The Leatherstocking Tales II

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “I pretend not to things I do’n’t possess,” he said, “and lay no claim to any knowledge of the ocean, or of navigation. We steer by the stars, and the compass on these lakes, running from head-land to head-land, and, having little need of figures and calculations make no use of them. But, we have our claims, notwithstanding, as I have often heard from those who have passed years on the ocean. In the first place we have always the land aboard, and much of the time on a lee-shore, and that I have frequently heard makes hardy sailors. Our gales are sudden and severe, and we are compelled to run for our ports at all hours—”

  “You have your leads—” interrupted Cap.

  “They are of little use, and are seldom cast.”

  “The deep-seas—”

  “I have heard of such things, but confess I never saw one.”

  “Oh! the deuce, with a vengeance. A trader and no deep sea! Why, boy, you cannot pretend to be any thing of a mariner. Who the devil ever heard of a seaman without his deep-sea!”

  “I do not pretend to any particular skill, Master Cap—”

  “Except in shooting falls, Jasper; except in shooting falls and rifts,” said Pathfinder, coming to the rescue; “in which business, even you, Master Cap, must allow he has some handiness. In my judgment, every man is to be esteemed or condemned according to his gifts, and if Master Cap is useless in running the Oswego falls, I try to remember that he is useful when out of sight of land; and if Jasper be useless when out of sight of land, I do not forget that he has a true eye and steady hand when running the falls.”

  “But Jasper is not useless—would not be useless when out of sight of land,” said Mabel with a spirit and energy that caused her clear sweet voice to be startling amid the solemn stillness of that extraordinary scene. “No one can be useless there, who can do so much here, is what I mean; though I dare say, he is not as well acquainted with ships as my uncle.”

  “Ay, bolster each other up in your ignorance,” returned Cap, with a sneer. “We seamen are so much outnumbered when ashore, that it is seldom we get our dues, but when your coast is to be defended, or trade is to be carried on, there is outcry enough for us.”

  “But, uncle, landsmen do not come to attack our coasts, so that seamen only meet seamen.”

  “So much for ignorance!—Where are all the armies that have landed in this country, French and English, let me inquire, miss?”

  “Sure enough, where are they!” ejaculated Pathfinder. “None can tell better than we who dwell in the woods, Master Cap. I have often followed their line of march by bones bleaching in the rain, and have found their trail by graves, years after they and their pride had vanished together. Generals and privates, they lay scattered throughout the land, so many proofs of what men are when led on by their love of great names, and the wish to be more than their fellows.”

  “I must say, Master Pathfinder, that you sometimes utter opinions that are a little remarkable, for a man who lives by the rifle; seldom snuffing the air but he smells gunpowder, or turning out of his berth, but to bear down on an enemy.”

  “If you think I pass my days in warfare against my kind, you know neither me, nor my history. The man that lives in the woods, and on the frontiers, must take the chances of the things among which he dwells. For this I am not accountable, being but a humble and powerless hunter and scout and guide. My real calling is to hunt for the army, on its marches, and in times of peace, although I am more especially engaged in the sarvice of one officer, who is now absent in the settlements, where I never follow him. No—no—bloodshed and warfare are not my real gifts, but peace and marcy. Still, I must face the inimy as well as another, and as for a Mingo, I look upon him, as man looks on a snake, a creatur’ to be put beneath the heel, whenever a fitting occasion offers.”

  “Well—well—I have mistaken your calling, which I had thought as regularly warlike as that of the ship’s gunner. There is my brother-in-law, now; he has been a soldier since he was sixteen, and he looks upon his trade as every way as respectable as that of a sea-faring man, which is a point I hardly think it worth while to dispute with him.”

  “My father has been taught to believe that it is honorable to carry arms,” said Mabel, “for his father was a soldier before him.”

