Silent Struggles Part 38

This rustic meal the women brought forth to the mound and placed upon the rock, without a sign of curiosity about the stranger, or a spoken word. Barbara looked on in wonder. The whole scene really did appear like enchantment to her. Philip took a case from the pouch by his side, and extracted from it a knife and fork, mounted with silver. Barbara's eye brightened: they had been her gift to the young man when he first went forth on his travels after those dreary years of bondage.

"Eat," he said, carving one of the birds with his hunting-knife, "and see if wholesome food may not be found in the woods."

"Yes, if you eat also," she answered. "In our hard journey through life we may at least take this one quiet meal together."

Philip took a piece of the bird, but could not eat; his heart was too full.

"This is our last meal together on earth, perhaps," he said, in a broken voice. "If you return to England I may perish here, and never look upon your face again."

"My friend, there is another world," Barbara answered, "and at the longest only a few short years divides us from it."

"But what if the Indian's hunting-grounds and the white man's heaven should be eternally sundered?" answered the young chief mournfully.

"That cannot be," was the gentle reply. "If friends.h.i.+p and love are immortal, G.o.d will not make a torture of his holiest gifts. In the next world as in this I shall surely be your friend."

"And the friends.h.i.+p of angels must be sweeter than earthly love,"

answered the youth. "That shall content me, lady; something tells me that it will not be long before I can claim this beautiful promise, up yonder. The path that I have chosen is full of danger, and its end may be speedy death."

Barbara looked down upon him with all the light of a n.o.ble soul in her eyes.

"Oh, Philip! may you never learn how sweet the hopes of death can be to a human soul."

The young man smiled mournfully.

"Perhaps I have already learned that," he said. "But I am wrong, inhospitable, selfish; my complaints trouble you, and you cannot eat.

Come, come; let me carve another bird, this is cold."

An hour after this Barbara mounted her horse, and accompanied by her old guide took the forest path again. As the night came on, and the shadows around her grew blacker and blacker, though the tree tops were aflame with scarlet and gold, she became conscious of some strange companions.h.i.+p in the woods. Sometimes it seemed as if the mellow tread of hoofs stole up from the recesses of the forest. Then she could hear the bend and sway of branches; and, closer still, whispering sounds among the leaves, as if every thing around her were full of active life.

What these signs could be was a wonder to her; neither restless birds nor deer, bounding through the undergrowth in flocks, could produce a noise at once so subdued and persistent. But no harm came, or appeared to threaten her. On the contrary, legions of spirits seemed to guard her path unseen. It was dark before Barbara came out of the thick of the forest, and made her way to the farm-house. Up to the very margin of the trees these whispered sounds and almost inaudible footsteps accompanied her. The moment Barbara's feet crossed that threshold hundreds on hundreds of human beings swarmed out of the woods, and moved noiselessly toward Jason Brown's barn.

A crash, as of broken boards, followed by a low, rattling sound, came from the building. Then, as each man filed by the door, a musket was placed in his hand, which he carried straight to the woods, following the warrior who had gone before, as savages tread a war-path. It was the end of this procession that Jason Brown had seen, coiling like a serpent along the edge of the forest, after Barbara Stafford came forth into the moonlight on her white horse and rode away. Of all the arms secreted in the barn, not a gun was left; even the boxes were carried off in fragments.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

THE BEACON FIRE.

Barbara rode on her way, altogether unconscious that the woods around her swarmed with armed men, who had been for hours following her at a distance. But all at once another hoof-tread sounded in her path, and looking around she saw young Philip, mounted on a horse that seemed black in the darkness, riding close by her side, while Wahpee lagged behind.

"Do not be afraid; I have been near you all the time," said the young horseman.

