Duncan shook his worthy and reluctant associate warmly by the hand, once more recommended his aged friend to his care, and returning his good wishes, he motioned to David to proceed. Hawkeye gazed after the high-spirited and adventurous young man for several moments, in open admiration; then shaking his head, doubtingly, he turned, and led his own division of the party into the concealment of the forest.
The route taken by Duncan and David, lay directly across the clearing of the beavers, and along the margin of their pond. When the former found himself alone with one so simple, and so little qualified to render any assistance in desperate emergencies, he first began to be sensible of the difficulties of the task he had undertaken. The fading light increased the gloominess of the bleak and savage wilderness, that stretched so far on every side of him, and there was even a fearful character in the stillness of those little huts, that he knew were so abundantly peopled. It struck him, as he gazed at the admirable structures, and the wonderful precautions of their sagacious immates, that even the brutes of these vast wilds were possessed of an instinct nearly commensurate with his own practised reason; and he could not reflect, without anxiety, on the unequal contest that he had so rashly courted. Then came the glowing image of Alice; her distress; her actual danger; and all the peril of his situation faded before her loveliness. Cheering David with his voice, he moved more swiftly onward, with the light and vigorous step of youth and enterprise.
After making nearly a semi-circle around the pond, they diverged from the water-course, and began to ascend to the level of a slight elevation in that bottom land, over which they journeyed. Within half an hour they gained the margin of another opening, that bore all the signs of having been also made by the beavers, and which those sagacious animals had probably been induced, by some accident, to abandon, for the more eligible position they now occupied. A very natural sensation caused Duncan to hesitate a moment, unwilling to leave the cover of their bushy path, as a man pauses to collect his energies, before he essays any hazardous experiment, in which he is secretly conscious they will all be needed. He profited by the halt, to gather such information as might be obtained from his short and hasty glances.
On the opposite side of the clearing, and near the point where the brook tumbled over some rocks, from a still higher level, some fifty or sixty lodges, rudely fabricated of logs, brush, and earth, intermingled, were to be discovered. They were arranged without any order, and seemed to be constructed with very little attention to their neatness or beauty. Indeed, so very inferior were they, in the two latter particulars, to the village Duncan had just seen, that he began to expect a second surprise, no less astonishing than the former. This expectation was in no degree diminished, when, by the doubtful twilight, he beheld twenty or thirty forms, rising alternately, from the cover of the tall, coarse grass, in front of the lodges, and then sinking again from the sight, as it were to burrow in the earth. By the sudden and hasty glimpses that he caught of these figures, they seemed more like dark glancing spectres, or some other unearthly beings, than creatures fashioned with the ordinary and vulgar materials of flesh and blood. A gaunt, naked form, was seen, for a single instant, tossing its arms wildly in the air, and then the spot it had filled was vacant; the figure appearing, suddenly, in some other and distant place, or being succeeded by another, possessing the same mysterious character. David, observing that his companion lingered, pursued the direction of his gaze, and in some measure recalled the recollection of Heyward, by speaking–
“There is much fruitful soil uncultivated here,” he said; “and I may add, without the sinful leaven of self-commendation, that, since my short sojourn in these heathenish abodes, much good seed has been scattered by the way-side.”
“The tribes are fonder of the chase, than of the arts of men of labour,” returned the unconscious Duncan, still gazing at the objects of his wonder.
“It is rather joy than labour to the spirit, to lift up the voice in praise; but sadly do these boys abuse their gifts! Rarely have I found any of their age, on whom nature has so freely bestowed the elements of psalmody; and surely, surely, there are none who neglect them more. Three nights have I now tarried here, and three several times have I assembled the urchins to join in sacred song, and as often have they responded to my efforts with whoopings and howlings that have chilled my inmost soul!”
“Of whom speak you?”
“Of those children of the devil, who waste their precious moments in yonder idle antics. Ah! the wholesome restraint of discipline is but little known among this self-abandoned people! In a country of birches, a rod is never seen; and it ought not to appear a marvel in my eyes, that the choicest blessings of Providence are wasted in such cries as these.”
David closed his ears against the juvenile pack, whose yells just then rang shrilly through the forest; and Duncan, suffering his lip to curl in a proud smile, as in mockery at his own momentary superstition, said firmly–
“We will proceed.”
Without removing the safeguards from his ears, the master of song complied, and together they pursued their way, boldly, towards what David was sometimes wont to call “the tents of the Philistines.”
CHAPTER VI.
–“But though the beast of game The privilege of chase may claim;
Though space and law the stag we lend,
Ere hound we slip, or bow we bend;
Whoever recked, where, how, or when,
The prowling fox was trapped or slain.”
—
It is unusual to find an encampment of the natives, like those of the more instructed whites, guarded by the presence of armed men. Well informed of the approach of every danger, while it is yet at a distance, the Indian generally rests secure under his knowledge of the signs of the forest, and the long and difficult paths that separate him from those he has most reason to dread. But the enemy who, by any lucky concurrence of accidents, has found means to elude the vigilance of the scouts, will seldom meet with sentinels nearer home to sound the alarm. In addition to this general usage, the tribes friendly to the French king knew too well the weight of the blow that had just been struck, to apprehend any immediate danger from the hostile nations that were tributary to the crown of Britain.
When Duncan and David, therefore, found themselves in the centre of the busy children, who played the antics already mentioned, it was without the least previous intimation of their approach. But so soon as they were observed, the whole of the juvenile pack raised, by common consent, a single shrill and warning whoop; and then sunk, as it were, by magic, from before the sight of their visiters. The naked, tawny bodies of the crouching urchins, blended so nicely, at that hour, with the withered herbage, that at first it seemed as if the earth had, in truth, swallowed up their forms; though when surprise had permitted Duncan to bend his own wondering looks more curiously about the spot, he found them every where met by dark, quick, and rolling eye-balls.
Gathering no encouragement from this startling presage, of the nature of the scrutiny he was likely to undergo from the more mature judgments of the men, there was an instant when the young soldier would gladly have retreated. It was, however, too late to appear even to hesitate. The cry of the children had drawn a dozen warriors to the door of the nearest lodge, where they stood, clustered in a dark and savage groupe, gravely awaiting the nearer approach of those who had thus unexpectedly come among them.
David, in some measure familiarized to the scene, led the way, with a steadiness that no slight obstacle was likely to disconcert, into this very building. It was the principal edifice of the village, though roughly constructed of the bark and branches of trees; being the lodge in which the tribe held its councils and public meetings, during their temporary residence on the borders of the English province. Duncan found it difficult to assume the necessary appearance of unconcern, as he brushed the dark and powerful frames of the savages who thronged its threshold; but, conscious that his existence depended on his presence of mind, he trusted to the discretion of his companion, whose footsteps he closely followed, endeavouring, as he proceeded, to rally his thoughts for the occasion. His blood had stagnated for a moment, when he found himself in absolute contact with such fierce and implacable enemies; but he so far mastered his feelings, as to pursue his way into the centre of the lodge, with an exterior that did not betray the weakness. Imitating the example of the deliberate Gamut, he drew a bundle of fragrant brush from beneath a pile, that filled a corner of the hut, and seated himself, in silence.