The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757
morning! Hundreds of Frenchmen saw the sun that day for the last time; and even
their leader, Dieskau himself, fell into our hands, so cut and torn with the
lead, that he has gone back to his own country, unfit for further acts in
war.”
[1]
Baron Dieskau, a German, in the service of France. A few years previously to
the period of the tale, this officer was defeated by Sir William Johnson, of
Johnstown, New York, on the shores of Lake George.
“’Twas a noble repulse!” exclaimed Heyward, in the heat of
his youthful ardor; “the fame of it reached us early, in our southern
army.”
“Ay! but it did not end there. I was sent by Major Effingham, at Sir
William’s own bidding, to outflank the French, and carry the tidings of
their disaster across the portage, to the fort on the Hudson. Just hereaway,
where you see the trees rise into a mountain swell, I met a party coming down
to our aid, and I led them where the enemy were taking their meal, little
dreaming that they had not finished the bloody work of the day.”
“And you surprised them?”
“If death can be a surprise to men who are thinking only of the cravings
of their appetites. We gave them but little breathing time, for they had borne
hard upon us in the fight of the morning, and there were few in our party who
had not lost friend or relative by their hands.”
“When all was over, the dead, and some say the dying, were cast into that
little pond. These eyes have seen its waters colored with blood, as natural
water never yet flowed from the bowels of the ’arth.”
“It was a convenient, and, I trust, will prove a peaceful grave for a
soldier. You have then seen much service on this frontier?”
“Ay!” said the scout, erecting his tall person with an air of
military pride; “there are not many echoes among these hills that
haven’t rung with the crack of my rifle, nor is there the space of a
square mile atwixt Horican and the river, that ‘killdeer’
hasn’t dropped a living body on, be it an enemy or be it a brute beast.
As for the grave there being as quiet as you mention, it is another matter.
There are them in the camp who say and think, man, to lie still, should not be
buried while the breath is in the body; and certain it is that in the hurry of
that evening, the doctors had but little time to say who was living and who was
dead. Hist! see you nothing walking on the shore of the pond?”
“’Tis not probable that any are as houseless as ourselves in this
dreary forest.”
“Such as he may care but little for house or shelter, and night dew can
never wet a body that passes its days in the water,” returned the scout,
grasping the shoulder of Heyward with such convulsive strength as to make the
young soldier painfully sensible how much superstitious terror had got the
mastery of a man usually so dauntless.
“By heaven, there is a human form, and it approaches! Stand to your arms,
my friends; for we know not whom we encounter.”
“Qui vive?” demanded a stern, quick voice, which sounded like a
challenge from another world, issuing out of that solitary and solemn place.
“What says it?” whispered the scout; “it speaks neither
Indian nor English.”
“Qui vive?” repeated the same voice, which was quickly followed by
the rattling of arms, and a menacing attitude.
“France!” cried Heyward, advancing from the shadow of the trees to
the shore of the pond, within a few yards of the sentinel.
“D’ou venez-vous—ou allez-vous, d’aussi bonne
heure?” demanded the grenadier, in the language and with the accent of a
man from old France.
“Je viens de la découverte, et je vais me coucher.”
“Etes-vous officier du roi?”
“Sans doute, mon camarade; me prends-tu pour un provincial! Je suis
capitaine de chasseurs (Heyward well knew that the other was of a regiment in
the line); j’ai ici, avec moi, les filles du commandant de la
fortification. Aha! tu en as entendu parler! je les ai fait prisonnières près
de l’autre fort, et je les conduis au général.”
“Ma foi! mesdames; j’en suis faché pour vous,” exclaimed the
young soldier, touching his cap with grace; “mais—fortune de
guerre! vous trouverez notre général un brave homme, et bien poli avec les
dames.”
“C’est le caractere des gens de guerre,” said Cora, with
admirable self-possession. “Adieu, mon ami; je vous souhaiterais un
devoir plus agréable a remplir.”
The soldier made a low and humble acknowledgment for her civility; and Heyward
adding a “Bonne nuit, mon camarade,” they moved deliberately
forward, leaving the sentinel pacing the banks of the silent pond, little
suspecting an enemy of so much effrontery, and humming to himself those words
which were recalled to his mind by the sight of women, and, perhaps, by
recollections of his own distant and beautiful France:
“Vive le vin, vive l’amour,” &c., &c.
“’Tis well you understood the knave!” whispered the scout,
when they had gained a little distance from the place, and letting his rifle
fall into the hollow of his arm again; “I soon saw that he was one of
them uneasy Frenchers; and well for him it was that his speech was friendly and
his wishes kind, or a place might have been found for his bones among those of
his countrymen.”
He was interrupted by a long and heavy groan which arose from the little basin,
as though, in truth, the spirits of the departed lingered about their watery
sepulcher.
“Surely it was of flesh,” continued the scout; “no spirit
could handle its arms so steadily.”
