The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757 eBook

As the chief slowly uttered these words, pausing impressively between each sentence, the culprit raised his face, in deference to the other’s rank and years.  Shame, horror, and pride struggled in its lineaments.  His eye, which was contracted with inward anguish, gleamed on the persons of those whose breath was his fame; and the latter emotion for an instant predominated.  He arose to his feet, and baring his bosom, looked steadily on the keen, glittering knife, that was already upheld by his inexorable judge.  As the weapon passed slowly into his heart he even smiled, as if in joy at having found death less dreadful than he had anticipated, and fell heavily on his face, at the feet of the rigid and unyielding form of Uncas.

The squaw gave a loud and plaintive yell, dashed the torch to the earth, and buried everything in darkness.  The whole shuddering group of spectators glided from the lodge like troubled sprites; and Duncan thought that he and the yet throbbing body of the victim of an Indian judgment had now become its only tenants.

CHAPTER 24

     “Thus spoke the sage:  the kings without delay
     Dissolve the council, and their chief obey.” 
     —­Pope’s Iliad

A single moment served to convince the youth that he was mistaken.  A hand was laid, with a powerful pressure, on his arm, and the low voice of Uncas muttered in his ear: 

“The Hurons are dogs.  The sight of a coward’s blood can never make a warrior tremble.  The ‘Gray Head’ and the Sagamore are safe, and the rifle of Hawkeye is not asleep.  Go—­Uncas and the ‘Open Hand’ are now strangers.  It is enough.”

Heyward would gladly have heard more, but a gentle push from his friend urged him toward the door, and admonished him of the danger that might attend the discovery of their intercourse.  Slowly and reluctantly yielding to the necessity, he quitted the place, and mingled with the throng that hovered nigh.  The dying fires in the clearing cast a dim and uncertain light on the dusky figures that were silently stalking to and fro; and occasionally a brighter gleam than common glanced into the lodge, and exhibited the figure of Uncas still maintaining its upright attitude near the dead body of the Huron.

A knot of warriors soon entered the place again, and reissuing, they bore the senseless remains into the adjacent woods.  After this termination of the scene, Duncan wandered among the lodges, unquestioned and unnoticed, endeavoring to find some trace of her in whose behalf he incurred the risk he ran.  In the present temper of the tribe it would have been easy to have fled and rejoined his companions, had such a wish crossed his mind.  But, in addition to the never-ceasing anxiety on account of Alice, a fresher though feebler interest in the fate of Uncas assisted to chain him to the spot.  He continued, therefore, to stray from hut to hut, looking into each only to encounter additional disappointment, until he had made the entire circuit of the village.  Abandoning a species of inquiry that proved so fruitless, he retraced his steps to the council-lodge, resolved to seek and question David, in order to put an end to his doubts.