As I stumbled through the moonlit forest I heard Ringan's tunes ever crooning among the trees. First it was the old mad march of "Bundle and go," which the pipers play when the clans are rising. Then it changed to the lilt of "Colin's Cattle," which is an air that the fairies made, and sung in the ear of a shepherd who fell asleep in one of their holy places. And then it lost all mortal form, and became a thing as faint as the wind in the tree-tops or the humming of bees in clover. My weary legs stepped out to this wizard music, and the spell of it lulled my fevered thoughts into the dull patience of the desperate.
At an open space where I could see the sky I tried to take further bearings. I must move south-east by east, and in time I must come to Lawrence. I do not think I had any hope of getting there, for I knew that long ere this the man who escaped must have returned with others, and that now they would be hot on my trail. What could one lad do in a wide woodland against the cunningest trackers on earth? But Ringan had praised my courage, and I could not fail him. I should go on till I died, and I did not think that would be very long. My pistols, re-loaded, pressed against my side, and Ringan's sword swung by my thigh. I was determined to make a good ending, since that was all now left to me. In that hour I had forgotten about everything--about the peril of Virginia, even about Elspeth and the others in the fort on the hill-top. There comes a time to every one when the world narrows for him to a strait alley, with Death at the end of it, and all his thoughts are fixed on that waiting enemy of mankind.
My senses were blunted, and I took no note of the noises of the forest. As I passed down a ravine a stone dropped behind me, but I did not pause to wonder why. A twig crackled on my left, but it did not disquiet me, and there was a rustling in the thicket which was not the breeze. I marked nothing, as I plodded on with vacant mind and eye. So when I tripped on a vine and fell, I was scarcely surprised when I found I could not rise. Men had sprung up silently around me, and I was pinned by many hands.
They trussed me with ropes, binding my hands cruelly behind my back, and swathing my legs till not a muscle could move. My pistols hung idle, and the ropes drove the hafts into my flesh. This is the end, thought I, and I did not even grieve at my impotence. My courage now was of the passive kind, not to act but to endure. Always I kept telling myself that I must be brave, for Ringan had praised my courage, and I had a conviction that nothing that man could do would shake me. Thanks be to God, my quick fancy was dulled, and I did not try to look into the future. I lived for the moment, and I was resolved that the moment should find me unmoved.
They carried me to where their horses were tied up in a glade, and presently we were galloping towards the hills, myself an inert bundle strapped across an Indian saddle. The pain of the motion was great, but I had a kind of grim comfort in bearing it. After a time I think my senses left me, and I slipped into a stupor, from which I woke with a fiery ache at every joint and eyes distended with a blinding heat. Some one tossed me on the ground, where I lay with my cheek in a cool, wet patch of earth. Then I felt my bonds being unloosed, and a strong arm pulled me to my feet. When it let go I dropped again, and not till many hands had raised me and set me on a log could I look round at my whereabouts.
I was in a crook of a hill glen, lit with a great radiance of moonlight. Fires dotted the flat, and Indian tents, and there seemed to me hundreds of savages crowding in on me. I do not suppose that I showed any fear, for my bodily weakness had made me as impassive as any Indian.
Presently a voice spoke to me, but I could not understand the words. I shook my head feebly, and another spoke. This time I knew that the tongue was Cherokee, a speech I could recognize but could not follow. Again I shook my head, and a third took up the parable. This one spoke the Powhatan language, which I knew, and I replied in the same tongue.
There was a tall man wearing in his hair a single great feather, whom I took to be the chief. He spoke to me through the interpreter, and asked me whence I came.
I told him I was a hunter who had strayed in the hills. He asked where the other was.
"He is dead," I said, "dead of your knives. But five of your braves atoned for him."
"You speak truth," he said gravely. "But the Children of the West Wind do not suffer the death of, their sons to go unrewarded. For each one of the five, three Palefaces shall eat the dust in the day of our triumph."
"Be it so," said I stoutly, though I felt a dreadful nausea coming over me. I was determined to keep my head high, if only my frail body would not fail me.
