds diffused themselves over the
barren rock, that it was not difficult for the anxious listeners to imagine
they could be heard beneath, as in truth they were above on every side of them.
In the midst of this tumult, a triumphant yell was raised within a few yards of
the hidden entrance to the cave. Heyward abandoned every hope, with the belief
it was the signal that they were discovered. Again the impression passed away,
as he heard the voices collect near the spot where the white man had so
reluctantly abandoned his rifle. Amid the jargon of Indian dialects that he now
plainly heard, it was easy to distinguish not only words, but sentences, in the
patois of the Canadas. A burst of voices had shouted simultaneously, “La
Longue Carabine!” causing the opposite woods to re-echo with a name
which, Heyward well remembered, had been given by his enemies to a celebrated
hunter and scout of the English camp, and who, he now learned for the first
time, had been his late companion.
“La Longue Carabine! La Longue Carabine!” passed from mouth to
mouth, until the whole band appeared to be collected around a trophy which
would seem to announce the death of its formidable owner. After a vociferous
consultation, which was, at times, deafened by bursts of savage joy, they again
separated, filling the air with the name of a foe, whose body, Heywood could
collect from their expressions, they hoped to find concealed in some crevice of
the island.
“Now,” he whispered to the trembling sisters, “now is the
moment of uncertainty! if our place of retreat escape this scrutiny, we are
still safe! In every event, we are assured, by what has fallen from our
enemies, that our friends have escaped, and in two short hours we may look for
succor from Webb.”
There were now a few minutes of fearful stillness, during which Heyward well
knew that the savages conducted their search with greater vigilance and method.
More than once he could distinguish their footsteps, as they brushed the
sassafras, causing the faded leaves to rustle, and the branches to snap. At
length, the pile yielded a little, a corner of a blanket fell, and a faint ray
of light gleamed into the inner part of the cave. Cora folded Alice to her
bosom in agony, and Duncan sprang to his feet. A shout was at that moment
heard, as if issuing from the center of the rock, announcing that the
neighboring cavern had at length been entered. In a minute, the number and
loudness of the voices indicated that the whole party was collected in and
around that secret place.
As the inner passages to the two caves were so close to each other, Duncan,
believing that escape was no longer possible, passed David and the sisters, to
place himself between the latter and the first onset of the terrible meeting.
Grown desperate by his situation, he drew nigh the slight barrier which
separated him only by a few feet from his relentless pursuers, and placing his
face to the casual opening, he even looked out with a sort of desperate
indifference, on their movements.
Within reach of his arm was the brawny shoulder of a gigantic Indian, whose
deep and authoritative voice appeared to give directions to the proceedings of
his fellows. Beyond him again, Duncan could look into the vault opposite, which
was filled with savages, upturning and rifling the humble furniture of the
scout. The wound of David had dyed the leaves of sassafras with a color that
the native well knew as anticipating the season. Over this sign of their
success, they sent up a howl, like an opening from so many hounds who had
recovered a lost trail. After this yell of victory, they tore up the fragrant
bed of the cavern, and bore the branches into the chasm, scattering the boughs,
as if they suspected them of concealing the person of the man they had so long
hated and feared. One fierce and wild-looking warrior approached the chief,
bearing a load of the brush, and pointing exultingly to the deep red stains
with which it was sprinkled, uttered his joy in Indian yells, whose meaning
Heyward was only enabled to comprehend by the frequent repetition of the name
“La Longue Carabine!” When his triumph had ceased, he cast the
brush on the slight heap Duncan had made before the entrance of the second
cavern, and closed the view. His example was followed by others, who, as they
drew the branches from the cave of the scout, threw them into one pile, adding,
unconsciously, to the security of those they sought. The very slightness of the
defense was its chief merit, for no one thought of disturbing a mass of brush,
which all of them believed, in that moment of hurry and confusion, had been
accidentally raised by the hands of their own party.
As the blankets yielded before the outward pressure, and the branches settled
in the fissure of the rock by their own weight, forming a compact body, Duncan
once more breathed freely. With a light step and lighter heart, he returned to
the center of the cave, and took the place he had left, where he could command
a view of the opening next the river. While he was in the act of making this
movement, the Indians, as if changing their purpose by a common impulse, broke
away from the chasm in a body, and were heard rushing up the island again,
toward the point whence they had originally descended. Here another wailing cry
betrayed that they were again collected around the bodies of their dead
comrades.
Duncan now ventured to look at his companions; for, during the most critical
moments of their danger, he had been apprehensive that the anxiety of his
countenance might communicate some additional alarm to those who were so little
able to sustain it.
“They are gone, Cora!” he whispered; “Alice, they are
returned whence they came, and we are saved! To Heaven, that has alone