The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757
side of the mountain, in time to note the route of the pursued. The course lay
up the ascent, and still continued hazardous and laborious.
Encumbered by his rifle, and, perhaps, not sustained by so deep an interest in
the captive as his companions, the scout suffered the latter to precede him a
little, Uncas, in his turn, taking the lead of Heyward. In this manner, rocks,
precipices and difficulties were surmounted in an incredibly short space, that
at another time, and under other circumstances, would have been deemed almost
insuperable. But the impetuous young men were rewarded by finding that,
encumbered with Cora, the Hurons were losing ground in the race.
“Stay, dog of the Wyandots!” exclaimed Uncas, shaking his bright
tomahawk at Magua; “a Delaware girl calls stay!”
“I will go no further!” cried Cora, stopping unexpectedly on a
ledge of rock, that overhung a deep precipice, at no great distance from the
summit of the mountain. “Kill me if thou wilt, detestable Huron; I will
go no further.”
The supporters of the maiden raised their ready tomahawks with the impious joy
that fiends are thought to take in mischief, but Magua stayed the uplifted
arms. The Huron chief, after casting the weapons he had wrested from his
companions over the rock, drew his knife, and turned to his captive, with a
look in which conflicting passions fiercely contended.
“Woman,” he said, “chose; the wigwam or the knife of Le
Subtil!”
Cora regarded him not, but dropping on her knees, she raised her eyes and
stretched her arms toward heaven, saying in a meek and yet confiding voice:
“I am thine; do with me as thou seest best!”
“Woman,” repeated Magua, hoarsely, and endeavoring in vain to catch
a glance from her serene and beaming eye, “choose!”
But Cora neither heard nor heeded his demand. The form of the Huron trembled in
every fibre, and he raised his arm on high, but dropped it again with a
bewildered air, like one who doubted. Once more he struggled with himself and
lifted the keen weapon again; but just then a piercing cry was heard above
them, and Uncas appeared, leaping frantically, from a fearful height, upon the
ledge. Magua recoiled a step; and one of his assistants, profiting by the
chance, sheathed his own knife in the bosom of Cora.
The Huron sprang like a tiger on his offending and already retreating country
man, but the falling form of Uncas separated the unnatural combatants. Diverted
from his object by this interruption, and maddened by the murder he had just
witnessed, Magua buried his weapon in the back of the prostrate Delaware,
uttering an unearthly shout as he committed the dastardly deed. But Uncas arose
from the blow, as the wounded panther turns upon his foe, and struck the
murderer of Cora to his feet, by an effort in which the last of his failing
strength was expended. Then, with a stern and steady look, he turned to Le
Subtil, and indicated by the expression of his eye all that he would do had not
the power deserted him. The latter seized the nerveless arm of the unresisting
Delaware, and passed his knife into his bosom three several times, before his
victim, still keeping his gaze riveted on his enemy, with a look of
inextinguishable scorn, fell dead at his feet.
“Mercy! mercy! Huron,” cried Heyward, from above, in tones nearly
choked by horror; “give mercy, and thou shalt receive from it!”
Whirling the bloody knife up at the imploring youth, the victorious Magua
uttered a cry so fierce, so wild, and yet so joyous, that it conveyed the
sounds of savage triumph to the ears of those who fought in the valley, a
thousand feet below. He was answered by a burst from the lips of the scout,
whose tall person was just then seen moving swiftly toward him, along those
dangerous crags, with steps as bold and reckless as if he possessed the power
to move in air. But when the hunter reached the scene of the ruthless massacre,
the ledge was tenanted only by the dead.
His keen eye took a single look at the victims, and then shot its glances over
the difficulties of the ascent in his front. A form stood at the brow of the
mountain, on the very edge of the giddy height, with uplifted arms, in an awful
attitude of menace. Without stopping to consider his person, the rifle of
Hawkeye was raised; but a rock, which fell on the head of one of the fugitives
below, exposed the indignant and glowing countenance of the honest Gamut. Then
Magua issued from a crevice, and, stepping with calm indifference over the body
of the last of his associates, he leaped a wide fissure, and ascended the rocks
at a point where the arm of David could not reach him. A single bound would
carry him to the brow of the precipice, and assure his safety. Before taking
the leap, however, the Huron paused, and shaking his hand at the scout, he
shouted:
“The pale faces are dogs! the Delawares women! Magua leaves them on the
rocks, for the crows!”
Laughing hoarsely, he made a desperate leap, and fell short of his mark, though
his hands grasped a shrub on the verge of the height. The form of Hawkeye had
crouched like a beast about to take its spring, and his frame trembled so
violently with eagerness that the muzzle of the half-raised rifle played like a
leaf fluttering in the wind. Without exhausting himself with fruitless efforts,
the cunning Magua suffered his body to drop to the length of his arms, and
found a fragment for his feet to rest on. Then, summoning all his powers, he
renewed the attempt, and so far succeeded as to draw his knees on the edge of
the mountain. It was now, when the body of his enemy was most collected
together, that the agitated weapon of the scout was drawn to his shoulder. The
surrounding rocks themselves were not steadier than the piece became, for the
single instant that it poured out its contents. The arms of the Huron relaxed,
and his body fell back a little, while his knees still kept their position.
