Peeping through the fringe of shrubs that rose, a verdant parapet, on the brink of the gully, they looked down upon the savage party, now less than forty paces from the muzzle of their guns, and wholly unaware of the fate preparing for them.  The scene of diversion and torment was over; the prisoner, a man of powerful frame but squallid appearance, whose hat,—­a thing of shreds and patches,—­adorned the shorn pate of one of the Indians, while his coat, equally rusty and tattered, hung from the shoulders of a second, lay bound under a tree, but so nigh that they could mark the laborious heavings of his chest.  Two of the Indians sat near him on the grass keeping watch, their hatchets in their hands, their guns resting within reach against the trunk of a tree overthrown by some hurricane of former years, and now mouldering away.  A third was engaged with his tomahawk, lopping away the few dry boughs that remained on the trunk.  Squatting at the fire, which the third was thus labouring to replenish with fuel, were the two remaining savages, who, holding their rifles in their hands, divided their attention betwixt a shoulder of venison roasting on a stick in the fire, and the captive, whom they seemed to regard as destined to be sooner or later disposed of in a similar manner.

The position of the parties precluded the hope Nathan had ventured to entertain of getting them in a cluster, and so doing double execution with each bullet; but the disappointment neither chilled his ardour nor embarrassed his plans.  His scheme of attack had been framed to embrace all contingences; and he wasted no further time in deliberation.  A few whispered words conveyed his last instructions to the soldier; who, reflecting that he was fighting in the cause of humanity, remembering his own heavy wrongs, and marking the fiery eagerness that flamed from Nathan’s visage, banished from his mind whatever disinclination he might have felt at beginning the fray in a mode so seemingly treacherous and ignoble.  He laid his axe on the brink of the gully at his side, together with his foraging cap; and then, thrusting his rifle through the bushes, took aim at one of the savages at the fire, Nathan directing his piece against the other.  Both of them presented the fairest marks, as they sat wholly unconscious of their danger, enjoying in imagination the tortures yet to be inflicted on the prisoner.  But a noise in the gully,—­the falling of a stone loosened by the soldier’s foot, or a louder than usual plash of water,—­suddenly roused them from their dreams; they started up, and turned their eyes towards the hill.—­“Now, friend!” whispered Nathan;—­“if thee misses, thee loses thee maiden and thee life into the bargain.—­Is thee ready?”

“Ready,” was the reply.

“Right, then, through the dog’s brain,—­fire!”