Wacousta

by John Richardson

  “Thank God, she still lives!” he cried, pressing his sister once more in fondness to his heart; then turning to his companion, who, although seemingly abstracted, had been a silent and attentive witness of the scene,–“By Heaven! Valletort, there is yet a hope. She it was indeed whom we saw borne out of the fort, and subsequently made to walk by the cruel Indian who had charge of her.”

  “Valletort, Valletort,” murmured Clara unconsciously, her sick heart throbbing with she knew not what. “How is this, Frederick?–Where, then, is Captain Baynton? and how came you here?”

  “Alas! Clara, poor Baynton is no more. Even at the moment when he confided the unconscious burden, preserved at the peril of his own life, to the arms of Sir Everard here, he fell beneath the tomahawk of a pursuing savage. Poor, noble, generous Baynton,” he continued, mournfully: “to him, indeed, Clara, are you indebted for your life; yet was it purchased at the price of his own.”

  Again the pained and affectionate girl wept bitterly, and her brother proceeded:–

  “The strange object you saw on the lake, my love, was nothing more than a canoe disguised with leafy boughs, in which Sir Everard Valletort and myself, under the guidance of old François of the Fleur de lis, whom you must recollect, have made the dangerous passage of the Sinclair in the garb of duck hunters,–which latter we had only discarded on reaching the schooner, in order to assume another we conceived better suited to our purpose. Alas!” and he struck his hand violently against his brow, “had we made directly for the shore without touching the vessel at all, there might have been time to save those we came to apprise of their danger. Do you not think there was, Valletort?”

  “Most assuredly not,” returned his companion, anxious to remove the impression of self-blame that existed in the mind of Captain de Haldimar. “From the moment of our reaching the schooner, which lay immediately in our route, to that when the shout was raised by the savages as they rushed into the fort, there was scarcely an interval of three minutes; and it would have required a longer period to have enabled us even to gain the shore.”

  “Thank, thank you for that!” exclaimed the officer, drawing himself up with the air of one who breathes more freely. “I would not, for the wealth and honours of the united world, that such a cause for self-reproach should linger on my mind. By Heaven! it would break my heart to think we had been in time to save them, and yet had lost the opportunity through even one moment of neglect.” Then turning once more to his sister,–“Now, Clara, that I see you in safety, I have another sacred duty to perform. I must leave you, but not alone.”

  “What mean you, Frederick?” exclaimed his agitated sister, clinging more closely to his embrace. “Scarce have we met, and you talk of leaving me. Oh, whither would you go?”

  “Surely, my love,” and he spoke half reproachfully, although with tenderness of accent, “my meaning must be obvious. But what do I say? You know it not. Madeline still lives. We saw her, as we pulled towards the shore, led across the clearing in the direction of Chabouiga. Hear me, then: the canoe in which we came is still towing from the vessel’s stern, and in this do I mean to embark, without further loss of time, in search of her who is dearer to me than existence. I know,” he pursued with emotion, “I have but little hope of rescuing, even if I do succeed in finding her; but at least I shall not have to suffer under the self-reproach of having neglected the only chance that now lies within my reach. If she be doomed to die, I shall then have nothing left to live for ____ except you, Clara,” he concluded, after a pause, pressing the weeping girl to his heart, as he remarked how much she seemed pained by the declaration.

  Having placed his sister once more on the couch, and covered her with a cloak that had been brought from the cabin of the unfortunate commander, Captain de Haldimar now rose from his humble seat, and grasping the hand of his friend,–

  “Valletort,” he said, “I commit this dear girl to your keeping. Hitherto we have been equal sharers in an enterprise having for its object the preservation of our mutual companions and friends. At present, interests of a more personal nature occupy my attention; and to these must I devote myself alone. I trust you will reach Détroit in safety; and when you have delivered my unfortunate sister into the arms of her father, you will say to him from me, I could not survive the loss of that being to whom I had sworn eternal fidelity and affection. François must be my only companion on this occasion. Nay,” he continued, pointing to his sister, in answer to the rising remonstrance of the baronet, “will you desert the precious charge I have confided to your keeping? Recollect, Valletort,” in a more subdued tone, “that besides yourself, there will be none near her but rude and uneducated sailors;–honest men enough in their way, it is true; but not the sort of people to whom I should like to confide my poor sister.”

