The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757
loud whoop upon the expected Chingachgook. It was the signal for a general
combat. Neither party had firearms, and the contest was to be decided in the
deadliest manner, hand to hand, with weapons of offense, and none of defense.
Uncas answered the whoop, and leaping on an enemy, with a single, well-directed
blow of his tomahawk, cleft him to the brain. Heyward tore the weapon of Magua
from the sapling, and rushed eagerly toward the fray. As the combatants were
now equal in number, each singled an opponent from the adverse band. The rush
and blows passed with the fury of a whirlwind, and the swiftness of lightning.
Hawkeye soon got another enemy within reach of his arm, and with one sweep of
his formidable weapon he beat down the slight and inartificial defenses of his
antagonist, crushing him to the earth with the blow. Heyward ventured to hurl
the tomahawk he had seized, too ardent to await the moment of closing. It
struck the Indian he had selected on the forehead, and checked for an instant
his onward rush. Encouraged by this slight advantage, the impetuous young man
continued his onset, and sprang upon his enemy with naked hands. A single
instant was enough to assure him of the rashness of the measure, for he
immediately found himself fully engaged, with all his activity and courage, in
endeavoring to ward the desperate thrusts made with the knife of the Huron.
Unable longer to foil an enemy so alert and vigilant, he threw his arms about
him, and succeeded in pinning the limbs of the other to his side, with an iron
grasp, but one that was far too exhausting to himself to continue long. In this
extremity he heard a voice near him, shouting:
“Extarminate the varlets! no quarter to an accursed Mingo!”
At the next moment, the breech of Hawkeye’s rifle fell on the naked head
of his adversary, whose muscles appeared to wither under the shock, as he sank
from the arms of Duncan, flexible and motionless.
When Uncas had brained his first antagonist, he turned, like a hungry lion, to
seek another. The fifth and only Huron disengaged at the first onset had paused
a moment, and then seeing that all around him were employed in the deadly
strife, he had sought, with hellish vengeance, to complete the baffled work of
revenge. Raising a shout of triumph, he sprang toward the defenseless Cora,
sending his keen axe as the dreadful precursor of his approach. The tomahawk
grazed her shoulder, and cutting the withes which bound her to the tree, left
the maiden at liberty to fly. She eluded the grasp of the savage, and reckless
of her own safety, threw herself on the bosom of Alice, striving with convulsed
and ill-directed fingers, to tear asunder the twigs which confined the person
of her sister. Any other than a monster would have relented at such an act of
generous devotion to the best and purest affection; but the breast of the Huron
was a stranger to sympathy. Seizing Cora by the rich tresses which fell in
confusion about her form, he tore her from her frantic hold, and bowed her down
with brutal violence to her knees. The savage drew the flowing curls through
his hand, and raising them on high with an outstretched arm, he passed the
knife around the exquisitely molded head of his victim, with a taunting and
exulting laugh. But he purchased this moment of fierce gratification with the
loss of the fatal opportunity. It was just then the sight caught the eye of
Uncas. Bounding from his footsteps he appeared for an instant darting through
the air and descending in a ball he fell on the chest of his enemy, driving him
many yards from the spot, headlong and prostrate. The violence of the exertion
cast the young Mohican at his side. They arose together, fought, and bled, each
in his turn. But the conflict was soon decided; the tomahawk of Heyward and the
rifle of Hawkeye descended on the skull of the Huron, at the same moment that
the knife of Uncas reached his heart.
The battle was now entirely terminated with the exception of the protracted
struggle between “Le Renard Subtil” and “Le Gros
Serpent.” Well did these barbarous warriors prove that they deserved
those significant names which had been bestowed for deeds in former wars. When
they engaged, some little time was lost in eluding the quick and vigorous
thrusts which had been aimed at their lives. Suddenly darting on each other,
they closed, and came to the earth, twisted together like twining serpents, in
pliant and subtle folds. At the moment when the victors found themselves
unoccupied, the spot where these experienced and desperate combatants lay could
only be distinguished by a cloud of dust and leaves, which moved from the
center of the little plain toward its boundary, as if raised by the passage of
a whirlwind. Urged by the different motives of filial affection, friendship and
gratitude, Heyward and his companions rushed with one accord to the place,
encircling the little canopy of dust which hung above the warriors. In vain did
Uncas dart around the cloud, with a wish to strike his knife into the heart of
his father’s foe; the threatening rifle of Hawkeye was raised and
suspended in vain, while Duncan endeavored to seize the limbs of the Huron with
hands that appeared to have lost their power. Covered as they were with dust
and blood, the swift evolutions of the combatants seemed to incorporate their
bodies into one. The death-like looking figure of the Mohican, and the dark
form of the Huron, gleamed before their eyes in such quick and confused
succession, that the friends of the former knew not where to plant the
succoring blow. It is true there were short and fleeting moments, when the
fiery eyes of Magua were seen glittering, like the fabled organs of the
basilisk through the dusty wreath by which he was enveloped, and he read by
those short and deadly glances the fate of the combat in the presence of his
enemies; ere, however, any hostile hand could descend on his devoted head, its
place was filled by the scowling visage of Chingachgook. In this manner the
scene of the combat was removed from the center of the little plain to its
verge. The Mohican now found an opportunity to make a powerful thrust with his
knife; Magua suddenly relinquished his grasp, and fell backward without motion,
and seemingly without life. His adversary leaped on his feet, making the arches
of the forest ring with the sounds of triumph.
