"Nor widows' tears, nor tender orphans' cries
Can stop th' invader's force;
Nor swelling seas, nor threatening skies,
Prevent the pirate's course:
Their lives to selfish ends decreed
Through blood and rapine they proceed;
No anxious thoughts of ill repute,
Suspend the impetuous and unjust pursuit;
But power and wealth obtain'd, guilty and great,
Their fellow creatures' fears they raise, or urge their hate."Congreve, "Pindaric Ode," ii.
By this time Deerslayer had been twenty minutes in the canoe, and
he began to grow a little impatient for some signs of relief from
his friends. The position of the boat still prevented his seeing
in any direction, unless it were up or down the lake, and, though
he knew that his line of sight must pass within a hundred yards of
the castle, it, in fact, passed that distance to the westward of
the buildings. The profound stillness troubled him also, for he
knew not whether to ascribe it to the increasing space between him
and the Indians, or to some new artifice. At length, wearied with
fruitless watchfulness, the young man turned himself on his back,
closed his eyes, and awaited the result in determined acquiescence.
If the savages could so completely control their thirst for revenge,
he was resolved to be as calm as themselves, and to trust his fate
to the interposition of the currents and air.
Some additional ten minutes may have passed in this quiescent
manner, on both sides, when Deerslayer thought he heard a slight
noise, like a low rubbing against the bottom of his canoe. He
opened his eyes of course, in expectation of seeing the face or
arm of an Indian rising from the water, and found that a canopy
of leaves was impending directly over his head. Starting to his
feet, the first object that met his eye was Rivenoak, who had so far
aided the slow progress of the boat, as to draw it on the point,
the grating on the strand being the sound that had first given
our hero the alarm. The change in the drift of the canoe had been
altogether owing to the baffling nature of the light currents of
the air, aided by some eddies in the water.
"Come," said the Huron with a quiet gesture of authority, to order
his prisoner to land, "my young friend has sailed about till he is
tired; he will forget how to run again, unless he uses his legs."
"You've the best of it, Huron," returned Deerslayer, stepping
steadily from the canoe, and passively following his leader to the
open area of the point; "Providence has helped you in an onexpected
manner. I'm your prisoner ag'in, and I hope you'll allow that I'm
as good at breaking gaol, as I am at keeping furloughs."
"My young friend is a Moose!" exclaimed the Huron. "His legs are
very long; they have given my young men trouble. But he is not a
fish; he cannot find his way in the lake. We did not shoot him;
fish are taken in nets, and not killed by bullets. When he turns
Moose again he will be treated like a Moose."
'Ay, have your talk, Rivenoak; make the most of your advantage.
'Tis your right, I suppose, and I know it is your gift. On that
p'int there'll be no words atween us, for all men must and ought to
follow their gifts. Howsever, when your women begin to ta'nt and
abuse me, as I suppose will soon happen, let 'em remember that if
a pale-face struggles for life so long as it's lawful and manful,
he knows how to loosen his hold on it, decently, when he feels that
the time has come. I'm your captyve; work your will on me."
"My brother has had a long run on the hills, and a pleasant sail
on the water," returned Rivenoak more mildly, smiling, at the same
time, in a way that his listener knew denoted pacific intentions.
'He has seen the woods; he has seen the water. Which does he like
best? Perhaps he has seen enough to change his mind, and make him
hear reason."
"Speak out, Huron. Something is in your thoughts, and the sooner
it is said, the sooner you'll get my answer."
"That is straight! There is no turning in the talk of my pale-face
friend, though he is a fox in running. I will speak to him; his
ears are now open wider than before, and his eyes are not shut. The
Sumach is poorer than ever. Once she had a brother and a husband.
She had children, too. The time came and the husband started for
the Happy Hunting Grounds, without saying farewell; he left her
alone with his children. This he could not help, or he would not
have done it; le Loup Cervier was a good husband. It was pleasant
to see the venison, and wild ducks, and geese, and bear's meat, that
hung in his lodge in winter. It is now gone; it will not keep in
warm weather. Who shall bring it back again? Some thought the
brother would not forget his sister, and that, next winter, he would
see that the lodge should not be empty. We thought this; but the
Panther yelled, and followed the husband on the path of death. They
are now trying which shall first reach the Happy Hunting Grounds.
Some think the Lynx can run fastest, and some think the Panther
can jump the farthest. The Sumach thinks both will travel so fast
and so far that neither will ever come back. Who shall feed her
and her young? The man who told her husband and her brother to
quit her lodge, that there might be room for him to come into it.