  The warm and silent pressure by Sir Everard of his hand announced his participation in the sentiment; and Captain de Haldimar now hastened forward to apprise the Canadian of his purpose. He found mine host of the Fleur de lis seated in the forecastle of the schooner; and with an air of the most perfect unconcern discussing a substantial meal, consisting of dried uncooked venison, raw onions, and Indian corn bread, the contents of a large bag or wallet that lay at his feet. No sooner, however, had the impatient officer communicated his design, asking at the same time if he might expect his assistance in the enterprise, than the unfinished meal of the Canadian was discontinued, the wallet refilled, and the large greasy clasp-knife with which the portions had been separated, closed and thrust into a pocket of his blanket coat.

  “I shall go to de devils for you, capitaine, if we must,” he said, as he raised his portly form, not without effort, from the deck, slapping the shoulder of the officer at the same time somewhat rudely with his hand. There was nothing, however, offensively familiar in this action. It expressed merely the devoted ness of heart with which the man lent himself to the service to which he had pledged himself, and was rather complimentary than otherwise to him to whom it was directed. Captain de Haldimar took it in the light in which we have just shown it, and he grasped and shook the rough hand of the Canadian with an earnestness highly gratifying to the latter.

  Every thing was now in readiness for their departure. The canoe, still covered with its streaming boughs, was drawn close up to the gangway, and a few hasty necessaries thrown in. While this was passing, the officer had again assumed his disguise of a duck-hunter; and he now appeared in the blanket costume in which we introduced Sir Everard and himself at the opening of this volume.

  “If I may be so bold as to put in my oar, your honour,”–said the veteran boatswain, on whom the command of the schooner had fallen, as he now advanced, rolling his quid in his mouth, and dropping his hat on his shoulder, while the fingers of the hand which clutched it were busily occupied in scratching his bald head,–“if I may be so bold, there is another chap here as might better sarve your honour’s purpose than that ’ere fat Canadian, who seems to think only of stuffing while his betters are fasting.”

  “And who is he, my good Mullins?” asked Captain de Haldimar.

  “Why, that ’ere Ingian, your honour, as began the butchery in the fort, yonder, by trying to kill Jack Fuller while he laid asleep this morning, waiting for the captain in the jolly boat. Jack never seed him coming, until he felt his black hands upon his throat, and then he ups with the tiller at his noddle, and sends him floundering across the boat’s thwarts like a flat-fish. I thought, your honour, seeing as how I have got the command of the schooner, of tying him up to the mainmast, and giving him two or three round dozen or so, and then sending him to swim among the mascannungy with a twenty-four-pound shot in his neckcloth; but, seeing as how your honour is going among them savages agin, I thought as how some good might be done with him, if your honour could contrive to keep him in tow, and close under your lee quarter, to prevent his escape.”

  “At all events,” returned the officer, after a pause of some moments, during which he appeared to be deliberating on his cou
rse of action, “it may be dangerous to keep him in the vessel; and yet, if we take him ashore, he may be the means of our more immediate destruction; unless, indeed, as you observe, he can be so secured as to prevent the possibility of escape: but that I very much doubt indeed. Where is he, Mullins? I should like to see and question him.”

  “He shall be up, your honour, in no time,” replied the sailor, once more resuming his hat, and moving a pace or two forward. Then addressing two or three men in the starboard gangway in the authoritative tone of command:–“Bear a hand there, my men, and cast off the lashings of that black Ingian, and send him aft, here, to the officer.”

  The order was speedily executed. In a few minutes the Indian stood on the quarter-deck, his hands firmly secured behind, and his head sunk upon his chest in sullen despondency. In the increasing gloom in which objects were now gradually becoming more and more indistinct, it was impossible for Captain de Haldimar to distinguish his features; but there was something in the outline of the Indian’s form that impressed him with the conviction he had seen it before. Advancing a pace or two forward, he pronounced, in an emphatic and audible whisper, the name of “Oucanasta!”