"The Sons of the West Wind," he spoke again, "have need of warriors. You can atone for the slaughter you have caused, and the blood feud will be forgotten. In the space of five suns we shall sweep the Palefaces into the sea, and rule all the land to the Eastern waters. My brother is a man of his hands, and valour is dear to the heart of Onotawah. If he casts in his lot with the Children of the West Wind a wigwam shall be his, and a daughter of our race to wife, and six of our young men shall follow his commands. Will my brother march with us against those whom God has delivered to us for our prey?"
"Does the eagle make terms with the kite?" I asked, "and fly with them to raid his own eyrie? Yes, I will join with you, and march with you till I have delivered you to, perhaps, a score of the warriors of my own people. Then I will aid them in making carrion of you."
Heaven knows what wrought on me to speak like this, I, a poor, broken fellow, face to face with a hundred men-at-arms. I think my mind had forsaken me altogether, and I spoke like a drunken man with a tongue not my own. I had only the one idea in my foolish head--to be true to Ringan, and to meet the death of which I was assured with an unflinching face. Yet perhaps my very madness was the course of discretion. You cannot move an Indian by pity, and he will show mercy only to one who, like a gamecock, asks nothing less.
The chief heard me gravely, and spoke to the others. One cried out something in a savage voice, and for a moment a fierce argument was raised, which the chief settled with uplifted hand.
"My brother speaks bold words," he said. "The spirits of his fathers cry out for the companionship of such a hero. When the wrongs of our race have been avenged, I wish him good hunting in the Kingdom of the Sunset."
They took me and stripped me mother naked. Has any man who reads this tale ever faced an enemy in his bare feet? If so, he will know that the heart of man is more in his boots than philosophers wot of. Without them he feels lost and unprepared, and the edge gone from his spirit. But without his clothes he is in a far worse case. The winds of heaven play round his nakedness; every thorn and twig is his assailant, and the whole of him seems a mark for the arrows of his foes. That stripping was the thing that brought me to my senses. I recognized that I was to be the subject of those hellish tortures which the Indians use, the tales of which are on every Borderer's lips.
And yet I did not recognize it fully, or my courage must have left me then and there. My imagination was still limping, and I foresaw only a death of pain, not the horrid incidents of its preparation. Death I could face, and I summoned up every shred of my courage. Ringan's voice was still in my ear, his airy songs still sang themselves in my brain. I would not shame him, but oh! how I envied him lying, all troubles past, in his quiet grave!
The night was mild, and the yellow radiance of the moon seemed almost warmth-giving. I sat on that log in a sort of stupor, watching my enemies preparing my entertainment. One thing I noted, that there were no women in the camp. I remembered that I had heard that the most devilish tortures were those which the squaws devised, and that the Indian men were apt to be quicker and more merciful in their murderings.
Then I was lifted up and carried to a flat space beside the stream, where the trunk of a young pine had been set upright in the ground. A man, waving a knife, and singing a wild song, danced towards me. He seized me by the hair, and I actually rejoiced, for I knew that the pain of scalping would make me oblivious of all else. But he only drew the sharp point of the knife in a circle round my head, scarce breaking the skin.
I had grace given me to keep a stout face, mainly because I was relieved that this was to be my fate. He put the knife back in his girdle, and others laid hold on me. They smeared my lower limbs with some kind of grease which smelt of resin. One savage who had picked up a brand from one of the little fires dropped some of the stuff on it, and it crackled merrily. He grinned at me--a slow, diabolical grin.
They lashed me to the stake with ropes of green vine. Then they piled dry hay a foot deep around me, and laid above it wood and green branches. To make the fuel still greener, they poured water on it. At the moment I did not see the object of these preparations, but now I can understand it. The dry hay would serve to burn my legs, which had already been anointed with the inflammable grease. So I should suffer a gradual torture, for it would be long ere the flames reached a vital part. I think they erred, for they assumed that I had the body of an Indian, which does not perish till a blow is struck at its heart; whereas I am confident that any white man would be dead of the anguish long ere the fire had passed beyond his knees.
