The Land of Bondage

As the wretch spoke, however, there were two things happened that he saw not, in spite of the all-seeing eyes with which he was credited by the tribe he dwelt with. He did not see that, as he turned to insult Mary and me, O'Rourke first opened his own eyes and gazed on him and then raised his head to stare at him; he did not see that, from where the window had been, the Indian chief heard all he said, and stared in amazement and looked strangely at him as he spoke of the "credulous red fools."

But Mary and Mr. Kinchella and I saw it all, as well as did Buck and Lamb. Nay, we saw more; we saw the Indian's hand feel for the hilt of his dagger and half draw it from his wampum belt, and then return it to its place while he smoothed his features to the usual impenetrable Indian calm.

"And," went on Roderick St. Amande, as he drew near to my beloved one, who still lay as I had placed him, "who is this spruce and well-dressed gentleman who was to have been the husband of my Joice. Some Virginian dandy, I presume, who, not good enough for England, is yet a provincial magnate here. Ay, it must be so" – stooping down to gaze into my lord's face-"it must be so, for I have seen those very features when in a more boyish form. Possibly he is one of the young Pringles, or Byrds, or Clibornes, whom I knew five years ago. Is't not so, Joice, my beloved Joice, my future queen of squaws?"

That he should not recognise Gerald for his own cousin, for the man who held the rank he had once falsely said would some day be his, was the first moment of happiness I had known through this dreadful night, since the fact of his not so recognising him might, I thought, save my lover from instant death, if he were not dead already. For, if that villain could but guess who he really was, I did not doubt but that he would sheath his knife in the other's heart, all helpless as he lay. This being so, I answered:

"He is a gentleman and, I fear, is dead. Is that not enough for you?"

"Nay, too much. I would not have one Virginian dead; yet, I would not have one die so easily as he is dying now, for he is not at present dead. No, no; the dead are no good to us when we return from a successful attack such as this of Pomfret; it is the living we want; the quick not the dead. For see, my Joice, and you, too, my black but bonny Mary, the dead cannot feel! Their nerves and sinews have no longer the power of suffering, their flesh is cold, their tongues paralysed, so that they can neither shriek with pain nor cry for mercy-but, with the living, how different it is! They can feel all that is done upon them, they can feel limbs twisted off, and burnings, and loppings off of-of-of, why, say of ears," and here he grinned so demoniacally while he fingered the clusters of human ears that hung on his own breast, that all of white blood in the room shuddered but himself. "Yes, all these things they can feel. And, my sweethearts," he went on, gloatingly over our horror and his own foul and devilish picturings, "shall I tell you what the Indian tortures are, what you will see-when you sit by my side, my best beloved of wives-done upon these men here. On him," pointing to Mr. Kinchella, "and him," with his finger directed to my lord, "and this old blunderer," indicating O'Rourke, "and these scum and rakings of the London gutters?" sweeping his arm round so as to denominate all the convicts and bondsmen who had fought so well for us this night, though without avail. "Shall I tell you that? 'Twill be pretty hearing."

For myself I could but sob and moan and say, "No, no. Tell us no more! Spare them, oh, spare them!" But Mary, whose spirit was of so much firmer mould than mine, and who was no more cowed by him than was Buck himself-who, indeed, had interrupted his remarks with many contemptuous and disdainful snorts and "pishes" and "pahs" and with, once, a scornful laugh-answered him in very different fashion.

"Tell us nothing, you murderous, cowardly wolf," she said, while she extended her hand defiantly at him as though she forbade him to dare to speak again, "tell us nothing, since we should not believe you. We know-God help us! we all in Virginia know-that the Indian exacts a fearful reckoning from all who have once wronged him, but we know, too, that that exactment is made upon the actual persons who have done the wrong, and not on those who have never raised hand against him, as none in this house to-night have done except in their own defence. As for you, you cowardly, crawling dog, who think you can egg on the Indians to gratify your petty spite and cruelty, what, what, think you, will they do for the gratification of your thirst for innocent blood when I, tell them who and what their great wonderworking, miracle-making medicine chief is?" and I saw her dark eyes steal into the obscurity of the ruined window frame to observe if the chief out there heard her words. But he only drew a little more in the shadow as she did so.