Turning a relentless look on his enemy, he shook a hand in grim defiance. But
his hold loosened, and his dark person was seen cutting the air with its head
downward, for a fleeting instant, until it glided past the fringe of shrubbery
which clung to the mountain, in its rapid flight to destruction.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
“They fought, like brave men, long and well,
They piled that ground with Moslem slain,
They conquered—but Bozzaris fell,
Bleeding at every vein.
His few surviving comrades saw
His smile when rang their loud hurrah,
And the red field was won;
Then saw in death his eyelids close
Calmly, as to a night’s repose,
Like flowers at set of sun.”
—Halleck.
The sun found the Lenape, on the succeeding day, a nation of mourners. The
sounds of the battle were over, and they had fed fat their ancient grudge, and
had avenged their recent quarrel with the Mengwe, by the destruction of a whole
community. The black and murky atmosphere that floated around the spot where
the Hurons had encamped, sufficiently announced of itself, the fate of that
wandering tribe; while hundreds of ravens, that struggled above the summits of
the mountains, or swept, in noisy flocks, across the wide ranges of the woods,
furnished a frightful direction to the scene of the combat. In short, any eye
at all practised in the signs of a frontier warfare might easily have traced
all those unerring evidences of the ruthless results which attend an Indian
vengeance.
Still, the sun rose on the Lenape a nation of mourners. No shouts of success,
no songs of triumph, were heard, in rejoicings for their victory. The latest
straggler had returned from his fell employment, only to strip himself of the
terrific emblems of his bloody calling, and to join in the lamentations of his
countrymen, as a stricken people. Pride and exultation were supplanted by
humility, and the fiercest of human passions was already succeeded by the most
profound and unequivocal demonstrations of grief.
The lodges were deserted; but a broad belt of earnest faces encircled a spot in
their vicinity, whither everything possessing life had repaired, and where all
were now collected, in deep and awful silence. Though beings of every rank and
age, of both sexes, and of all pursuits, had united to form this breathing wall
of bodies, they were influenced by a single emotion. Each eye was riveted on
the center of that ring, which contained the objects of so much and of so
common an interest.
Six Delaware girls, with their long, dark, flowing tresses falling loosely
across their bosoms, stood apart, and only gave proof of their existence as
they occasionally strewed sweet-scented herbs and forest flowers on a litter of
fragrant plants that, under a pall of Indian robes, supported all that now
remained of the ardent, high-souled, and generous Cora. Her form was concealed
in many wrappers of the same simple manufacture, and her face was shut forever
from the gaze of men. At her feet was seated the desolate Munro. His aged head
was bowed nearly to the earth, in compelled submission to the stroke of
Providence; but a hidden anguish struggled about his furrowed brow, that was
only partially concealed by the careless locks of gray that had fallen,
neglected, on his temples. Gamut stood at his side, his meek head bared to the
rays of the sun, while his eyes, wandering and concerned, seemed to be equally
divided between that little volume, which contained so many quaint but holy
maxims, and the being in whose behalf his soul yearned to administer
consolation. Heyward was also nigh, supporting himself against a tree, and
endeavoring to keep down those sudden risings of sorrow that it required his
utmost manhood to subdue.
But sad and melancholy as this group may easily be imagined, it was far less
touching than another, that occupied the opposite space of the same area.
Seated, as in life, with his form and limbs arranged in grave and decent
composure, Uncas appeared, arrayed in the most gorgeous ornaments that the
wealth of the tribe could furnish. Rich plumes nodded above his head; wampum,
gorgets, bracelets, and medals, adorned his person in profusion; though his
dull eye and vacant lineaments too strongly contradicted the idle tale of pride
they would convey.
Directly in front of the corpse Chingachgook was placed, without arms, paint or
adornment of any sort, except the bright blue blazonry of his race, that was
indelibly impressed on his naked bosom. During the long period that the tribe
had thus been collected, the Mohican warrior had kept a steady, anxious look on
the cold and senseless countenance of his son. So riveted and intense had been
that gaze, and so changeless his attitude, that a stranger might not have told
the living from the dead, but for the occasional gleamings of a troubled
spirit, that shot athwart the dark visage of one, and the deathlike calm that
had forever settled on the lineaments of the other. The scout was hard by,
leaning in a pensive posture on his own fatal and avenging weapon; while
Tamenund, supported by the elders of his nation, occupied a high place at hand,
whence he might look down on the mute and sorrowful assemblage of his people.
Just within the inner edge of the circle stood a soldier, in the military
attire of a strange nation; and without it was his warhorse, in the center of a
collection of mounted domestics, seemingly in readiness to undertake some
distant journey. The vestments of the stranger announced him to be one who held
a responsible situation near the person of the captain of the Canadas; and who,
as it would now seem, finding his errand of peace frustrated by the fierce
impetuosity of his allies, was content to become a silent and sad spectator of
the fruits of a contest that he had arrived too late to anticipate.
The day was drawing to the close of its first quarter, and yet had the