I think that was the most awful moment of my life. Indeed I could not have endured it had not my mind been drugged and my body stupid with fatigue. Men have often asked me what were my thoughts in that hour, while the faggots were laid about my feet. I cannot tell, for I have no very clear memory. The Power which does not break the bruised reed tempered the storm to my frailty. I could not envisage the future, and so was mercifully enabled to look only to the moment. I knew that pain was coming; but I was already in pain, and the sick man does not trouble himself about degrees of suffering. Death, too, was coming; but for that I had been long ready. The hardest thing that man can do is to endure, but this was to me no passive endurance; it was an active struggle to show a fortitude worthy of the gallant dead.
So I must suppose that I hung there in my bonds with a motionless face and a mouth which gave out no cry. They brought the faggots, and poured on water, and I did not look their way. Some score of braves began a war dance, circling round me, waving their tomahawks, and singing their wild chants. For me they did not break the moonlit silence, I was hearing other sounds and seeing far other sights. An old sad song of Ringan's was in my ears, something about an exile who cried out in France for the red heather and the salt winds of the Isles.
"Nevermore the deep fern," it ran, "or the bell of the dun deer, far my castle is windblown sands, and my homelands are a stranger's."
And the air brought back in a flash my own little house on the grey hill-sides of Douglasdale, the cluck of hens about the doors on a hot summer morn, the crying of plovers in the windy Aprils, the smell of peatsmoke when the snow drifted over Cairntable. Home-sickness has never been my failing, but all at once I had a vision of my own land, the cradle of my race, well-beloved and unforgotten over the leagues of sea. Somehow the thought strengthened me. I had now something besides the thought of Ringan to keep my heart firm. If all hell laid hold on me, I must stand fast for the honour of my own folk.
The edge of the pile was lit, and the flames crackled through the hay below the faggots. The smoke rose in clouds, and made me sneeze. Suddenly there came a desperate tickling in my scalp where the knife had pricked. Little things began to tease me, notably the ache of my swollen wrists, and the intolerable cramp in my legs.
Then came a sharp burst of pain as a tongue of flame licked on my anointed ankles. Anguish like hell-fire ran through my frame. I think I would have cried out if my tongue had had the power. Suddenly I envisaged the dreadful death which was coming. All was wiped from my mind, all thought of Ringan, and home, and honour; everything but this awful fear. Happily the smoke hid my face, which must have been distraught with panic. The seconds seemed endless. I prayed that unconsciousness would come. I prayed for death, I prayed for respite. I was mad with the furious madness of a tortured animal, and the immortal soul had fled from me and left only a husk of pitiful and shrinking flesh.
Suddenly there came a lull. A dozen buckets of water were flung on the pile, and the flames fell to smouldering ashes. The smoke thinned, and I saw the circle of my tormentors.
The chief spoke, and asked me if my purpose still held.
With the cool shock of the water one moment of bodily comfort returned to me, and with it a faint revival of my spirit. But it was of no set intention that I answered as I did. My bones were molten with fright, and I had not one ounce of bravery in me. Something not myself took hold on me, and spoke for me. Ringan's tunes, a brisk one this time, lilted in my ear.
I could not believe my own voice. But I rejoice to say that my reply was to consign every Indian in America to the devil.
I shook with fear when I had spoken. I looked to see them bring dry fuel and light the pile again. But I had played a wiser part than I knew. The chief gave an order, the faggots were cleared, my bonds were cut, and I was led away from the stake.
The pain of my cramped and scorched limbs was horrible, but I had just enough sense left to shut my teeth and make no sound.
The chief looked at me long and calmly as I drooped before him, for there was no power in my legs. He was an eagle-faced savage, with the most grave and searching eyes.
"Sleep, brother," he said. "At dawn we will take further counsel."
I forced some kind of lightness into my voice, "Sleep will be grateful," I said, "for I have come many miles this day, and the welcome I have got this evening has been too warm for a weary man."
The Indian nodded. The jest was after his own taste. I was carried to a teepee and shown a couch of dry fern. A young man rubbed some oil on my scorched legs, which relieved the pain of them. But no pain on earth could have kept me awake. I did not glide but pitched headforemost into sleep.