He is a great hunter, and we know that the woman will never want."
"Ay, Huron this is soon settled, accordin' to your notions, but it
goes sorely ag'in the grain of a white man's feelin's. I've heard
of men's saving their lives this-a-way, and I've know'd them that
would prefar death to such a sort of captivity. For my part, I do
not seek my end, nor do I seek matrimony."
"The pale-face will think of this, while my people get ready for
the council. He will be told what will happen. Let him remember
how hard it is to lose a husband and a brother. Go; when we want
him, the name of Deerslayer will be called."
This conversation had been held with no one near but the speakers.
Of all the band that had so lately thronged the place, Rivenoak
alone was visible. The rest seemed to have totally abandoned the
spot. Even the furniture, clothes, arms, and other property of the
camp had entirely disappeared, and the place bore no other proofs
of the crowd that had so lately occupied it, than the traces of
their fires and resting places, and the trodden earth that still
showed the marks of their feet. So sudden and unexpected a change
caused Deerslayer a good deal of surprise and some uneasiness,
for he had never known it to occur, in the course of his experience
among the Delawares. He suspected, however, and rightly, that
a change of encampment was intended, and that the mystery of the
movement was resorted to in order to work on his apprehensions.
Rivenoak walked up the vista of trees as soon as he ceased speaking,
leaving Deerslayer by himself. The chief disappeared behind the
covers of the forest, and one unpractised in such scenes might have
believed the prisoner left to the dictates of his own judgment.
But the young man, while he felt a little amazement at the dramatic
aspect of things, knew his enemies too well to fancy himself
at liberty, or a free agent. Still, he was ignorant how far the
Hurons meant to carry their artifices, and he determined to bring
the question, as soon as practicable, to the proof. Affecting an
indifference he was far from feeling, he strolled about the area,
gradually getting nearer and nearer to the spot where he had landed,
when he suddenly quickened his pace, though carefully avoiding all
appearance of flight, and pushing aside the bushes, he stepped upon
the beach. The canoe was gone, nor could he see any traces of it,
after walking to the northern and southern verges of the point, and
examining the shores in both directions. It was evidently removed
beyond his reach and knowledge, and under circumstances to show
that such had been the intention of the savages.
Deerslayer now better understood his actual situation. He was a
prisoner on the narrow tongue of land, vigilantly watched beyond a
question, and with no other means of escape than that of swimming.
He, again, thought of this last expedient, but the certainty that
the canoe would be sent in chase, and the desperate nature of the
chances of success deterred him from the undertaking. While on
the strand, he came to a spot where the bushes had been cut, and
thrust into a small pile. Removing a few of the upper branches,
he found beneath them the dead body of the Panther. He knew that
it was kept until the savages might find a place to inter it,
where it would be beyond the reach of the scalping knife. He gazed
wistfully towards the castle, but there all seemed to be silent
and desolate, and a feeling of loneliness and desertion came over
him to increase the gloom of the moment.
"God's will be done!" murmured the young man, as he walked sorrowfully
away from the beach, entering again beneath the arches of the wood.
"God's will be done, on 'arth as it is in heaven! I did hope that
my days would not be numbered so soon, but it matters little a'ter
all. A few more winters, and a few more summers, and 'twould have
been over, accordin' to natur'. Ah's! me, the young and actyve
seldom think death possible, till he grins in their faces, and
tells 'em the hour is come!"
While this soliloquy was being pronounced, the hunter advanced
into the area, where to his surprise he saw Hetty alone, evidently
awaiting his return. The girl carried the Bible under her arm,
and her face, over which a shadow of gentle melancholy was usually
thrown, now seemed sad and downcast. Moving nearer, Deerslayer
spoke.
"Poor Hetty," he said, "times have been so troublesome, of late,
that I'd altogether forgotten you; we meet, as it might be to mourn
over what is to happen. I wonder what has become of Chingachgook
and Wah!"
"Why did you kill the Huron, Deerslayer? -" returned the girl
reproachfully. 'Don't you know your commandments, which say 'Thou
shalt not kill!' They tell me you have now slain the woman's husband
and brother!"
"It's true, my good Hetty - 'tis gospel truth, and I'll not deny
what has come to pass. But, you must remember, gal, that many
things are lawful in war, which would be onlawful in peace. The
husband was shot in open fight -or, open so far as I was consarned,
while he had a better cover than common - and the brother brought
his end on himself, by casting his tomahawk at an unarmed prisoner.