"Silence, woman," said Roderick St. Amande, advancing threateningly towards her. "Silence, I say, or it shall be the worse for you."

"Silence," she repeated, "silence! And why? So as to shield you from their wrath if they should know who you are? Silence! Nay, I tell you Roderick St. Amande, that when you have taken us away to wherever you herd now, I will speak out loudly and tell them all. All, all, as to what their great medicine man-their great impostor is. A wonder-worker, a magician!" And she laughed long and bitterly as she spoke, so that his face became so distorted with anger that I feared he would rush at her and slay her. Yet, as she did so, and still spake further, I saw the Indian chief's eyes steal round the corner while he listened to her every word. "A wonder-worker! a magician!" she went on. "Ay! a pretty one forsooth. A magician who could not save his ear from a righteous vengeance; a bond-slave to an English colonist; a poor, pitiful drunkard! What a thing for a red man who cannot live in slavery, and who hates in his heart the fire-water he has learnt to drink, to worship! A magician who knows all. Ha! ha! A wonder-worker! who stole from out his owner's bookshelves a 'British Merlin' and a calendar because, perhaps, he knew the credulous creatures with whom he would ere long dwell."

"Ay," exclaimed Buck, "and a book of how to do tricks with cards from me, with many recipes for palming and counterfeiting. A magician, ha! ha! ha!"

And of all that was said the Indian chief had heard every word.

CHAPTER XXI

IN CAPTIVITY

Although the villain knew not that the chief-whose name I learnt hereafter was Anuza, signifying in the Shawnee and Doeg tongue, the Bear-had heard all, his rage was terrible. He gesticulated so before Mary that again I feared for her, he struck at Buck, calling him thief and other opprobrious names, and he kicked at O'Rourke's body as though he would kick in his ribs. Then, swearing and vowing that if Mary spoke before his followers-for so he called them-as she had spoken now he would, instead of taking her for one of his squaws, have her tongue cut out of her mouth so that she should never speak again, he called for the Indians to enter from without. And they, coming in a moment or so afterwards, showed no signs upon their impassive faces of having overheard, or understood, one word that had been uttered.

The dawn had come now, and the light as it crept in to my ruined saloon served but to increase my sense of the horrors of the night. At the side of the window to which they had been pushed by Anuza and the others, so as to allow for easy ingress and exit, lay huddled together numberless dead Indians, two or three of my poor servants, and the bodies of the mastiffs, all of which had been slain after a fierce resistance. The carpets and rugs for which my father had sent to London were torn and slit and drenched with blood, the spinet and the harpsichord were both ruined, ornaments were broken, and the pictures splashed with blood. Oh, what a scene of horror for the sun to rise upon!

"Let all the prisoners who are alive be taken to the woods at once," exclaimed Roderick to Anuza; "to-night we start back to the mountains. Our work is done. Pomfret is destroyed, or destroyed so much that years shall not see it again as it was."

Once more, as at his coming, Anuza and his followers prostrated themselves low before him, whereby I feared that, after all Mary's denunciations, they still might not have understood how vile a creature was this whom they worshipped-and then, addressing us, the impostor said:

"My loves that shall be-my sweet ones of the Wigwam, I leave you now while I go to seek others to accompany you to our homes. For your friends shall be with you, I promise you. You shall, I hope, see cousin Gregory from whom I was once threatened a beating, and Roger Cliborne, who was to have been married a week hence. Ha! ha! And Bertram Pringle; he, too, shall ride with us and we will see if his courage is as great as that of his vaunted fighting cocks. All, all, my fair Joice and you, my Mary, shall you see, and" – coming close to us, while he hissed out the words with incredible fury-"you shall see them all die a hideous, lingering death by tortures such as even no saint in the calendar ever devised for his enemies. Farewell until tonight." After which, calling to his guards, he strode forth into the morning air accompanied by them.

For a moment Anuza the Bear stood where the window once had been while gazing after him, his huge form filling up half the vacant space as he did so. Then slowly, and with that stately grace which the Indian never lacks, he returned to where we were-I being again crouched on the floor with my beloved one's head in my arms-and standing before Mary, he said:

"White woman, were the words that fell from your lips to him the words of truth? Is he all that you have said?"

