Silent Struggles Part 13

"_Rachael, that man was one of my judges!_"

The words came out hoa.r.s.ely, rattling in her throat. She fell back, struggled with awful force for a moment, and then a cold, gray corpse settled down in the chair, terribly in contrast with the savage dress.

The child, who had been growing paler and paler, went softly up to the chair, and burying its face in the gorgeous vestments that clung about the corpse, remained motionless and mute as the dead. She neither wept nor moaned like an ordinary child, but a dull pallor stole over her neck and her little hands, which proved how terrible that still grief was.

Ah, who shall tell how much of the iron that rusted through her after-life, entered that human soul during those moments of silent agony!

Mrs. Parris stood looking at them both, then, struck with a pang of terrible anguish, she crept out of the room, moaning as she went.

CHAPTER XI.

DOOMED TO SLAVERY.

While Mrs. Parris was in her chamber, faint with pain and driven wild by the fearful developments just made to her, the dead woman lay in the great easy-chair, wrapped in her gorgeous forest-dress and with the bright hair falling in ma.s.ses down her cheek, concealing the death shadows that lay upon it.

All was still as midnight in the house. Save for a faint sob that came once or twice from the chamber above, the pretty cabin might have been taken for a tomb. Old t.i.tuba had been very busy at the great stone oven, back of the house, baking bread, and that fearful scene had pa.s.sed in the parlor without her knowledge. Though a soul had gone into eternity, and a heart had been broken, in those few minutes, the poor old savage was ignorant of it all. With her long iron shovel she was launching great loaves of rye bread into the depths of an enormous oven, and at last blocked up its yawning mouth with an earthen milk-pan full of beans, crested with a crisp ma.s.s of pork cut in square blocks across the rind. She had put the great wooden door up, and was stuffing tufts of gra.s.s about the edges to keep the air out, when a lad rushed wildly by her, leaping over the ground like a deer, and, turning a corner of the house, disappeared. The lad was dressed in a deer-skin tunic, trimmed so richly with wampum that it rattled like a hail storm as he fled. She caught one glimpse of a ma.s.s of glossy hair floating on the wind, and scarlet leggins hanging in shreds around those flying feet.

"It is an Indian child. It is one of our people," cried t.i.tuba, casting her heavy iron fire-shovel to the ground. "The white men are on his track; they swarm like snakes in the forest."

But, quickly as the old woman moved, that wild Indian boy entered the house before she came up. He halted one moment on the threshold, hesitating and wild. A glance at the great easy-chair, a cry that rang through and through the house, a leap that seemed rather that of some wild animal than a human being, and the boy lay prostrate at the dead woman's feet, with both hands pulling at her dress, while he cried out, in a voice that made the very air tremble with its pathos,

"Mother! mother! I am here! I am here! They could not hold me! I tore their bonds asunder like tow. I shot one through the heart, outran the others. All night long have I been on your trail. Look at me, mother.

Wake up or the enemy will be upon us again."

A stir in the woman's garments that shook all its wampum fringes, deceived the boy, or he would have known that she was dead.

"Mother! mother! there is no time for rest. They were crowding in the outskirts of the woods when I came through. Come with me. I know of a cave in the rocks where you can be safe with my little sister. Did you know they will sell us for slaves--these white men that talk of a G.o.d higher than Mineto? Mother! mother! I hear a step. They are on us!

They--" he paused suddenly, his hands, clasped and uplifted, seemed freezing together. He did not breathe. His wild eyes had caught the deadly pallor of that face, scattered as it were with ashes beneath the shadowy hair. He shuddered fearfully as the dead woman's garments rustled around her. A little form, half concealed by the chair, half buried in the garments, crept to his feet. A tiny hand, cold as snow, grasped at his dress.

"Brother!"

The little girl spoke in the Indian tongue, and looked into his face with those dark, piteous eyes.

"Brother!"

The boy s.n.a.t.c.hed her up, and folding her close in his arms, looked in terrible woe on the dead face resting against the high back of the chair.

"Oh, mother! mother! have they killed you as well as my father?" he cried, drooping toward her. "Will you never speak again? Oh, Mineto!

Mineto! what has your people done, that they are chased to death like wolves and foxes? What had she done that they could not spare her?"

t.i.tuba stood motionless in the doorway. The wail of grief in that young voice held her there dumb and sorrowful. She understood the Indian tongue, and knew that this boy was the dead woman's son. A death-chant rose to her lips; she began to rock to and fro on the threshold. But a sound on the edge of the wood frightened the impulse away. She turned and saw a body of armed men coming around the meeting-house. The danger was close upon them. t.i.tuba darted into the room, s.n.a.t.c.hed the little girl from her brother's arms, and cried out in the Indian tongue: "Go!

go! leap through the back window. There is a hollow floor under the oven: creep in. They will not look for you there." She ran into the kitchen as she spoke, mounted a ladder, and hid the child in a corner of the garret, heaping strings of dried apples and bunches of herbs upon her. The little girl lay in her concealment, pa.s.sive and mute, holding her breath. Poor thing, she had become used to scenes of peril like that.

But the lad, that brave Indian boy, scorned to flee for his own safety alone. There he stood, close to his dead mother, pale as death, but with a terrible fire in his eyes. He had not distinctly understood old t.i.tuba, and only knew that danger was near.

The heavy tramp of feet on the gravel path drew his eyes from that cold form to the window. It was blocked up with iron faces crowned with tall sugar-loaf hats, which shut out the very sight of heaven.