  “Yes, yes—” resumed the guide—“Most of the Sarjeant’s gifts are martial, and he looks at most things in this world, over the barrel of his musket. One of his notions now, is to prefar a King’s piece to a regular double-sighted long-barreled rifle! Such consaits will come over men, from long habit, and prejudyce is perhaps the commonest failing of human natur’.”

  “Ashore, I grant you,” said Cap. “I never return from a v’y’ge, but I make the very same remark. Now, the last time I came in, I found scarcely a man in all York, who would think of matters and things in general, as I thought about them myself. Every man I met, appeared to have bowsed all his idees up into the wind’s eye, and when he did fall off a little from his one-sided notions, it was commonly to ware short round on his heel, and to lay up as close as ever, on the other tack.”

  “Do you understand this, Jasper?—” the smiling Mabel half whispered to the young man who still kept his own canoe so near, as to be close at her side.

  “There is not so much difference between salt and fresh water, that we who pass our time on them cannot comprehend each other. It is no great merit, Mabel, to understand the language of our trade.”

  “Even religion,” continued Cap, “is’n’t moored in exactly the same place it was, in my young days. They veer and haul upon it, ashore, as they do on all other things, and it is no wonder if, now and then, they get jammed. Every thing seems to change but the compass, and even that has its variations.”

  “Well,” returned the Pathfinder, “I thought Christianity and the compass both pretty stationary.”

  “So they are, afloat, bating the variations. Religion at sea, is just the same thing to day, that it was when I first put my hand into the tar-bucket. No one will dispute it, who has the fear of God before his eyes. I can see no difference between the state of religion on board ship, now, and what it was when I was a younker. But it is not so ashore, by any means. Take my word for it, Master Pathfinder, it is a difficult thing to find a man—I mean a landsman—who views these matters, to-day exactly as he looked at them, forty years ago.”

  “And yet God is unchanged—his works are unchanged—his holy word is unchanged—and all that ought to bless and honor his name should be unchanged too!”

  “Not ashore. That is the worst of the land, it is all the while in motion, I tell you, though it looks so solid. If you plant a tree, and leave it, on your return from a three years’ v’y’ge you do’n’t find it, at all, the sort of thing you left it. The towns grow, and new streets spring up, the wharves are altered, and the whole face of the earth undergoes change. Now a ship comes back from an India v’y’ge just the thing she sailed, bating the want of paint, wear and tear, and the accidents of the sea.”

  “That is too true, Master Cap, and more’s the pity. Ah’s! me—the things they call improvements and betterments are undermining and defacing the land! The glorious works of God are daily cut down and destroyed, and the hand of man seems to be upraised in contempt of his mighty will. They tell me there are fearful signs of what we may all come to, to be met with, west and south of the great lakes, though I have never yet visited that region.”

  “What do you mean, Pathfinder?” modestly enquired Jasper.

  “I mean the spots marked by the vengeance of Heaven, or which perhaps have been raised up as solemn warnings to the thoughtless and wasteful, hereaways. They call them Prairies, and I have heard as honest Delawares as I ever knew, declare that the finger of God has been laid so heavily on them, that they are altogether without trees. This is an awful visitation to befal innocent ’arth, and can only mean to show to what frightful consequences a heedless desire to destroy may lead.”

  “And yet I have seen settlers, who have much fancied those op
en spots, because they saved them the toil of clearing. You relish your bread, Pathfinder, and yet wheat will not ripen in the shade.”

  “But honesty will, and simple wishes, and a love of God, Jasper. Even Master Cap will tell you a treeless plain must resemble a desert island.”

  “Why that as it may be,” put in Cap. “Desert islands, too, have their uses, for they serve to correct the reckonings by. If my taste is consulted, I shall never quarrel with a plain for wanting trees. As nature has given a man eyes to look about with, and a sun to shine, were it not for ship-building, and now and then a house, I can see no great use in a tree; especially one that do’n’t bear monkies or fruit.”