"He is all that I have said," she answered, "ay, and a thousand times worse. Why do you ask?"

Yet she told me afterwards that she already guessed the reason of his question.

He made no reply but still stood gazing down at her from his great height, while she returned his glance fearlessly; then he turned to one of his warriors behind him and spoke to him in their own tongue, whereon the man vanished and came back a moment afterwards bearing in his hand one of my great bowls full of water.

"Drink," he said to her, "and refresh yourself." When she had done so he passed the bowl to me, bidding me drink also. Likewise he let me bathe my darling's lips with the cool water and lave his temples, and he permitted Mr. Kinchella to drink; while, on Buck and Lamb making signs that they too were thirsty, water was fetched for them by another savage.

Next, he sat himself down upon a couch that stood against the wall opposite to us and, with his chin in his hand, sat meditating long, while we could form no guess as to what shape those meditations were taking. Then once more, when our suspense was intense, he spake again, addressing me this time:

"White maiden, you who rule as mistress of this abode, you and she spoke to him as one whom you had known before. Answer me, and answer truly, what know you of him? And has this, your sister," for so he seemed to deem Mary, "also spoken truly?"

"Alas! alas!" I replied, "only too truly. He came to my father's house a slave bought with his money," here the Bear started and clenched his great hands; "yet was he not made a slave because of our pity for him. He ate my father's bread and, in return, he sought the dishonour of his daughter." Then, being sadly wrought upon by all the misery that had come upon us, I threw myself upon my knees before him as I had done to that other, and, lifting up my hands in supplication, I cried again, "Oh chief of the Shawnee warriors, if in your heart there is any of that noble spirit with which your race is credited, pity me and mine; pity us, pity us! Your fathers, as I have said, ate once of our bread, this house which you have to-night made desolate sheltered them once. Will you show us no more gratitude than that craven whom you, in your delusion, worship as a great medicine chief?"

He bade me rise, even assisting me to do so, and motioned to one of the braves to wheel up another couch on which to seat myself, and all the time he muttered to himself, "A slave! a slave! a drunkard! a cheat!" and his eyes glistened fiercely.

But at last he rose to his feet again, and said with the calm that distinguished all his actions:

"The time has come to set forth to the mountains-"

"No, no!" Mary and I shrieked together, "No! no! Spare us, oh! spare us. Nay, rather slay us here on the spot than let us fall into his hands."

"If," he replied, looking down imperturbably upon us, "you have spoken truth, as from his own manner I deem it to be, no woman will ever fall into his hands again. If he has deceived us as you have said, no punishment he promised for the prisoners of Pomfret will equal that which he himself will endure. I have spoken."

"And our dear ones," I said, "what, what shall become of them? Oh! do not tear us from those we love," while, even as I spoke, I flung myself on Gerald's body and kissed his lips and wept over him. "Those who are alive must journey with us into the forests and towards the mountains-those who are gone to their fathers we war not with. This one," he said, stooping over Gerald, "this one, who was you say to have been your mate, is not dead, but-he will die."

Again I shrieked at his words, though as I did so I saw so strange a look in the chief's eye that the shriek died upon my lips. It was a look I could not understand.

"He will die," he went on, "he will die. Yet he was a brave man; of all white men in this house none last night fought more fiercely. And this other," turning to the body of O'Rourke, "he too still lives, and he too will die. Let him lie here."

His glance rested next on Mr. Kinchella, and, in the same soft impassive voice-the voice in which there was no variance of tone-he said, "You are unharmed?"

"Yes," the other replied, "I am unharmed."

"And you," exclaimed the Bear, striding to where all the others stood bound, "you, too, have escaped our weapons; the great War God has spared you?"

"Ay, noble chief," exclaimed Buck, as though addressing a comrade, "the great War God, as you call him, generally does spare Peter Buck. I was born to good luck, and, noble chief, being so spared I'm going to give you a few revelations about your great medicine man who's just gone out."

