The Plowshare and the Sword Part 23

said I, as she pushed away. 'She it was who smote down George Flower by treachery, and she it was who brought the Frenchman to our hiding-place.'"

"Said she anything?"

"Never a word. But her eyes strained upon the knife."

Then the two lonely men returned to New Windsor, the slow day pa.s.sed, and night enwrapped in cloud fell upon the land. The fires of the allied tribes spotted the forest with scarlet, and between the black trees the upright figures of warriors, fully painted and feathered, crossed as they threaded the mazes of the dance. Five thousand fighters were there gathered, the best and bravest of the Oneidas, Senacas, and Onandagas, mad to avenge their wrongs. Spies were posted at every point; a hundred watched the fortress, pa.s.sing the word from man to man. In a chain they stretched from the height above the river to the council fire, where the nine sachems sat muttering in whispers and drawing omens from the flight of the smoke and the burning of the logs.

"Shuswap, great chief of the Cayugas, the woman your daughter would speak to you," a voice sounded.

"Let her come near," answered the old man.

His keen eyes distended. He had looked, prepared to behold his younger daughter, but instead his eyes fell upon Tuschota, her sister. The father noted her warlike bearing, the bow slung upon her shoulders, the arrows and knife thrust through her girdle. He saw also the sternness of her countenance.

"What would you, daughter?"

"Where is Onawa, my sister?"

"I know not," said the sachem.

"Find her and bring her forth. She led hither the Frenchman who has slain my son."

The sachems turned and their black eyes glittered upon her.

"It is false," cried Shuswap.

"She desires to win the French doctor for husband. She brought him therefore to the lake that he might lie in wait to kill the Englishmen.

One man Onawa killed with her own hand. My son is your son. Your daughter, my sister, must die."

She spoke, and pa.s.sed away into the glow of the forest.

Shuswap dashed his grey head to the ground.

"She must die," muttered the counsellors.

The news travelled like an evil wind from fire to fire. All the tribes swore by their G.o.ds that the woman who had sought to betray them must die. Not till then might Shuswap lift up his head among them. They danced more cruelly, maddened by disgrace.

A runner came from the depths of the forest, spots of blood thrown from his flying heels. Three hours had he run at that speed. He pa.s.sed the warriors and their fires and reached the council. All the sachems sat erect, save only old Shuswap, who lay forward, his head upon the dust.

"Oskelano comes upon us at the head of the tribes of the Algonquins,"

spoke the messenger. "They carry the fire-tubes given them by the French."

The sachems sat like figures of stone.

"Which way do they come?" demanded Piscotasin, surnamed Son of the Weasel, the learned chief of the Oneidas.

"From the north."

"They shall find us ready."

The messenger pa.s.sed back. Straightway the forest s.h.i.+vered with a wild cry for battle until the leaves were shed like rain.

There came another runner.

"A fire-float pa.s.ses down the Father of Waters."

"It is well," said the Son of the Weasel. "It is the signal of the friendly Dutch."

Thereupon commenced that great advance of the confederate tribes which descendants speak of to this day. The flower and strength of the Iroquois, that great people which from time immemorial had ruled the north-eastern land from the coast to the chain of inland seas, went out to avenge their wrongs. The women rushed to find shelter from their hereditary enemies the pitiless Algonquins. The army poured away in a roaring torrent, draining the forest, leaving the fires licking the sharp breeze with forked tongues, leaving only one man behind:

Old Shuswap, doubled in the dust.

CHAPTER XIX.

ENKINDLED.

The raft of fire, which had been reported to the sachems as visible upon the river, had indeed been ignited and started upon its course by the hands of the Dutch, but without any idea of signalling to their allies. The man who was chiefly instrumental in giving the signal, which Van Vuren had arranged for in the time of his power, had never heard of that secret conspiracy which the action of the English venturers had brought to nought.

