Had the flames spread on that rock with half the quick ness with which they leaped from bush to tree in other parts of the mountain, our painful task would have soon ended; for they would have consumed already the captives they inclosed. But the peculiarity of their situation afforded Elizabeth and her companion the respite of which they had availed themselves to make the efforts we have recorded.
The thin covering of earth on the rock supported but a scanty and faded herbage, and most of the trees that had found root in the fissures had already died, during the in tense heats of preceding summers. Those which still retained the appearance of life bore a few dry and withered leaves, while the others were merely the wrecks of pines, oaks, and maples. No better materials to feed the fire could be found, had there been a communication with the flames; but the ground was dest.i.tute of the brush that led the destructive element, like a torrent, over the remainder of the hill. As auxiliary to this scarcity of fuel, one of the large springs which abound in that country gushed out of the side of the ascent above, and, after creeping sluggishly along the level land, saturating the mossy covering of the rock with moisture, it swept around the base of the little cone that formed the pinnacle of the mountain, and, entering the canopy of smoke near one of the terminations of the terrace, found its way to the lake, not by dashing from rock to rock, but by the secret channels of the earth. It would rise to the surface, here and there, in the wet seasons, but in the droughts of summer it was to be traced only by the bogs and moss that announced the proximity of water. When the fire reached this barrier, it was compelled to pause, until a concentration of its heat could overcome the moisture, like an army awaiting the operations of a battering train, to open its way to desolation.
That fatal moment seemed now to have arrived, for the hissing steams of the spring appeared to be nearly exhausted, and the moss of the rocks was already curling under the intense heat, while fragments of bark, that yet clung to the dead trees, began to separate from their trunks, and fall to the ground in crumbling ma.s.ses. The air seemed quivering with rays of heat, which might be seen playing along the parched stems of the trees. There were moments when dark clouds of smoke would sweep along the little terrace; and, as the eye lost its power, the other senses contributed to give effect to the fearful horror of the scene.
At such moments, the roaring of the flames, the crackling of the furious element, with the tearing of falling branches, and occasionally the thundering echoes of some falling tree, united to alarm the victims.
Of the three, however, the youth appeared much the most agitated.
Elizabeth, having relinquished entirely the idea of escape, was fast obtaining that resigned composure with which the most delicate of her s.e.x are sometimes known to meet unavoidable evils; while Mohegan, who was much nearer to the danger, maintained his seat with the invincible resignation of an Indian warrior. Once or twice the eye of the aged chief, which was ordinarily fixed in the direction of the distant hills, turned toward the young pair, who seemed doomed to so early a death, with a slight indication of pity crossing his composed features, but it would immediately revert again to its former gaze, as if already looking into the womb of futurity. Much of the time he was chanting a kind of low dirge in the Delaware tongue, using the deep and remarkable guttural tones of his people.
"At such a moment, Mr. Edwards, all earthly distinctions end," whispered Elizabeth; "persuade John to move nearer to us--let us die together."
"I cannot--he will not stir," returned the youth, in the same horridly still tones. "He considers this as the happiest moment of his life, he is past seventy, and has been decaying rapidly for some time; he received some injury in chasing that unlucky deer, too, on the lake, Oh!
Miss Temple, that was an unlucky chase, indeed! it has led, I fear, to this awful scene."
The smile of Elizabeth was celestial. "Why name such a trifle now?--at this moment the heart is dead to all earthly emotions!"
"If anything could reconcile a man to this death," cried the youth, "it would be to meet it in such company!"
"Talk not so, Edwards; talk not so," interrupted Miss Temple. "I am unworthy of it, and it is unjust to your self. We must die; yes--yes--we must die--it is the will of G.o.d, and let us endeavor to submit like his own children."
"Die!" the youth rather shrieked than exclaimed, "no--no--no--there must yet be hope--you, at least, must-not, shall not die."
"In what way can we escape?" asked Elizabeth, pointing with a look of heavenly composure toward the fire "Observe! the flame is crossing the barrier of wet ground--it comes slowly, Edwards, but surely. Ah! see!
the tree! the tree is already lighted!"
Her words were too true. The heat of the conflagration had at length overcome the resistance of the spring, and the fire was slowly stealing along the half-dried moss; while a dead pine kindled with the touch of a forked flame, that, for a moment, wreathed around the stem of the tree, as it whined, in one of its evolutions, under the influence of the air.