“It _was_ of flesh; but whether the poor fellow still belongs to
this world may well be doubted,” said Heyward, glancing his eyes around
him, and missing Chingachgook from their little band. Another groan more faint
than the former was succeeded by a heavy and sullen plunge into the water, and
all was still again as if the borders of the dreary pool had never been
awakened from the silence of creation. While they yet hesitated in uncertainty,
the form of the Indian was seen gliding out of the thicket. As the chief
rejoined them, with one hand he attached the reeking scalp of the unfortunate
young Frenchman to his girdle, and with the other he replaced the knife and
tomahawk that had drunk his blood. He then took his wonted station, with the
air of a man who believed he had done a deed of merit.
The scout dropped one end of his rifle to the earth, and leaning his hands on
the other, he stood musing in profound silence. Then, shaking his head in a
mournful manner, he muttered:
“’Twould have been a cruel and an unhuman act for a white-skin; but
’tis the gift and natur’ of an Indian, and I suppose it should not
be denied. I could wish, though, it had befallen an accursed Mingo, rather than
that gay young boy from the old countries.”
“Enough!” said Heyward, apprehensive the unconscious sisters might
comprehend the nature of the detention, and conquering his disgust by a train
of reflections very much like that of the hunter; “’tis done; and
though better it were left undone, cannot be amended. You see, we are, too
obviously within the sentinels of the enemy; what course do you propose to
follow?”
“Yes,” said Hawkeye, rousing himself again; “’tis as
you say, too late to harbor further thoughts about it. Ay, the French have
gathered around the fort in good earnest and we have a delicate needle to
thread in passing them.”
“And but little time to do it in,” added Heyward, glancing his eyes
upwards, toward the bank of vapor that concealed the setting moon.
“And little time to do it in!” repeated the scout. “The thing
may be done in two fashions, by the help of Providence, without which it may
not be done at all.”
“Name them quickly for time presses.”
“One would be to dismount the gentle ones, and let their beasts range the
plain, by sending the Mohicans in front, we might then cut a lane through their
sentries, and enter the fort over the dead bodies.”
“It will not do—it will not do!” interrupted the generous
Heyward; “a soldier might force his way in this manner, but never with
such a convoy.”
“’Twould be, indeed, a bloody path for such tender feet to wade
in,” returned the equally reluctant scout; “but I thought it
befitting my manhood to name it. We must, then, turn in our trail and get
without the line of their lookouts, when we will bend short to the west, and
enter the mountains; where I can hide you, so that all the devil’s hounds
in Montcalm’s pay would be thrown off the scent for months to
come.”
“Let it be done, and that instantly.”
Further words were unnecessary; for Hawkeye, merely uttering the mandate to
“follow,” moved along the route by which they had just entered
their present critical and even dangerous situation. Their progress, like their
late dialogue, was guarded, and without noise; for none knew at what moment a
passing patrol, or a crouching picket of the enemy, might rise upon their path.
As they held their silent way along the margin of the pond, again Heyward and
the scout stole furtive glances at its appalling dreariness. They looked in
vain for the form they had so recently seen stalking along in silent shores,
while a low and regular wash of the little waves, by announcing that the waters
were not yet subsided, furnished a frightful memorial of the deed of blood they
had just witnessed. Like all that passing and gloomy scene, the low basin,
however, quickly melted in the darkness, and became blended with the mass of
black objects in the rear of the travelers.
Hawkeye soon deviated from the line of their retreat, and striking off towards
the mountains which form the western boundary of the narrow plain, he led his
followers, with swift steps, deep within the shadows that were cast from their
high and broken summits. The route was now painful; lying over ground ragged
with rocks, and intersected with ravines, and their progress proportionately
slow. Bleak and black hills lay on every side of them, compensating in some
degree for the additional toil of the march by the sense of security they
imparted. At length the party began slowly to rise a steep and rugged ascent,
by a path that curiously wound among rocks and trees, avoiding the one and
supported by the other, in a manner that showed it had been devised by men long
practised in the arts of the wilderness. As they gradually rose from the level
of the valleys, the thick darkness which usually precedes the approach of day
began to disperse, and objects were seen in the plain and palpable colors with
which they had been gifted by nature. When they issued from the stunted woods
which clung to the barren sides of the mountain, upon a flat and mossy rock
that formed its summit, they met the morning, as it came blushing above the
green pines of a hill that lay on the opposite side of the valley of the
Horican.
The scout now told the sisters to dismount; and taking the bridles from the
mouths, and the saddles off the backs of the jaded beasts, he turned them
loose, to glean a scanty subsistence among the shrubs and meager herbage of
that elevated region.
“Go,” he said, “and seek your food where natur’ gives
it to you; and beware that you become not food to ravenous wolves yourselves,
among these hills.”
“Have we no further need of them?” demanded Heyward.
“See, and judge with your own eyes,” said the scout, advancing
toward the eastern brow of the mountain, whither he beckoned for the whole
party to follow; “if it was as easy to look into the heart of man as it
is to spy out the nakedness of Montcalm’s camp from this spot, hypocrites
would grow scarce, and the cunning of a Mingo might prove a losing game,
compared to the honesty of a Delaware.”
When the travelers reached the verge of the precipices they saw, at a glance,
the truth of the scout’s declaration, and the admirable foresight with
which he had led them to their commanding station.