Did you witness that deed, gal?"
"I saw it, and was sorry it happened, Deerslayer, for I hoped you
wouldn't have returned blow for blow, but good for evil."
"Ah, Hetty, that may do among the Missionaries, but 'twould make
an onsartain life in the woods! The Panther craved my blood, and
he was foolish enough to throw arms into my hands, at the very
moment he was striving a'ter it. 'Twould have been ag'in natur'
not to raise a hand in such a trial, and 'twould have done discredit
to my training and gifts. No - no - I'm as willing to give every
man his own as another, and so I hope you'll testify to them that
will be likely to question you as to what you've seen this day."
"Deerslayer, do you mean to marry Sumach, now she has neither
husband nor brother to feed her?"
"Are such your idees of matrimony, Hetty! Ought the young to wive
with the old - the pale-face with the red-skin - the Christian with
the heathen? It's ag'in reason and natur', and so you'll see, if
you think of it a moment."
"I've always heard mother say," returned Hetty, averting her face
more from a feminine instinct than from any consciousness of wrong,
"that people should never marry until they loved each other better
than brothers and sisters, and I suppose that is what you mean.
Sumach is old, and you are young!"
"Ay and she's red, and I'm white. Beside, Hetty, suppose you was
a wife, now, having married some young man of your own years, and
state, and colour -Hurry Harry, for instance -" Deerslayer selected
this example simply from the circumstance that he was the only
young man known to both - "and that he had fallen on a war path,
would you wish to take to your bosom, for a husband, the man that
slew him?"
"Oh! no, no, no -" returned the girl shuddering - "That would be
wicked as well as heartless! No Christian girl could, or would do
that! I never shall be the wife of Hurry, I know, but were he my
husband no man should ever be it, again, after his death!"
"I thought it would get to this, Hetty, when you come to understand
sarcumstances. 'Tis a moral impossibility that I should ever marry
Sumach, and, though Injin weddin's have no priests and not much
religion, a white man who knows his gifts and duties can't profit
by that, and so make his escape at the fitting time. I do think
death would be more nat'ral like, and welcome, than wedlock with
this woman."
"Don't say it too loud," interrupted Hetty impatiently; "I suppose
she will not like to hear it. I'm sure Hurry would rather marry even
me than suffer torments, though I am feeble minded; and I am sure
it would kill me to think he'd prefer death to being my husband."
"Ay, gal, you ain't Sumach, but a comely young Christian, with a
good heart, pleasant smile, and kind eye. Hurry might be proud to
get you, and that, too, not in misery and sorrow, but in his best
and happiest days. Howsever, take my advice, and never talk to
Hurry about these things; he's only a borderer, at the best."
"I wouldn't tell him, for the world!" exclaimed the girl, looking
about her like one affrighted, and blushing, she knew not why.
"Mother always said young women shouldn't be forward, and speak
their minds before they're asked; Oh! I never forget what mother
told me. Tis a pity Hurry is so handsome, Deerslayer; I do think
fewer girls would like him then, and he would sooner know his own
mind."
"Poor gal, poor gal, it's plain enough how it is, but the Lord will
bear in mind one of your simple heart and kind feelin's! We'll talk
no more of these things; if you had reason, you'd be sorrowful at
having let others so much into your secret. Tell me, Hetty, what
has become of all the Hurons, and why they let you roam about the
p'int as if you, too, was a prisoner?"
'I'm no prisoner, Deerslayer, but a free girl, and go when and where
I please. Nobody dare hurt me! If they did, God would be angry,
as I can show them in the Bible. No - no - Hetty Hutter is
not afraid; she's in good hands. The Hurons are up yonder in the
woods, and keep a good watch on us both, I'll answer for it, since
all the women and children are on the look-out. Some are burying
the body of the poor girl who was shot, so that the enemy and the
wild beasts can't find it. I told 'em that father and mother lay
in the lake, but I wouldn't let them know in what part of it,
for Judith and I don't want any of their heathenish company in our
burying ground."
"Ahs! me; Well, it is an awful despatch to be standing here, alive
and angry, and with the feelin's up and ferocious, one hour, and
then to be carried away at the next, and put out of sight of mankind
in a hole in the 'arth! No one knows what will happen to him on
a warpath, that's sartain."