  The Indian gave an involuntary start,–uttered a deep interjectional “Ugh!”–and, raising his head from his chest, fixed his eye heavily on the officer.

  “Hookynaster!–Hookynaster!” growled Jack Fuller, who had followed to hear the examination of his immediate captive: “why, your honour, that jaw-breaking name reminds me as how the chap had a bit of paper when I chucked him into the jolly boat, stuck in his girdle. It was covered over with pencil-marks, as writing like; but all was rubbed out agin, except some such sort of a name as that.”

  “Where is it?–what have you done with it?” hastily asked Captain de Haldimar.

  “Here, in my backy-box, your honour. I kept it safe, thinking as how it might sarve to let us know all about it afterwards.”

  The sailor now drew from the receptacle just named a dirty piece of folded paper, deeply impregnated with the perfume of stale and oft rechewed quids of coarse tobacco: and then, with the air of one conscious of having “rendered the state some service,” hitched up his trowsers with one hand, while with the other he extended the important document.

  To glance his eye hurriedly over the paper by the light of a dark lanthorn that had meanwhile been brought upon deck, unclasp his hunting-knife, and divide the ligatures of the captive, and then warmly press his liberated hands within his own, were, with Captain de Haldimar, but the work of a minute.

  “Holloa! which the devil way does the wind blow now?” muttered Fuller, the leer of self-satisfaction that had hitherto played in his eye rapidly giving place to an air of seriousness and surprise; an expression that was not at all diminished by an observation from his new commander.

  “I tell you what it is, Jack,” said the latter, impressively; “I don’t pretend to have more gumption than my messmates; but I can see through a millstone as clear as any man as ever heaved a lead in these here lakes; and may I never pipe boatswain’s whistle again, if you ar’n’t, some how or other, in the wrong box. That ’ere Ingian’s one of us!”

  The feelings of Captain de Haldimar may easily be comprehended by our readers, when, on glancing at the paper, he found himself confirmed in the impression previously made on him by the outline of the captive’s form. The writing, nearly obliterated by damp, had been rudely traced by his own pencil on a leaf torn from his pocketbook on the night of his visit to the Indian encampment, and at the moment when, seated on the fatal log, Oucanasta had generously promised her assistance in at least rescuing his betrothed bride. They were addressed to Major de Haldimar, and briefly stated that a treacherous plan was in contemplation by the enemy to surprise the fort, which the bearer, Oucanasta (the latter word strongly marked), would fully explain, if she could possibly obtain access within. From the narrative entered into by Clara, who had particularly dwelt on the emotions of fear that had sprung up in her own and cousin’s heart by the sudden transformation of a supposed harmless beaver into a fierce and threatening savage, he had no difficulty in solving the enigma.

  The Indian, in whom he had recognised the young chief who had saved him from the fury of Wacousta, had evidently been won upon by his sister to perform a service which offered so much less difficulty to a warrior than to a woman; and it was clear, that, finding all other means of communication with the fort, undiscovered by his own people, impracticable, he had availed himself of the opportunity, when he saw the boat waiting on the strand, to assume a disguise so well adapted to insure success. It was no remarkable thing in these countries, to see both the beaver and the otter moving on the calm surface of the waters in the vicinity of the forts, even at mid-day; and occupied as the Indians were, to a man, at that moment with their cruel projects, it was by no means likely that their attention should have been called off from these to so apparently unimportant a circumstance. The act that had principally alarmed the cousins, and terminated, as we have seen, in the sudden attack of the sailor, had evidently been misconceived. The hand supposed to be feeling for the heart of the sluggard, had, in all probability, been placed on his chest with a view to arouse him from his slumber; while that which was believed to have been dropped to the handle of his knife, was, in reality, merely seeking the paper that contained the announcement, which, if then delivered, might have saved the garrison.

