Here the speaker paused, and again looked around him, to discover if his legend had touched the sympathies of his listeners. He met every where with eyes riveted on his own, heads erect, and nostrils expanded, as though each individual present felt himself able and willing, singly, to redress the wrongs of his race.
“If the Great Spirit gave different tongues to his red children,” he continued, in a low, still, melancholy voice, “it was, that all animals might understand them. Some he placed among the snows, with their cousin the bear. Some he placed near the setting sun, on the road to the happy hunting grounds. Some on the lands around the great fresh waters; but to his greatest, and most beloved, he gave the sands of the salt lake. Do my brothers know the name of this favoured people?”
“It was the Lenape!” exclaimed twenty eager voices, in a breath.
“It was the Lenni Lenape,” returned Magua, affecting to bend his head in reverence to their former greatness. “It was the tribes of the Lenape! The sun rose from the water that was salt, and set in water that was sweet, and never hid himself from their eyes. But why should I, a Huron of the woods, tell a wise people their own traditions? Why remind them of their injuries; their ancient greatness; their deeds; their glory; their happiness–their losses; their defeats; their misery? Is there not one among them who has seen it all, and who knows it to be true? I have done. My tongue is still, but my ears are open.”
As the voice of the speaker suddenly ceased, every face and all eyes turned, by a common movement, towards the venerable Tamenund. From the moment that he took his seat, until the present instant, the lips of the patriarch had not severed, nor had scarcely a sign of life escaped him. He had sate, bent in feebleness, and apparently unconscious of the presence he was in, during the whole of that opening scene, in which the skill of the scout had been so clearly established. At the nicely graduated sounds of Magua’s voice, however, he had betrayed some evidence of consciousness, and once or twice he had even raised his head, as if to listen. But when the crafty Huron spoke of his nation by name, the eyelids of the old man raised themselves, and he looked out upon the multitude, with that sort of dull, unmeaning expression, which might be supposed to belong to the countenance of a spectre. Then he made an effort to rise, and being upheld by his supporters, he gained his feet, in a posture commanding by its dignity, while he tottered with weakness.
“Who calls upon the children of the Lenape!” he said, in a deep, guttural voice, that was rendered awfully audible by the breathless silence of the multitude; “who speaks of things gone! Does not the egg become a worm–the worm a fly–and perish! Why tell the Delawares of good that is past? Better thank the Manitto for that which remains.”
“It is a Wyandot,” said Magua, stepping nigher to the rude platform on which the other stood; “a friend of Tamenund.”
“A friend!” repeated the sage, on whose brow a dark frown settled, imparting a portion of that severity, which had rendered his eye so terrible in middle age–“Are the Mingoes rulers of the earth! What brings a Huron here?”
“Justice. His prisoners are with his brothers, and he comes for his own.”
Tamenund turned his head towards one of his supporters, and listened to the short explanation the man gave. Then facing the applicant, he regarded him a moment with deep attention; after which, he said, in a low and reluctant voice–
“Justice is the law of the Great Manitto. My children, give the stranger food. Then, Huron, take thine own, and depart.”
On the delivery of this solemn judgment, the patriarch seated himself, and closed his eyes again, as if better pleased with the images of his own ripened experience, than with the visible objects of the world. Against such a decree, there was no Delaware sufficiently hardy to murmur, much less oppose himself. The words were barely uttered, when four or five of the younger warriors stepping behind Heyward and the scout, passed thongs so dexterously and rapidly around their arms, as to hold them both in instant bondage. The former was too much engrossed with his precious and nearly insensible burthen, to be aware of their intentions before they were executed; and the latter, who considered even the hostile tribes of the Delawares a superior race of beings, submitted without resistance. Perhaps, however, the manner of the scout would not have been so passive, had he fully comprehended the language in which the preceding dialogue had been conducted.
Magua cast a look of triumph around the whole assembly, before he proceeded to the execution of his purpose. Perceiving that the men were unable to offer any resistance, he turned his looks on her he valued most. Cora met his gaze with an eye so calm and firm, that his resolution wavered. Then recollecting his former artifice, he raised Alice from the arms of the warrior, against whom she leaned, and beckoning Heyward to follow, he motioned for the encircling crowd to open. But Cora, instead of obeying the impulse he had expected, rushed to the feet of the patriarch, and raising her voice, exclaimed aloud–
“Just and venerable Delaware, on thy wisdom and power, we lean for mercy! Be deaf to younder artful and remorseless monster, who poisons thy ears with falsehoods, to feed his thirst for blood. Thou, that hast lived long, and that hast seen the evil of the world, should know how to temper its calamities to the miserable.”
The eyes of the old man opened heavily, and he once more looked upward at the multitude. As the full, piercing tones of the supplicant swelled on his ears, they moved slowly in the direction of her person, and finally settled there, in a steady, riveted gaze. Cora had cast herself to her knees, and with hands clenched in each other, and pressed upon her bosom, she remained like a beauteous and breathing model of her sex, looking up in his faded, but majestic countenance, with a species of holy reverence. Gradually, the expression of Tamenund’s features changed, and losing their vacancy in admiration, they lighted with a portion of that intelligence, which, a century before, had been wont to communicate his youthful fire to the extensive bands of the Delawares. Rising, without assistance, and, seemingly, without an effort, he demanded, in a voice that startled its auditors by its firmness–
“What art thou?”
“A woman. One of a hated race, if thou wilt– a Yengee. But one who has never harmed thee, and who cannot harm thy people, if she would; who asks for succour.”
“Tell me, my children,” continued the patriarch, hoarsely, motioning to those around him, though his eyes still dwelt upon the kneeling form of Cora, “where have the Delawares ’camped?”
“In the mountains of the Iroquois; beyond the clear springs of the Horican.”
“Many parching summers are come and gone,” continued the sage, “since I drank of the waters of my own river. The children of Miquon are the justest white men; but they were thirsty, and they took it to themselves. Do they follow us so far?
“We follow none; we covet nothing;” answered the ardent Cora. “Captives, against our wills, have we been brought amongst you; and we ask but permission to depart to our own, in peace. Art thou not Tamenund–the father–the judge–I had almost said, the prophet–of this people?”
“I am Tamenund, of many days.”
“’Tis now some seven years that one of thy people was at the mercy of a white chief, on the borders of this province. He claimed to be of the blood of the good and just Tamenund. ‘Go,’ said the white man, ‘for thy parent’s sake, thou art free.’ Dost thou remember the name of that English warrior?”
“I remember, that when a laughing boy,” returned the patriarch, with the peculiar recollection of vast age, “I stood upon the sands of the sea-shore, and saw a big canoe, with wings whiter than the swan’s, and wider than many eagles, come from the rising sun–”
“Nay, nay; I speak not of a time so very distant; but of favour shown to thy kindred by one of mine, within the memory of thy youngest warrior.”
“Was it when the Yengeese and the Dutchemanne fought for the hunting grounds of the Delawares? Then Tamenund was a chief, and first laid aside the bow for the lightning of the pale-faces–”
“Nor yet then,” interrupted Cora again, “by many ages; I speak of a thing of yesterday. Surely, surely, you forget it not!”
“It was but yesterday,” rejoined the aged man, with a touching pathos in his hollow voice, “that the children of the Lenape were masters of the world! The fishes of the salt-lake, the birds, the beasts, and the Mengwe of the woods, owned them for Sagamores.”