Here the stirring of leaves and the cracking of dried twigs
interrupted the discourse, and apprised Deerslayer of the approach
of his enemies. The Hurons closed around the spot that had been
prepared for the coming scene, and in the centre of which the intended
victim now stood, in a circle, the armed men being so distributed
among the feebler members of the band, that there was no safe opening
through which the prisoner could break. But the latter no longer
contemplated flight, the recent trial having satisfied him of
his inability to escape when pursued so closely by numbers. On
the contrary, all his energies were aroused in order to meet his
expected fate, with a calmness that should do credit to his colour
and his manhood; one equally removed from recreant alarm, and savage
boasting.
When Rivenoak re-appeared in the circle, he occupied his old place
at the head of the area. Several of the elder warriors stood near
him, but, now that the brother of Sumach had fallen, there was no
longer any recognised chief present whose influence and authority
offered a dangerous rivalry to his own. Nevertheless, it is well
known that little which could be called monarchical or despotic
entered into the politics of the North American tribes, although the
first colonists, bringing with them to this hemisphere the notions
and opinions of their own countries, often dignified the chief men
of those primitive nations with the titles of kings and princes.
Hereditary influence did certainly exist, but there is much reason
to believe it existed rather as a consequence of hereditary merit
and acquired qualifications, than as a birthright. Rivenoak,
however, had not even this claim, having risen to consideration
purely by the force of talents, sagacity, and, as Bacon expresses
it in relation to all distinguished statesmen, "by a union of great
and mean qualities;" a truth of which the career of the profound
Englishman himself furnishes so apt an illustration. Next to arms,
eloquence offers the great avenue to popular favor, whether it be
in civilized or savage life, and Rivenoak had succeeded, as so many
have succeeded before him, quite as much by rendering fallacies
acceptable to his listeners, as by any profound or learned
expositions of truth, or the accuracy of his logic. Nevertheless,
he had influence; and was far from being altogether without just
claims to its possession. Like most men who reason more than they
feel, the Huron was not addicted to the indulgence of the more
ferocious passions of his people: he had been commonly found on the
side of mercy, in all the scenes of vindictive torture and revenge
that had occurred in his tribe since his own attainment to power.
On the present occasion, he was reluctant to proceed to extremities,
although the provocation was so great. Still it exceeded his
ingenuity to see how that alternative could well be avoided. Sumach
resented her rejection more than she did the deaths of her husband
and brother, and there was little probability that the woman
would pardon a man who had so unequivocally preferred death to her
embraces. Without her forgiveness, there was scarce a hope that the
tribe could be induced to overlook its loss, and even to Rivenoak,
himself, much as he was disposed to pardon, the fate of our hero
now appeared to be almost hopelessly sealed.
When the whole band was arrayed around the captive, a grave silence,
so much the more threatening from its profound quiet, pervaded
the place. Deerslayer perceived that the women and boys had been
preparing splinters of the fat pine roots, which he well knew were
to be stuck into his flesh, and set in flames, while two or three
of the young men held the thongs of bark with which he was to
be bound. The smoke of a distant lire announced that the burning
brands were in preparation, and several of the elder warriors
passed their fingers over the edges of their tomahawks, as if to
prove their keenness and temper. Even the knives seemed loosened
in their sheathes, impatient for the bloody and merciless work to
begin.
"Killer of the Deer," recommenced Rivenoak, certainly without any
signs of sympathy or pity in his manner, though with calmness and
dignity, "Killer of the Deer, it is time that my people knew their
minds. The sun is no longer over our heads; tired of waiting on
the Hurons, he has begun to fall near the pines on this side of the
valley. He is travelling fast towards the country of our French
fathers; it is to warn his children that their lodges are empty,
and that they ought to be at home. The roaming wolf has his den,
and he goes to it when he wishes to see his young. The Iroquois
are not poorer than the wolves. They have villages, and wigwams,
and fields of corn; the Good Spirits will be tired of watching
them alone. My people must go back and see to their own business.
There will be joy in the lodges when they hear our whoop from the
forest! It will he a sorrowful whoop; when it is understood, grief
will come after it. There will be one scalp-whoop, but there will
be only one. We have the fur of the Muskrat; his body is among
the fishes. Deerslayer must say whether another scalp shall be on
our pole. Two lodges are empty; a scalp, living or dead, is wanted
at each door."
