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 were now turned on Uncas, who stood leaning against the ragged rock, in immoveable composure. After waiting a short time, Cora pointed down the river, and said–
“Your friends, as you perceive, 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 his imperfect 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 ardent gaze of the Mohican, and, perhaps, with an inuitive 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 sunk, 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 the 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 eyes fell wistfully on the beautiful form of Alice, who was clinging to his arm with the dependency of an infant.
“Consider, after all,” continued Cora, after a pause of a moment, during which she seemed to struggle with a pang, even more acute than any that her fears had excited, “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 even 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 instantly 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.”
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 himself 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 subsequent fate.
In a moment of such painful doubt, Duncan did not hesitate to look about 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 every thing 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, who, secure on the topmost branches of a dead pine, had been a distant spectator of the fray, now stooped 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 left 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 in their success.
“The Hurons are not to be seen,” he said, addressing David, whose faculties 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 thanks-giving,” 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! every thing 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 lighting his countenance, 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 abandonded 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 that 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 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 in 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 every thing 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 hands as he passed towards 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 centre of the cavern, grasping his remaining pistol with a hand firmly 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 lowly muttered; and dropping 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.