  To this remark the guide made no answer, beyond a low sound, intended to enjoin silence on his companions. While the desultory conversation just related had been carried on in subdued voices, the canoes were dropping slowly down with the current, within the deep shadows of the western shore, the paddles being used merely to preserve the desired direction, and proper positions. The strength of the stream varied materially, the water being seemingly still in places, while in other reaches it flowed at a rate exceeding two, or even three miles, in the hour. On the rifts it even dashed forward with a velocity that was appalling to the unpractised eye. Jasper was of opinion that they might drift down with the current to the mouth of the river, in two hours from the time they left the shore, and he and the Pathfinder had agreed on the expediency of suffering the canoes to float of themselves, for a time, or, at least, until they had passed the first dangers of their new movement. The dialogue had been carried on in voices guardedly low, for though the quiet of deep solitude reigned in that vast and nearly boundless forest, nature was speaking with her thousand tongues, in the eloquent language of night in a wilderness. The air sighed through ten thousand trees, the water rippled, and at places, even roared along the shores, and now and then was heard the creaking of a branch, or a trunk, as it rubbed against some object similar to itself, under the vibrations of a nicely balanced body. All living sounds had ceased. Once, it is true, the Pathfinder fancied he heard the howl of a distant wolf, of which a few prowled through those woods, but it was a transient and doubtful cry, that might possibly have been attributed to the imagination. When he desired his companions, however, to cease talking in the manner just mentioned, his vigilant ear had caught the peculiar sound that is made by the parting of a dried branch of a tree, and which, if his senses did not deceive him, came from the western shore. All who are accustomed to that particular sound will understand how readily the ear receives it, and how easy it is to distinguish the tread which breaks the branch, from every other noise of the forest.

  “There is the footstep of a man on the bank,” said Pathfinder to Jasper, speaking in neither a whisper, nor yet in a voice loud enough to be heard at any distance. “Can the accursed Iroquois have crossed the river, already, with their arms, and without a boat!”

  “It may be the Delaware! He would follow us of course down this bank, and would know where to look for us. Let me draw closer in to the shore, and reconnoitre.”

  “Go, boy, but be light with the paddle, and, on no account, venture ashore on an onsartainty.”

  “Is this prudent?” demanded Mabel, with an impetuosity that rendered her incautious in modulating her sweet voice.

  “Very imprudent, if you speak so loud, fair one. I like your voice, which is soft and pleasing, after listening so long to the tones of men, but it must not be heard too much, or too freely, just now. Your father, the honest Sarjeant, will tell you, when you meet him, that silence is a double virtue on a trail. Go, Jasper, and do justice to your own character for prudence.”

  Ten anxious minutes succeeded the disappearance of the canoe of Jasper, which glided away from that of the Pathfinder, so noiselessly that it had been swallowed up in the gloom, before Mabel allowed herself to believe the young man would really venture alone, on a service that struck her imagination as singularly dangerous. During this time, the party continued to float with the current, no one speaking, and it might almost be said no one breathing, so strong was the general desire to catch the minutest sound that should come from the shore. But the same solemn, we might indeed say sublime quiet, reigned as before, the washing of the water, as it piled up against some slight obstruction, and the sighing of the trees alone interrupting the slumbers of the forest. At the end of the period mentioned, the snapping of dried branches was again faintly heard, and the Pathfinder fancied that the sound of smothered voices reached him.

  “I may be mistaken,” he said, “for the thoughts often fancy what the heart wishes, but them were notes like the low tones of the Delawares.”

  “Do the dead of the savages ever walk?” demanded Cap.

  “Ay, and run, too, in their happy hunting grounds, but nowhere else. A red skin finishes with the ’arth, after the breath quits the body. It is not one of his gifts to linger around his wigwam, when his hour has passed.”

  “I see some object on the water—” whispered Mabel, whose eye had not ceased to dwell on the body of gloom, with close intensity, since the disappearance of Jasper.

  “It is the canoe!” returned the guide, greatly relieved. “All must be safe, or we should have heard from the lad.”