The savage instincts of a warlike race impelled the boy to resistance.

t.i.tuba had spoken of a back window. He glanced that way, knowing well that the forest stretched darkly beyond. But there a terrible sight met him. A dozen or more young warriors, the bravest of those who had followed King Philip on his last war-path, lay upon the sod, bound hand and foot with strong withes, shorn of their forest splendor, and with the eagle feathers, which had been to them a crown of glory, broken in the tangled hair from which they could not be altogether wrested. There they lay, those brave, grand savages, like a flock of sheep bound and ready for the butcher. They had fought valiantly for the land that was undoubtedly their own, and for that crime were deemed unworthy of Christian mercy.

The brave boy saw that all avenues of escape were closed to him.

Instinctively, he felt for his bow. It was gone. When first taken a prisoner, those iron-faced men now glaring at him through the window had broken it under their feet. But bristling up from behind his mother's shoulder was a bow and quiver, in which were a half dozen arrows, the last love-gift of King Philip. Quick as lightning he s.n.a.t.c.hed the bow, and an arrow flashed through the window.

A howl of pain followed, and a rush at the door, but the lad wheeled half round, and arrow after arrow leaped from his bow, till the quiver on that marble woman's back was empty. Then a band of soldiers pressed in upon him with levelled halberts. Hands that seemed cased in iron gauntlets seized him by the shoulders, and he was dragged farther over the threshold stone, struggling against them to the last. There he was hurled to the earth and bound limb to limb with tough withes. Then two of the soldiers carried him around a corner of the house and cast him down as if he had been a dog, among the young warriors, destined to be sold into slavery.

The lad struggled to a sitting posture, and looked out on the ocean. A s.h.i.+p, old and weather beaten, lay within the harbor, with her anchor up, ready for sea. That s.h.i.+p was bound for Bermuda with a cargo of slaves, all gathered from the glorious forests of New England.

The men destined to fill her hold were chiefs and warriors of as brave a nation as ever baptized a free soil with blood--men taken in valiant fight, while contesting for their native woods, and the wigwams which were to them sacred homes. These unfortunate men were prisoners of war, helpless, and at the mercy of a victorious foe. The Puritan fathers being Christians and G.o.d-fearing men, would not put their captives to death: that would have been to sink themselves to a level with savages; so, after grave deliberation, some fasting, and much prayer, they resolved to stow away these brave men into the hold of a sea-going vessel, and let the winds of a benign heaven waft them into perpetual slavery. The returning s.h.i.+p would bring back heaps of glittering gold in exchange for this cargo of war prisoners; for the men who fought under King Philip were powerful and capable of severe toil. They had not yielded readily to the rifle, but peradventure the lash might prove a more effective instrument of civilization.

On this s.h.i.+p the son of King Philip looked with burning eyes, while the bonds with which they had lashed his limbs together cut purple hollows into his flesh. He knew that the sails which were now unfurling would bear him far away from the forest where his father had perished, and where hundreds of his tribe were now sheltering themselves from the white man's wrath.

There the lad sat, or rather knelt; every nerve in his body strained--every drop of his savage blood burning--every thought a denunciation. But no one of those iron-faced men heeded him.

The two soldiers who had cast the boy down amid his father's warriors, turned toward the sea.

"Lo," said one, extending his hand, "the wind is fresh from the east.

Yonder, half-way to the sh.o.r.e, comes a boat. Take these sinful creatures to the beach, brethren, while I go in and bring forth the woman and her pappoose."

The boy uttered a sharp cry, and turned his glance on the man, who strode toward the house. He went rudely up to the great chair, and laid his hand on the woman's shoulder, giving it a slight shake. The fringes on her dress rattled like hail upon crusted snow. The man took his hand suddenly away, hesitated an instant, and then swept back the hair from that still face. The certain presence of death touched even his granite heart. He bent down, and was folding the deer-skin robe more composedly about the form, when a little creature came gliding through the door, and stole close up to the chair before he saw that it was the child he sought. She was a fearless little thing at all times; now, some vague idea that the man was about to harm her mother made her eyes wildly luminous, as she lifted them to his face.

"Go away," she said, in broken English, pus.h.i.+ng him with all her tiny strength. "Go!" The fire in those beautiful eyes enkindled the stern cruelty of the man. He s.n.a.t.c.hed her up in his arms and bore her forth with a grim smile on his bearded lip.

Then old t.i.tuba saw what had happened and followed him, uttering wild cries of distress. The man took no heed, but carried his captive around the house in sight of her brother.

A yell of mingled rage and despair broke from that young heart. The lad tore and strained at his bonds like a trapped panther--fiery tears leaped to his eyes, specks of foam flew from his mouth.

"Not her, not her!" he shrieked, in English. "She is only a little baby.

Let them whip me, sell me, kill me. I will work and suffer for both."

The anguish in that young voice reached Mrs. Parris, where she lay with her face buried in the pillows of her bed. Like a beautiful white nun she came out of her chamber, down the stairs, and into the midst of those Puritan soldiers. Terrible suffering had cast its ashes over her; but there was resolution in her eyes, pain on her forehead.

She went up to the man, who still held the little savage and took her gently from his arms.

"She is mine. The minister will care for her. Little children are not our enemies. Christians do not make slaves of them."

There was something in the very gentleness of her words that almost conquered the man, who muttered a gloomy protest. The little creature clung to her with thrilling tenacity.

"Leave the child with me. I will answer for its safety to your leader.

I, the wife of Samuel Parris, whom you all know."

There was something in the face of this gentle young matron that enforced respect even from the men who had so rudely invaded her dwelling--a depth and intensity of suffering that prevailed more surely than command.

"Nay, if you will take charge of the little heathen we have nothing to say. In the minister's house she may find a gate of salvation open."

A spasm of pain swept the fair face of the matron; but her soul was strong enough for the moment to put this physical anguish aside. She took the infant in her arms, folded it close to her aching bosom, and went with it into the house. Old t.i.tuba stood in the door.