“Well done for the Delawares! victory to the Mohicans!” cried
Hawkeye, once more elevating the butt of the long and fatal rifle; “a
finishing blow from a man without a cross will never tell against his honor,
nor rob him of his right to the scalp.”
But at the very moment when the dangerous weapon was in the act of descending,
the subtle Huron rolled swiftly from beneath the danger, over the edge of the
precipice, and falling on his feet, was seen leaping, with a single bound, into
the center of a thicket of low bushes, which clung along its sides. The
Delawares, who had believed their enemy dead, uttered their exclamation of
surprise, and were following with speed and clamor, like hounds in open view of
the deer, when a shrill and peculiar cry from the scout instantly changed their
purpose, and recalled them to the summit of the hill.
“’Twas like himself!” cried the inveterate forester, whose
prejudices contributed so largely to veil his natural sense of justice in all
matters which concerned the Mingoes; “a lying and deceitful varlet as he
is. An honest Delaware now, being fairly vanquished, would have lain still, and
been knocked on the head, but these knavish Maquas cling to life like so many
cats-o’-the-mountain. Let him go—let him go; ’tis but one
man, and he without rifle or bow, many a long mile from his French commerades;
and like a rattler that lost his fangs, he can do no further mischief, until
such time as he, and we too, may leave the prints of our moccasins over a long
reach of sandy plain. See, Uncas,” he added, in Delaware, “your
father is flaying the scalps already. It may be well to go round and feel the
vagabonds that are left, or we may have another of them loping through the
woods, and screeching like a jay that has been winged.”
So saying the honest but implacable scout made the circuit of the dead, into
whose senseless bosoms he thrust his long knife, with as much coolness as
though they had been so many brute carcasses. He had, however, been anticipated
by the elder Mohican, who had already torn the emblems of victory from the
unresisting heads of the slain.
But Uncas, denying his habits, we had almost said his nature, flew with
instinctive delicacy, accompanied by Heyward, to the assistance of the females,
and quickly releasing Alice, placed her in the arms of Cora. We shall not
attempt to describe the gratitude to the Almighty Disposer of Events which
glowed in the bosoms of the sisters, who were thus unexpectedly restored to
life and to each other. Their thanksgivings were deep and silent; the offerings
of their gentle spirits burning brightest and purest on the secret altars of
their hearts; and their renovated and more earthly feelings exhibiting
themselves in long and fervent though speechless caresses. As Alice rose from
her knees, where she had sunk by the side of Cora, she threw herself on the
bosom of the latter, and sobbed aloud the name of their aged father, while her
soft, dove-like eyes, sparkled with the rays of hope.
“We are saved! we are saved!” she murmured; “to return to the
arms of our dear, dear father, and his heart will not be broken with grief. And
you, too, Cora, my sister, my more than sister, my mother; you, too, are
spared. And Duncan,” she added, looking round upon the youth with a smile
of ineffable innocence, “even our own brave and noble Duncan has escaped
without a hurt.”
To these ardent and nearly innocent words Cora made no other answer than by
straining the youthful speaker to her heart, as she bent over her in melting
tenderness. The manhood of Heyward felt no shame in dropping tears over this
spectacle of affectionate rapture; and Uncas stood, fresh and blood-stained
from the combat, a calm, and, apparently, an unmoved looker-on, it is true, but
with eyes that had already lost their fierceness, and were beaming with a
sympathy that elevated him far above the intelligence, and advanced him
probably centuries before, the practises of his nation.
During this display of emotions so natural in their situation, Hawkeye, whose
vigilant distrust had satisfied itself that the Hurons, who disfigured the
heavenly scene, no longer possessed the power to interrupt its harmony,
approached David, and liberated him from the bonds he had, until that moment,
endured with the most exemplary patience.
“There,” exclaimed the scout, casting the last withe behind him,
“you are once more master of your own limbs, though you seem not to use
them with much greater judgment than that in which they were first fashioned.
If advice from one who is not older than yourself, but who, having lived most
of his time in the wilderness, may be said to have experience beyond his years,
will give no offense, you are welcome to my thoughts; and these are, to part
with the little tooting instrument in your jacket to the first fool you meet
with, and buy some we’pon with the money, if it be only the barrel of a
horseman’s pistol. By industry and care, you might thus come to some
prefarment; for by this time, I should think, your eyes would plainly tell you
that a carrion crow is a better bird than a mocking-thresher. The one will, at
least, remove foul sights from before the face of man, while the other is only
good to brew disturbances in the woods, by cheating the ears of all that hear
them.”
“Arms and the clarion for the battle, but the song of thanksgiving to the