  In another minute the two canoes, which became visible to those they carried, only as they drew near each other, again floated side by side, and the form of Jasper was recognised at the stern of his own boat. The figure of a second man was seated in the bow, and as the young sailor so wielded his paddle, as to bring the face of his companion near the eyes of the Pathfinder and Mabel, they both recognised the person of the Delaware.

  “Chingachgook—my brother!” said the guide in the dialect of the other’s people, a tremor shaking his voice that betrayed the strength of his feelings—“Chief of the Mohicans! my heart is very glad. Often have we passed through blood and strife together, but I was afraid it was never to be so again.”

  “Hugh! Mingos—Squaws! Three of their scalps hang at my girdle. They do not know how to strike the Great Serpent of the Delawares. Their hearts have no blood, and their thoughts are on their return path, across the waters of the Great Lake.”

  “Have you been among them, chief?—and what has become of the warrior who was in the river?”

  “He has turned into a fish, and lies at the bottom with the eels! Let his brothers bait their hooks for him. Pathfinder, I have counted the enemy, and have touched their rifles.”

  “Ah! I thought he would be venturesome,” exclaimed the guide in English. “The risky fellow has been in the midst of them, and has brought us back their whole history. Speak, Chingachgook, and I will make our friends as knowing as ourselves.”

  The Delaware now related in a low earnest manner, the substance of all his discoveries since he was last seen struggling with his foe, in the river. Of the fate of his antagonist he said no more, it not being usual for a warrior to boast in his more direct and useful narratives. As soon as he had conquered in that fearful strife, however, he swam to the eastern shore, landed with caution, and wound his way in amongst the Iroquois, concealed by the darkness, undetected and, in the main, even unsuspected. Once, indeed, he had been questioned, but answering that he was Arrowhead, no further inquiries were made. By the passing remarks, he soon ascertained that the party was out expressly to intercept Mabel and her uncle, concerning whose rank, however, they had evidently been deceived. He also ascertained enough to justify the suspicion that Arrowhead had betrayed them to their enemies, from some motive that it was not now easy to reach, as he had not yet received the reward of his services.

  Pathfinder communicated no more of this intelligence to his companions, than he thought might relieve their apprehensions, intimating, at the same time, that now was the moment for exertion, the Iroquois not having yet entirely recovered from the confusion created by their losses.

  “We shall find them at the rift, I make no manner of doubt,” he continued, “and there it will be our f
ate, to pass them, or to fall into their hands. The distance to the garrison will then be so short, that I have been thinking of the plan of landing with Mabel, myself, that I may take her in, by some of the by-ways, and leave the canoes to their chances in the rapids.”

  “It will never succeed, Pathfinder,” eagerly interrupted Jasper; “Mabel is not strong enough to tramp the woods, in a night like this. Put her in my skiff, and I will lose my life or carry her through the rift safely, dark as it is.”

  “No doubt you will, lad; no one doubts your willingness to do any thing to sarve the Sarjeant’s daughter, but it must be the eye of Providence and not your own, that will take you safely through the Oswego rift, in a night like this.”

  “And who will lead her safely to the garrison if she land? Is not the night as dark on shore, as on the water, or, do you think I know less of my calling, than you know of yours?”

  “Spiritedly said, lad, but if I should lose my way in the dark, and I believe no man can say truly that such a thing ever yet happened to me—but, if I should lose my way, no other harm would come of it, than to pass a night in the forest, whereas a false turn of the paddle, or a broad sheer of the canoe, would put you and the young woman into the river, out of which it is more than probable the Sarjeant’s daughter would never come alive.”

  “I will leave it to Mabel, herself; I am certain that she will feel more secure in the canoe.”

  “I have great confidence in you both,” answered the girl, “and have no doubts that either will do all he can to prove to my father how much he values him, but, I confess I should not like to quit the canoe, with the certainty we have of there being enemies like those we have seen, in the forest. But, my uncle can decide for me, in this matter.”