Such an innovation on the silence and retirement of
the forest could not fail to enlist the ears of those
who journeyed at so short a distance in advance.
The Indian muttered a few words in broken English to
Heyward, who, in his turn, spoke to the stranger;
at once interrupting, and, for the time, closing his
musical efforts.
“Though we are not in danger, common prudence
would teach us to journey through this wilderness
in as quiet a manner as possible. You will then,
pardon me, Alice, should I diminish your enjoyments,
by requesting this gentleman to postpone his chant
until a safer opportunity.”
“You will diminish them, indeed,” returned
the arch girl; “for never did I hear a more
unworthy conjunction of execution and language than
that to which I have been listening; and I was far
gone in a learned inquiry into the causes of such
an unfitness between sound and sense, when you broke
the charm of my musings by that bass of yours, Duncan!”
“I know not what you call my bass,” said
Heyward, piqued at her remark, “but I know that
your safety, and that of Cora, is far dearer to me
than could be any orchestra of Handel’s music.”
He paused and turned his head quickly toward a thicket,
and then bent his eyes suspiciously on their guide,
who continued his steady pace, in undisturbed gravity.
The young man smiled to himself, for he believed he
had mistaken some shining berry of the woods for the
glistening eyeballs of a prowling savage, and he rode
forward, continuing the conversation which had been
interrupted by the passing thought.
Major Heyward was mistaken only in suffering his youthful
and generous pride to suppress his active watchfulness.
The cavalcade had not long passed, before the branches
of the bushes that formed the thicket were cautiously
moved asunder, and a human visage, as fiercely wild
as savage art and unbridled passions could make it,
peered out on the retiring footsteps of the travelers.
A gleam of exultation shot across the darkly-painted
lineaments of the inhabitant of the forest, as he traced
the route of his intended victims, who rode unconsciously
onward, the light and graceful forms of the females
waving among the trees, in the curvatures of their
path, followed at each bend by the manly figure of
Heyward, until, finally, the shapeless person of the
singing master was concealed behind the numberless
trunks of trees, that rose, in dark lines, in the
intermediate space.
“Before these
fields were shorn and till’d,
Full to the brim our
rivers flow’d;
The melody of waters
fill’d
The fresh and boundless
wood;
And torrents dash’d,
and rivulets play’d,
And fountains spouted
in the shade.”—Bryant
Leaving the unsuspecting Heyward and his confiding
companions to penetrate still deeper into a forest
that contained such treacherous inmates, we must use
an author’s privilege, and shift the scene a
few miles to the westward of the place where we have
last seen them.