The woods were so dark, except where the light of a clear moon could penetrate to the path she rode over, that Barbara was glad of this addition to her escort. So they rode on together at a quick pace, penetrating more and more deeply into the heart of the wilderness. The hum and rush of what seemed a current of wind in the distance still haunted her way. Sometimes she heard the crackling of underbrush, afar off; but these sounds were so continuous that she soon ceased to regard them. Then, for a mile or two, all was profound stillness. It seemed as if every living thing had suddenly dropped to sleep upon the earth, and in the leaves. The very moonlight ceased to tremble along the forest turf, for the branches which had sent it quivering like frost-work around her path, hung motionless over Barbara's head.

Over the soft turf the three horses sped till the moon went down, and midnight came on. Then, all at once, the woods just ahead of this party burst into sudden flame; a vivid column of fire shot up to the sky, leaping, hissing, and rioting along the sapless boughs of a dead pine-tree, that crowned an eminence around which their path lead. Thus the blackness of night was swept away, and all the forest trees turned of a rich, golden green, inexpressibly beautiful.

"We are near the encampment," said Philip, and a proud smile lighted his face, upon which the sudden radiance shone. "Ride on, dear lady; your halting-place of yesterday is but just ahead: that flaming pine-tree will light us to it. This time you will find it filled with warriors."

The horse which Philip bestrode leaped forward while he was speaking, and with a spirited bound Barbara's white steed sprang after him.

Directly they came in sight of the clearing, illuminated by the burning pine, which, uplifted by a ledge of rocks from a level with the forest, towered behind it like a steeple of quivering fire. Bathed in this golden light Barbara saw the turfy mound on which she had taken that noonday repast, and under it the miniature lake with all its crystal waves flame-tinted by the fire. The sparks, which fell in a perpetual storm from that burning tree, seemed eddying and s.h.i.+mmering in the depth of its waters, and the willows which drooped over them were of a rich luminous green that quivered with every stir of the wind.

The larger clearing was less broadly in the light, but that presented one of the grandest scenes that human eye ever dwelt upon. There, swarming, jostling, heaving together in gorgeous ma.s.ses, a mult.i.tude of savages crowded the open s.p.a.ce. Within the glow of that mighty council fire the scattered tribe of the Pomperoags had gathered to meet the son of their slain king. Burning with war paint, and resplendent with barbarous ornaments, they turned the sweet rural scene of the morning into a war camp so wild and picturesque that the lady uttered a cry of astonishment when she came thus suddenly upon it.

"Do not be afraid," said Philip, reining in his horse and bending a triumphant look upon his forced guest. "You are safe here. Keep close to my side, and I will show you how hard it is to subjugate a brave people."

Barbara drew her rein tight: this scene, so grandly beautiful, the pa.s.sionate eloquence in her companion's look and voice, aroused all the enthusiasm of her nature.

"Ride on; I will follow;" she said.

With grave dignity, and curbing the heroic fire that burned in his eyes, the young man advanced into the clearing. Barbara followed, threading her way through crowds of armed warriors, some standing in groups, others sitting on the half-illuminated sward, while the edges of the forest swarmed with savage forms; for the mult.i.tude gathering into that spot had already overrun the open s.p.a.ce, and was crowded back into the woods.

Barbara drew up her horse on the margin of the lake, where she sat, like an equestrian statue, under the willows. Philip rode directly up the mound, and as the hoofs of his war-horse struck the rock at its summit, called out in a loud, ringing voice that penetrated every nook and corner of the encampment--

"Chiefs and warriors, Metacomet, the son of King Philip, has asked the people of his tribe to come hither that he may hold a talk with them. He is here."

The young man's face and figure were thrown into splendid relief by the fire light. His dress, savage only where it could be made picturesque, gave kingly dignity to his presence. The eagle's plume, that proclaimed him chief, rose from a cap of crimson cloth, from under which his bright hair swept in curling waves. The horse stood motionless, his neck arched proudly, his wild eyes a-glow with animal fire.

While Philip's voice was yet vibrating through those savage hearts, a line of warriors, laden down with arms, defiled out of some unseen path of the forest, and belted the mound in with a triple wall of braves, which bristled so thickly with pikes and bayonets that the men who bore them were almost invisible.