"Then take 'em dead, Huron," firmly, but altogether without dramatic
boasting, returned the captive. "My hour is come, I do suppose,
and what must be, must. If you are bent on the tortur', I'll do
my indivours to bear up ag'in it, though no man can say how far
his natur' will stand pain, until he's been tried."
"The pale-face cur begins to put his tail between his legs!" cried
a young and garrulous savage, who bore the appropriate title of
the Corbeau Rouge; a sobriquet he had gained from the French by
his facility in making unseasonable noises, and an undue tendency
to hear his own voice; "he is no warrior; he has killed the Loup
Cervier when looking behind him not to see the flash of his own
rifle. He grunts like a hog, already; when the Huron women begin
to torment him, he will cry like the young of the catamount. He
is a Delaware woman, dressed in the skin of a Yengeese!"
"Have your say, young man; have your say," returned Deerslayer,
unmoved; "you know no better, and I can overlook it. Talking may
aggravate women, but can hardly make knives sharper, fire hotter,
or rifles more sartain."
Rivenoak now interposed, reproving the Red Crow for his premature
interference, and then directing the proper persons to bind the
captive. This expedient was adopted, not from any apprehensions
that he would escape, or from any necessity that was yet apparent
of his being unable to endure the torture with his limbs free, but
from an ingenious design of making him feel his helplessness, and
of gradually sapping his resolution by undermining it, as it might
be, little by little. Deerslayer offered no resistance. He submitted
his arms and legs, freely if not cheerfully, to the ligaments
of bark, which were bound around them by order of the chief, in a
way to produce as little pain as possible. These directions were
secret, and given in the hope that the captive would finally save
himself from any serious bodily suffering by consenting to take the
Sumach for a wife. As soon as the body of Deerslayer was withed in
bark sufficiently to create a lively sense of helplessness, he was
literally carried to a young tree, and bound against it in a way
that effectually prevented him from moving, as well as from falling.
The hands were laid flat against the legs, and thongs were passed
over all, in a way nearly to incorporate the prisoner with the
tree. His cap was then removed, and he was left half-standing,
half-sustained by his bonds, to face the coming scene in the best
manner he could.
Previously to proceeding to any thing like extremities, it was the
wish of Rivenoak to put his captive's resolution to the proof by
renewing the attempt at a compromise. This could be effected only
in one manner, the acquiescence of the Sumach being indispensably
necessary to a compromise of her right to be revenged. With this
view, then, the woman was next desired to advance, and to look to
her own interests; no agent being considered as efficient as the
principal, herself, in this negotiation. The Indian females, when
girls, are usually mild and submissive, with musical tones, pleasant
voices and merry laughs, but toil and suffering generally deprive
them of most of these advantages by the time they have reached
an age which the Sumach had long before passed. To render their
voices harsh, it would seem to require active, malignant, passions,
though, when excited, their screams can rise to a sufficiently
conspicuous degree of discordancy to assert their claim to possess
this distinctive peculiarity of the sex. The Sumach was not
altogether without feminine attraction, however, and had so recently
been deemed handsome in her tribe, as not to have yet learned the
full influence that time and exposure produce on man, as well as on
woman. By an arrangement of Rivenoak's, some of the women around
her had been employing the time in endeavoring to persuade the
bereaved widow that there was still a hope Deerslayer might be
prevailed on to enter her wigwam, in preference to entering the world
of spirits, and this, too, with a success that previous symptoms
scarcely justified. All this was the result of a resolution on
the part of the chief to leave no proper means unemployed, in order
to get transferred to his own nation the greatest hunter that was
then thought to exist in all that region, as well as a husband for
a woman who he felt would be likely to be troublesome, were any of
her claims to the attention and care of the tribe overlooked.
In conformity with this scheme, the Sumach had been secretly
advised to advance into the circle, and to make her appeal to the
prisoner's sense of justice, before the band had recourse to the
last experiment. The woman, nothing loth, consented, for there
was some such attraction in becoming the wife of a noted hunter,
among the females of the tribes, as is experienced by the sex, in
more refined life, when they bestow their hands on the affluent. As
the duties of a mother were thought to be paramount to all other
considerations, the widow felt none of that embarrassment, in
preferring her claims, to which even a female fortune hunter among
ourselves might be liable. When she stood forth before the whole
party, therefore, the children that she led by the hands fully
justified all she did.
"You see me before you, cruel pale-face," the woman commenced;
"your spirit must tell you my errand. I have found you; I cannot
find le Loup Cervier, nor the Panther; I have looked for them in
the lake, in the woods, in the clouds. I cannot say where they
have gone."