Because the captain shrank from introducing his party into a camp friendly only in name, where friction between his men and those of Roussilac might have occurred, the Dutchmen bivouacked upon the outskirts of the forest, and while darkness surrounded them sat smoking solemnly and chatting, altogether ignorant of the contemplated native rising. These men were of all ages and drawn from almost every station in life. The most prominent character was one Pieter von Donck, an elderly sailor of immense bulk, attired in the shapeless sack-coat, white tucker, and immense knee-breeches of the period. This man, so report went, had touched at every known harbour in the world, had explored many an unknown tract of country, and was as well acquainted with the streets of New Amsterdam, its double-roofed church, its battery upon the hill, its toylike windmills, and its gallows beside the wharf, as with the old-world town of Holland on the arm of the Zuyder Zee. He had been sent out with Dutoit to act as guide for the expedition, and it was well for the lieutenant that old Pieter had been with him, otherwise the entire party must have been lost. Von Donck was very nearly as skilful as an Indian in picking up a trail, and to his more unenlightened comrades his knowledge of locality savoured of witchcraft. Van Vuren and his lieutenant were conversing at a little distance from the big circle, the former frequently consulting a sc.r.a.p of vellum covered with names and lines, the first map of the great eastern coast which had ever been designed.

"Yonder is a mighty precipice," observed presently one of the youngest of the soldiers, nodding his head gravely in the direction of the heights. "How the folk at home would marvel, could they but see what we look upon daily in this land."

"What say you, boy? What say you?" cried Von Donck, aroused from his musings by this criticism. "What! call you yonder hill a precipice?

How would you name the cliffs of Jersey, had you seen them as I, Pieter von Donck, saw them from the s.h.i.+p _Goede Vrouw_? Should you but cross the expanse of Tapaan Bay, as I have done, should you enter the defiles of the Highlands and see the wigwams of the Iroquois perched among the cliffs like nests of eagles, should you see the black thunder-clouds chasing the hobgoblins among the Kaatskills, as I, Pieter von Donck, have seen them, then methinks, boy, you might sit among old travellers and talk to them the night."

The old sailor's voice was thick, and he snorted like an ox between his words.

"'Tis given to few to venture as you have done," spoke a conciliatory voice from the circle. "Tell us now somewhat of your journey up Hudson's River, good Piet."

"A weird river, they tell me," said another voice.

"True! true!" snorted the voyageur. "A river of ghosts and devils. A river which changes the flow of its tide 'gainst all nature. A river which shoals or deepens in an hour, to hold the explorer back, or to lure him into the heart of a storm. 'Tis a river which few dare to tempt. But I, Pieter von Donck, went up it under a master who, despite his English blood, was the bravest man upon this earth. Ay, but I saw even his cheek whiten, when we reached the whirlpools at the end of the known world, and yet saw no sea ahead."

"Who was that master?" asked the young man who had opened the conversation.

A derisive laugh sounded, followed by Von Donck's booming reproach:

"Young man, have you no pride in the doings of the great? Hast never heard the name of Hendrick Hudson?"

"I knew not that you had been with him," muttered the youth.

"Before Marie von Toit, your mother, was weaned I crossed the seas,"

snorted the old man, smiling into the fire. "What Dutchman has not heard of the s.h.i.+p which brought me over, the _Goede Vrouw_, which lies as I speak a-rotting within the wooden harbour of New Amsterdam? San Nicolas was her figure-head, the good saint who guided us through all perils, and to whom upon landing we erected a chapel within sight of the sea. He is the patron of our first settlement in this new world, and shall remain so for ever. Now they call him Santa Claus, and the children of New Amsterdam hang up each one a stocking in the chimney-side on San Nicolas' Eve, for the good saint is a lover of children, and rides that night over the houses, his wide breeches filled with gifts, which he lets fall down the chimneys and so into the stockings hung to receive them. All the city is a-laughing with children on the morn of San Nicholas' Day."

"Gives he then nothing to the elder folk?" asked one.

"'Twas once his custom to do so, when he could find an industrious body who spoke no evil of his neighbour," said Von Donck. "But he has much ado to find such now."