The effect was instantaneous, The flames danced along the parched trunk of the pine like lightning quivering on a chain, and immediately a column of living fire was raging on the terrace. It soon spread from tree to tree, and the scene was evidently drawing to a close. The log on which Mohegan was seated lighted at its further end, and the Indian appeared to be surrounded by fire. Still he was unmoved. As his body was unprotected, his sufferings must have been great; but his fort.i.tude was superior to all. His voice could yet be heard even in the midst of these horrors. Elizabeth turned her head from the sight, and faced the valley Furious eddies of wind were created by the heat, and, just at the moment, the canopy of fiery smoke that overhung the valley was cleared away, leaving a distinct view of the peaceful village beneath them. "My father!----my father!" shrieked Elizabeth "Oh! this--surely might have been spared me--but I submit."
The distance was not so great but the figure of Judge Temple could be seen, standing in his own grounds, and apparently contemplating, in perfect unconsciousness of the danger of his child, the mountain in flames. This sight was still more painful than the approaching danger; and Elizabeth again faced the hill.
"My intemperate warmth has done this!" cried Edwards, in the accents of despair. "If I had possessed but a moiety of your heavenly resignation, Miss Temple, all might yet have been well."
"Name it not--name it not," she said. "It is now of no avail. We must die, Edwards, we must die--let us do so as Christians. But--no--you may yet escape, perhaps. Your dress is not so fatal as mine. Fly! Leave me, An opening may yet be found for you, possibly--certainly it is worth the effort. Fly! leave me--but stay! You will see my father! my poor, my bereaved father! Say to him, then, Edwards, say to him, all that can appease his anguish. Tell him that I died happy and collected; that I have gone to my beloved mother; that the hours of this life are nothing when balanced in the scales of eternity. Say how we shall meet again.
And say," she continued, dropping her voice, that had risen with her feelings, as if conscious of her worldly weakness, "how clear, how very dear, was my love for him; that it was near, too near, to my love for G.o.d."
The youth listened to her touching accents, but moved not. In a moment he found utterance, and replied:
"And is it me that you command to leave you! to leave you on the edge of the grave? Oh! Miss Temple, how little have you known me!" he cried, dropping on his knees at her feet, and gathering her flowing robe in his arms as if to shield her from the flames. "I have been driven to the woods in despair, but your society has tamed the lion within me. If I have wasted my time in degradation, "twas you that charmed me to it.
If I have forgotten my name and family, your form supplied the place of memory. If I have forgotten my wrongs, "twas you that taught me charity.
No--no--dearest Elizabeth, I may die with you, but I can never leave you!"
Elizabeth moved not, nor answered. It was plain that her thoughts had been raised from the earth, The recollection of her father, and her regrets at their separation, had been mellowed by a holy sentiment, that lifted her above the level of earthly things, and she was fast losing the weakness of her s.e.x in the near view of eternity. But as she listened to these words she became once more woman. She struggled against these feelings, and smiled, as she thought she was shaking off the last lingering feeling of nature, when the world, and all its seductions, rushed again to her heart, with the sounds of a human, voice, crying in piercing tones:
"Gal! where be ye, gal! gladden the heart of an old man, if ye yet belong to "arth!"
"Hist!" said Elizabeth; ""tis the Leather-Stocking; he seeks me!"
""Tis Natty!" shouted Edwards, "and we may yet be saved!"
A wide and circling flame glared on their eyes for a moment, even above the fire of the woods, and a loud report followed.
""Tis the canister, "tis the powder," cried the same voice, evidently approaching them. ""Tis the canister, and the precious child is lost."
At the next instant Natty rushed through the steams of the spring, and appeared on the terrace, without his deerskin cap, his hair burnt to his head, his shirt, of country check, black and filled with holes, and his red features of a deeper color than ever, by the heat he had encountered.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.
"Even from the land of shadows, now My father"s awful ghost appears."
--Gertrude Of Wyoming.