"Silence," exclaimed Anuza, "not now; not now. But come, the day has arrived. We must go forth." Then turning to me he said, "Take your last farewell of him you love."

Oh! how I kissed my darling again and again, how I whispered in his ears my love for him in those sad moments of parting, while Mary knelt by my side and comforted me and Mr. Kinchella stood by gazing down on to Gerald's white face. To think that I should have to leave him lying thus, to think that this was our parting when our love was but so newly told!

They took us away very gently, it is true, from my old house, now so wrecked and battered; they let me go back once more to press my lips to his; they even let Mary and me go to our rooms, escorted by a guard, to fetch our cloaks and hoods. But, gentle as these savages were now-far, far more so, indeed, than could ever have been believed, remembering all the stories of their cruelty that we had listened to-their firmness and determination never varied and we were as much prisoners as though we had been shut up in a fortress.

Yet, at that last parting to which I was allowed to run back ere we left the room, there happened a thing that brought some joy to my poor bruised heart. For, as once more I stooped over Gerald to take, or rather give, my last kiss, I heard O'Rourke whisper low-his body lying close to my lord's: "Fear not to leave him. I was but stunned, and I doubt if he is much worse. And believe in me. He shall be my care. As soon as may be, we will follow you. Fear not."

And so I went forth with them, and there was greater peace at my heart than I had dared to hope would ever come again.

All that day we rode towards the forests that lie at the foot of the mountains and, there having been enough horses in my stables, as well as that of O'Rourke, none of us were without one. Ahead of all went Anuza-the Indians themselves being all mounted on horses they had obtained from the village-speaking no word to any one, but shrouded in his impenetrable Indian calm; behind him followed a score or so of his warriors, then we, the prisoners, came, and then the remainder of the band. Speech was not forbidden us-indeed, there was no enemy for our captors to fear if Pomfret was destroyed and all the dwellers thereabouts either driven forth or massacred-and so we conversed in whispers with each other and discussed in melancholy the sad fate that had befallen us all.

"Yet," said Mr. Kinchella who rode by Mary and me, "I cannot fear the worst. The chief's behaviour is not that of the Indian who is taking his victims to a dreadful death. The denunciation of that scoundrel by Mary has caused a terrible revolution in his mind; he seems, indeed, more like one who is carrying witnesses against another than one who is leading forth prisoners."

"And, reverend sir," said Buck, who rode close by, "what's more is that the chief doesn't stomach the business he is about. He knew well enough that neither his lordship nor the captain was badly wounded, and he left 'em there to escape as best they might-any way he gave them a chance."

"Yet he said that he did so," I replied with a sob, "because they must die."

"Ay, mistress," answered Buck, "so they must. All men must die. But they're not a-going to die yet, and he knew it. But I'll tell you who is going to die, and that before long. That's Roderick, the medicine man. He's marked as much as any man ever was when the dead warrant came down to Newgate. Ay! and a good deal more, too, for mine came down once and yet here I am alive and well, while the old judge who tried and sentenced me has gone long ago, I make no doubt."

"What will they do to him?" Mary asked.

"Do? Do, mistress? Why convict him of being an impostor, and then-why, then they'll tear him all to pieces. That's what they'll do with him. And when they've finished with him there won't be as much left of Roderick as will make a meal for a crow. I've spoken with men who have been captured by the Indians and lived to escape from them, and awful tales I've heard of their tortures, but the worst tortures they ever devised were kept for those whom the Indians have trusted and been deceived by. And you had only got to look at this chief's face when you, missy, were denouncing him, to guess what's going to happen to the other."

As he spoke we did, indeed, remember the look on Anuza's face as he stood behind the window frame. Also, I remembered the strange glance he gave me when he said that Gerald and O'Rourke should live though they must die later. So that it verily seemed as if Buck had rightly interpreted all that was going on in our captor's mind.