  Such was the train of conjecture that now passed through the mind of the officer; but, although he thus placed the conduct of the Indian in the most favourable light, his impression received no confirmation from the lips of the latter. Sullen and doggedly, notwithstanding the release from his bonds, the Ottawa hung his head upon his chest, with his eyes riveted on the deck, and obstinately refused to answer every question put to him by his deliverer. This, however, did not the less tend to confirm Captain de Haldimar in his belief. He knew enough of the Indian character, to understand the indignant and even revengeful spirit likely to be aroused by the treatment the savage had met with in return for his intended services. He was aware that, without pausing to reflect on the fact, that the sailor, ignorant of his actual purpose, could merely have seen in him an enemy in the act of attempting his life, the chief would only consider and inflame himself over the recollection of the blow inflicted; and that, with the true obstinacy of his race, he would rather suffer captivity or death itself, than humble the haughty pride of his nature, by condescending to an explanation with those by whom he felt himself so deeply injured. Still, even amid all his own personal griefs,–griefs that rendered the boon in some degree at present valueless,–Captain de Haldimar could not forget that the youth, no matter by what motive induced, had rescued him from a dreadful death on a previous occasion. With the generous warmth, therefore, of a grateful mind, he now sought to impress on the Indian the deep sense of obligation under which he laboured; explaining at the same time the very natural error into which the sailor had fallen, and concluding with a declaration that he was free to quit the vessel in the canoe in which he himself was about to take his departure for the shore, in search of her whom his sister had pledged herself, at all hazards, to save.

  The address of the officer, touching and impressive as language ever is that comes from the heart, was not altogether without effect on the Indian. Several times he interrupted him with a short, quick, approving “Ugh!” and when he at length received the assurance that he was no longer a prisoner, he raised his eyes rapidly, although without moving his head, to the countenance of his deliverer. Already were his lips opening to speak for the first time, when the attention of the group around him was arrested by his giving a sudden start of surprise. At the same moment he raised his head, stretched his neck, threw forward his right ear, and, uttering a loud and emphatic “waugh!” pointed with his finger over the bows of the vessel.

  All listened for upwards of a minute in mute suspense; and then a faint and scarcely distinguishable sound was heard in the direction in which he poi
nted. Scarcely had it floated on the air, when a shrill, loud, and prolonged cry, of peculiar tendency, burst hurriedly and eagerly from the lips of the captive; and, spreading over the broad expanse of water, seemed to be re-echoed back from every point of the surrounding shore.

  Great was the confusion that followed this startling yell on the decks of the schooner. “Cut the hell-fiend down!”–“Chuck him overboard!”–“We are betrayed!”–“Every man to his gun!”–“Put the craft about!” were among the numerous exclamations that now rose simultaneously from at least twenty lips, and almost drowned the loud shriek that burst again from the wretched Clara de Haldimar.

  “Stop, Mullins!–Stop, men!” shouted Captain de Haldimar, firmly, as the excited boatswain, with two or three of his companions, now advanced with the intention of laying violent hands on the Indian. “I will answer for his fidelity with my life. If he be false, it will be time enough to punish him afterwards; but let us calmly await the issue like men. Hear me,” he proceeded, as he remarked their incredulous, uncertain, and still threatening air;–“this Indian saved me from the tomahawks of his tribe not a week ago; and, even now, he has become our captive in the act of taking a note from me to the garrison, to warn them of their danger. But for that slumbering fool,” he added, bitterly, pointing to Fuller, who slept when he should have watched, “yon fort would not now have been what it is,–a mass of smoking ruins. He has an ocean of blood upon his soul, that all the waters of the Huron can never wash out!”

  Struck by the vehement manner of the officer, and the disclosure he had just made, the sailors sunk once more into inaction and silence. The boatswain alone spoke.

  “I thought, your honour, as how Jack Fuller, who sartainly is a better hand at a snooze than a watch, had got into a bit of a mess; but, shiver my topsails, if I think it’s quite fair to blame him, neither, for clapping a stopper on the Ingian’s cable, seeing as how he was expecting a shot between wind and water. Still, as the chap turns out to be an honest chap, and has saved your honour’s life above all, I don’t much care if I give him a grip. Here, old fellow, tip us your fist!”