"No man knows, good Sumach, no man knows," interposed the captive.
"When the spirit leaves the body, it passes into a world beyond
our knowledge, and the wisest way, for them that are left behind,
is to hope for the best. No doubt both your warriors have gone
to the Happy Hunting Grounds, and at the proper time you will see
'em ag'in, in their improved state. The wife and sister of braves
must have looked forward to some such tarmination of their 'arthly
careers."
"Cruel pale-face, what had my warriors done that you should slay
them! They were the best hunters, and the boldest young men of
their tribe; the Great Spirit intended that they should live until
they withered like the branches of the hemlock, and fell of their
own weight-"
"Nay - nay - good Sumach," interrupted Deerslayer, whose love of
truth was too indomitable to listen to such hyperbole with patience,
even though it came from the torn breast of a widow -"Nay - nay,
good Sumach, this is a little outdoing red-skin privileges. Young
man was neither, any more than you can be called a young woman, and
as to the Great Spirit's intending that they should fall otherwise
than they did, that's a grievous mistake, inasmuch as what the
Great Spirit intends is sartain to come to pass. Then, agin, it's
plain enough neither of your fri'nds did me any harm; I raised my
hand ag'in 'em on account of what they were striving to do, rather
than what they did. This is nat'ral law, 'to do lest you should
be done by.'"
"It is so. Sumach has but one tongue; she can tell but one story.
The pale face struck the Hurons lest the Hurons should strike him.
The Hurons are a just nation; they will forget it. The chiefs
will shut their eyes and pretend not to have seen it; the young men
will believe the Panther and the Lynx have gone to far off hunts,
and the Sumach will take her children by the hand, and go into the
lodge of the pale-face and say - 'See; these are your children;
they are also mine - feed us, and we will live with you.'"
"The tarms are onadmissable, woman, and though I feel for your
losses, which must he hard to bear, the tarms cannot be accepted.
As to givin' you ven'son, in case we lived near enough together,
that would be no great expl'ite; but as for becomin' your husband,
and the father of your children, to be honest with you, I feel no
callin' that-a-way."
"Look at this boy, cruel pale-face; he has no father to teach him
to kill the deer, or to take scalps. See this girl; what young man
will come to look for a wife in a lodge that has no head? There
are more among my people in the Canadas, and the Killer of Deer
will find as many mouths to feed as his heart can wish for."
"I tell you, woman," exclaimed Deerslayer, whose imagination was
far from seconding the appeal of the widow, and who began to grow
restive under the vivid pictures she was drawing, "all this is nothing
to me. People and kindred must take care of their own fatherless,
leaving them that have no children to their own loneliness. As for
me, I have no offspring, and I want no wife. Now, go away Sumach;
leave me in the hands of your chiefs, for my colour, and gifts,
and natur' itself cry out ag'in the idee of taking you for a wife."
It is unnecessary to expatiate on the effect of this downright refusal
of the woman's proposals. If there was anything like tenderness
in her bosom -and no woman was probably ever entirely without that
feminine quality - it all disappeared at this plain announcement.
Fury, rage, mortified pride, and a volcano of wrath burst out, at
one explosion, converting her into a sort of maniac, as it might
beat the touch of a magician's wand. Without deigning a reply in
words, she made the arches of the forest ring with screams, and
then flew forward at her victim, seizing him by the hair, which
she appeared resolute to draw out by the roots. It was some time
before her grasp could be loosened. Fortunately for the prisoner
her rage was blind; since his total helplessness left him entirely
at her mercy. Had it been better directed it might have proved
fatal before any relief could have been offered. As it was, she
did succeed in wrenching out two or three handsful of hair, before
the young men could tear her away from her victim.
The insult that had been offered to the Sumach was deemed an insult
to the whole tribe; not so much, however, on account of any respect
that was felt for the woman, as on account of the honor of the
Huron nation. Sumach, herself, was generally considered to be as
acid as the berry from which she derived her name, and now that
her great supporters, her husband and brother, were both gone, few
cared about concealing their aversion. Nevertheless, it had become
a point of honor to punish the pale-face who disdained a Huron woman,
and more particularly one who coolly preferred death to relieving
the tribe from the support of a widow and her children. The
young men showed an impatience to begin to torture that Rivenoak
understood, and, as his older associates manifested no disposition
to permit any longer delay, he was compelled to give the signal
for the infernal work to proceed.