We halted that night on the skirts of a forest with, to the west of it, a spur of the Alleghany Mountains. The scene itself was picturesque and beautiful, while, to our minds, it had something of the awful and sublime in connection with it. For here it was that, although not more than forty English miles from where I had dwelt all my life, the limit to what we knew of the mysterious unknown land lying to the west of us ceased. Into those mountains, indeed, the rough backwoodsman had penetrated sometimes, bringing back stories of the bands of savages who dwelt within them; we knew that living with these bands were white men and women who, as children, had been torn from their homes and parents in raids and forays, but we knew little more. And for what lay beyond the mountains still farther to the west we knew nothing except that, thousands of miles away, there was another ocean which washed the western shores of the great land in which we dwelt, and that on the coast of that ocean were Spanish settlements, even as on our coasts there were English settlements. But, of all that lay between the two when once the mountains were passed, no man knew anything.

And now it was that into those mountains we were to be taken, those mountains to which Roderick St. Amande had fled from my father's house, and where, to the Indian dwellers within them, he had appeared as a great magician or sorcerer.

The halt for the night was made, as I have said, on the skirts of the forest, with cool grass beneath the trees and, above us, those great trees stretching out their branches so that they were all interlaced together and formed a canopy which would have kept the rain from us had it been the wet instead of the exceeding dry season, and with, sheltering in those branches, innumerable birds twittering and calling to each other. It was, indeed, a strange scene! Around us in a vast circle sat the Indians, speaking never at all to each other, but smoking silently from the pipes they passed from one to the other, their faces still with the war-paint upon them and their bodies, now that the night was coming, wrapped in their blankets. Inside that circle we, the prisoners, were huddled together, Mary being at this time asleep with her head on her lover's shoulder and I lying with mine upon her lap, while the men, now no longer my servants, or, at least, my slaves, talked in whispers to each other.

And near us, in the glade, there stood that which we in our poor hearts regarded as an omen of better things to come. An object which, at least, went far to cheer us up and to inspire us with the earnest hope that, even between us and those in whose hands we were, there might still be a possibility of peace and of mercy from the victor to the vanquished. This thing was a rude stone in the form of a monolith, made smooth on one side and with, upon that smoothness, these words carved: "It was to this spot, in ye yere 1678, that Henry Johnson was brought from the mountains by an Indian woman, he being a boy of ten, and set free to return to Jamestown because, as she said to him, 'she pitied his poor mother.' 'I cried unto Thee in my trouble and Thou heard'st my prayer.'"4

Seeing this stone before us growing whiter in the dusk as the night came on, we, too, in our hearts cried unto the Lord and besought Him to hear our prayers and to give us freedom from our enemies and all dangers that encompassed us about.

CHAPTER XXII

AMONGST THE SAVAGES

The moon was waning and the stars disappearing when the movements of the Indians told us that the journey was to be resumed. All night those who had not acted as a watch over the party had laid like statues folded in their blankets, but now they arose as one man and set about preparations for our departure. With their awakening we, too, roused ourselves. Food had been given us over night, consisting of wheaten cakes and dried deer's flesh, accompanied by gourds of fresh water, and this was again offered to us ere we set out. Mary and I scarce ate on either occasion, though the water was indeed welcome, but Mr. Kinchella made a good meal while Buck and his companions ate heartily, the ex-highwayman contriving as usual to regard all that occurred as something to be made light of.

"'Tis better than prison fare, anyway," he said to his companions in the dawn, as they fell to on the meat and bread, "but the devil take the water! 'Tis cold to the stomach even on so fine a summer morning, and a tass of Nantz or of Kill-devil from the islands would improve it marvellously. However, that we must not look for till we get back to freedom."

"You think, then," Mr. Kinchella asked him, "that to freedom we shall get back?" The man had proved himself so loyal to us that he was now admitted to almost familiarity and indeed, it could not be otherwise. If ever we returned in safety to Pomfret, or to the spot where Pomfret once stood, these men had my word that they were free; they were, therefore, no longer our inferiors, while, at the present moment, all who were prisoners in the hands of the Indians were on a most decided equality. Yet, let me say it to the honour of all who had been my bond-servants but a day or two before, none presumed upon their being so no longer, or treated us with aught but respect.

"I feel sure of it, reverend sir. As I said before, if the chief is thinking of anything it is not of killing or torturing us; while, if I had any money, I would bet it all that there would be a pretty scene when once Roderick is safely back in their encampment."