As the fiery pine flamed skyward and flashed on this bristling steel, rank after rank of savages, concealed in the woods, pressed into the light, till the whole clearing was alive with Indians, some armed for the war-path, others bearing calumets, doubtful if they had been summoned from their hiding places in the forest to hold council or sound a war-whoop. But the whole mult.i.tude was ready for either, and a sea of dusky faces was uplifted to the young chief in stern attention.

"If there lives a warrior who knew Philip when he was king and chief of the Pomperoags, let him step forth, look on this face and say if it is not his son who talks with you?"

Thus the young Metacomet addressed the throng of savages as they swarmed in from the forest.

Two old medicine-men came out of the ranks and pa.s.sed through a lane of bayonets crowded back to give them free pa.s.sage. They went close up to Philip, and, shading their eyes from the hot light, searched his face with keen glances. They fell back satisfied, and, so far as their feeble voices could reach, the savages heard this curt decision:

"His face does not lie."

Here a low shout, or rather groan, of approval, ran through those savage ranks and died away in the forest. Again Metacomet turned to the crowd.

"Warriors, I have come back from across the great waters with the heart of King Philip beating loud in my bosom. He died fighting for his people. So will I, or set them free, with broader hunting-grounds than they ever trod, and richer cornfields than their enemies have learned to plant. When King Philip died, his enemies laughed, like cowards, for they knew that a great warrior had fallen, such as will never tread their cornfields, though they plant them over our fathers' graves ten thousand years. When he fell, the Pomperoags were a conquered people, not from lack of bravery, but because the white man's cunning was more powerful than the strong arms of all our warriors, with the bravest man that ever lived at their head.

"Warriors, your king, betrayed by a traitor, hunted down like a wild beast, was murdered. His son seized the rifle as it fell from his hand and sent its last bullet through the brain of a white soldier, who attempted to drag him away from his dying father. When he was disarmed, bleeding, desperate, they seized upon him. Warriors, I see by the fire in those eyes and the grip of those hands that no one of you has forgotten that story. The captors of this wretched boy sold him into slavery. They chained his limbs and gave him over to the lash--sent him under the hot sun to work like a beast of burden. He did work and he suffered, but slavery never reached the soul of Metacomet--that forever turned back to his people. Still he must have died like a brute beast, worn out with toil, but for the woman who sits yonder with her face turned this way in wonder at what she sees. She came to the island where he toiled under the lash, and saw how wretched he was. With her gold she broke his chains. With her smiles she cured his wounded heart. She taught him how to think, and out of that came a power which turned thought into a great purpose, which has never left his brain a moment from that day to this.

"He went across the great waters, and learned all the cunning secrets with which our enemies conquered the red man. He searched out the wonderful power which conquers without fighting. He learned that knowledge is more powerful than the tomahawk, and swifter than a rifle bullet. He learned that white men cut eagle plumes into pens, and with their sharp points send out thoughts like arrows, striking whole tribes at once.

"Warriors, with this knowledge the son of King Philip will give force to your strong arms. This night swift runners shall be on their way to friendly nations along the coast, and the great hunting-grounds on the big lakes. The thought that speaks here will run as fire leaps along yonder dead tree, burning up the hate that we have felt for each other, and linking us, tribe to tribe, nation to nation, till the coast is lighted by one belt of council fires, our forests threaded with war-paths, and the fields, cleared by our enemies, grow corn for the Indian alone. Warriors, has the son of your chief spoken well?"

A groan of general a.s.sent once more ran hoa.r.s.ely through that savage mult.i.tude, dying away in the depths of the forest. Again Metacomet spoke:

"Warriors, like the son of King Philip you have been slaves. The whites have taken away your rifles, and driven you into holes and corners to hide like foxes when the dogs are out. But I have brought muskets from over the great waters, and sharp spears that kill without leaving the hand. Powder and lead we have in plenty, hidden away in dry caves which our foe can never find."

Philip turned to the Indians that surrounded him closest standing under a forest of bayonets. Some of these men carried two muskets and a spear, some more.

"Stack your guns," he commanded.