For an hour after Louisa Grant was left by Miss Temple, in the situation already mentioned, she continued in feverish anxiety, awaiting the return of her friend. But as the time pa.s.sed by without the reappearance of Elizabeth, the terror of Louisa gradually increased, until her alarmed fancy had conjured every species of danger that appertained to the woods, excepting the one that really existed. The heavens had become obscured by degrees, and vast volumes of smoke were pouring over the valley; but the thoughts of Louisa were still recurring to beasts, without dreaming of the real cause for apprehension. She was stationed in the edge of the low pines and chestnuts that succeed the first or large growth of the forest, and directly above the angle where the highway turned from the straight course to the village, and ascended the mountain laterally. Consequently, she commanded a view, not only of the valley, but of the road beneath her. The few travellers that pa.s.sed, she observed, were engaged in earnest conversation, and frequently raised their eyes to the hill, and at length she saw the people leaving the court house, and gazing upward also. While under the influence of the alarm excited by such unusual movements, reluctant to go, and yet fearful to remain, Louisa was startled by the low, cracking, but cautious treads of some one approaching through the bushes. She was on the eve of flight, when Natty emerged from the cover, and stood at her side. The old man laughed as he shook her kindly by a hand that was pa.s.sive with fear.
"I am glad to meet you here, child," he said; "for the back of the mountain is a-fire, and it would be dangerous to go up it now, till it has been burnt over once, and the dead wood is gone. There"s a foolish man, the comrade of that varmint who has given me all this trouble, digging for ore on the east side. I told him that the kearless fellows, who thought to catch a practysed hunter in the woods after dark, had thrown the lighted pine-knots in the brush, and that "twould kindle like tow, and warned him to leave the hill. But he was set upon his business, and nothing short of Providence could move him, if he isn"t burnt and buried in a grave of his own digging, he"s made of salamanders. Why, what ails the child? You look as skeary as if you"d seed more painters.
I wish there were more to be found! they"d count up faster than the beaver. But where"s the good child with a bad father? Did she forget her promise to the old man?"
"The hill! the hill!" shrieked Louisa; "she seeks you on the hill with the powder!"
Natty recoiled several feet at this unexpected intelligence.
"The Lord of Heaven have mercy on her! She"s on the Vision, and that"s a sheet of fire agin" this. Child, if ye love the dear one, and hope to find a friend when ye need it most, to the village, and give the alarm.
The men are used to fighting fire, and there may be a chance left, Fly!
I bid ye fly! nor stop even for breath."
The Leather-Stocking had no sooner uttered this injunction, than he disappeared in the bushes, and, when last seen by Louisa, was rushing up the mountain, with a speed that none but those who were accustomed to the toil could attain.
"Have I found ye!" the old man exclaimed, when he burst out of the smoke; "G.o.d be praised that I have found ye; but follow--there"s no time for talking."
"My dress!" said Elizabeth; "it would be fatal to trust myself nearer to the flames in it."
"I bethought me of your flimsy things," cried Natty, throwing loose the folds of a covering buckskin that he carried on his arm, and wrapping her form in it, in such a manner as to envelop her whole person; "now follow, for it"s a matter of life and death to us all."
"But John! what will become of John?" cried Edwards; "can we leave the old warrior here to perish?"
The eyes of Natty followed the direction of Edwards" finger, where he beheld the Indian still seated as before, with the very earth under his feet consuming with fire. Without delay the hunter approached the spot, and spoke in Delaware:
"Up and away, Chingachgook! will ye stay here to burn, like a Mingo at the stake? The Moravians have teached ye better, I hope; the Lord preserve me if the powder hasn"t flashed atween his legs, and the skin of his back is roasting. Will ye come, I say; will ye follow me?"
"Why should Mohegan go?" returned the Indian, gloomily. "He has seen the days of an eagle, and his eye grows dim He looks on the valley; he looks on the water; he looks in the hunting-grounds--but he sees no Delawares.
Every one has a white skin. My fathers say, from the far-off land, Come.
My women, my young warriors, my tribe, say, Come. The Great Spirit says, Come. Let Mohegan die."
"But you forget your friend," cried Edwards,
""Tis useless to talk to an Indian with the death-fit on him, lad,"
interrupted Natty, who seized the strips of the blanket, and with wonderful dexterity strapped the pa.s.sive chieftain to his own back; when he turned, and with a strength that seemed to bid defiance, not only to his years, but to his load, he led the way to the point whence he had issued. As they crossed the little terrace of rock, one of the dead trees, that had been tottering for several minutes, fell on the spot where they had stood, and filled the air with its cinders.