Part 10

The terms were soon drawn up and signed by the staff officers of both forces; by Munro in the name of the British Commander-in-Chief, and by Montcalm in the name of the Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor-General, and Lieutenant-General of New France; and after ably concluding this negotiation, so important for his comrades, MacGillivray returned to the fort just as the red round moon began to rise like a bloody targe above the eastern skirts of the forest, and to tinge with its quivering rays the placid waters of Lake George.

The first who received him at the gate was his "dear wee Mary," as he called her, trembling and in tears for his safety. During the whole time of his visit to the camp of Montcalm, the yelling and whooping of the Indians had filled the fort and the woods with horrid sounds.

The next day passed before Munro had all prepared to leave the shattered ramparts he had defended so well.

It was on a gorgeous August evening when his war-worn and weary garrison paraded, prior to their final departure. The western clouds, as they floated across the sky, were tinged with violet and saffron hues. The forest and the grass wore their most brilliant green, and Lake George its deepest blue. The large golden butter-cups that spotted all the verdant glacis of the ramparts, within which so many brave men were lying stark and stiffened in their blood, and the bright-coloured wildflowers that grew amid the waters of the fosse and by the margin of the lake which filled it, were unclosing their petals, to catch the coming dew, and wore their gayest tints.

The whole aspect of the scenery, and of the soft balmy evening, were little in accordance with the horrors that were passed, and those which were soon to ensue!

Already the grenadiers of Montcalm, with all the formality of friends, had received the gates and various posts from the guards of the Royal Americans; the white banner of France, under a royal salute, had replaced the Union Jack, and at that moment sharply beat the drums, as the garrison began to march out, with their _unloaded_ muskets slung and their colours cased--the Royal Americans, Parker's Foot, and the little band of our old friends, the Black Watch (now less by sixteen men than on the day of their arrival), with the piper and MacGillivray at their head, defiling from the fort in close column of subdivisions, while the French escort was under arms to receive them in line by a general salute, with drummers beating on the flanks.

A faint cheer was heard within the fort. It came from the log huts where the wounded lay. They, poor fellows! were left to the care of the enemy, together with the unburied bodies of those who would never hear a sound again until the last trumpet shakes the earth with its peal.

The veteran Colonel Munro, tall and erect, with his quaint Kevenhuller hat and old-fashioned wig of the days of Malplacquet, marched at the head of his crestfallen column; he was on foot, with his sword drawn, and led by the hand the child, his son, as being the only object he cared about preserving in that hour of bitterness and defeat.

Seated on the tumbril of the 6-pounder, with two other ladies (one of whom had lost her husband in the siege), was the wife of MacGillivray, awe-stricken and all unused to such stern and stirring scenes as she had daily witnessed in Fort William Henry. Her _marriage brooch_, almost the only ornament she possessed, she had concealed in the folds or tresses of her long black hair, lest it should excite the cupidity of any French soldier or Indian, for she had an equal dread, and nearly an equal repugnance for them both.

A slender escort of French soldiers with their bayonets fixed protected Munro's garrison on both flanks; but as they proceeded into the forest, the savages continued to assemble in dark hordes, till their numbers, their gestures, and yells of rage became seriously alarming. They were animated by the blindest frenzy on finding themselves deluded of their plunder and the blood--the red reeking scalps of the hated Yengees--by a treaty which they could not and cared not to understand. They were rehearsing to each other the bravery and worth, the names and number of their warriors who had perished, and all continued to scream and shout, but none cared to begin the work of destruction while so near the tents of the pale faces of France.

"Push on--push on, for God's sake, gentlemen and comrades!"

"Forward, my friends--let us lose no time in reaching Fort Edward."

"Step out, comrades--step out, you fellows in front."

"Throw off your knapsacks--let these greedy hounds have them."

"Better lose an old kit than a young life."

"On, on--push on, boys!"

Such were the cries that were heard along the column as the rear urged on the front, and the dark yelling hordes of the infernal Iroquois blackened all the woods and grew denser and closer, until at last they insolently jostled and crushed the French guard among the impeded ranks of those they were escorting.

"This is intolerable--let us attack those dogs," said MacGillivray.

"Beware--beware!" exclaimed Munro; "if once blood be shed or the warwhoop raised, all will be over with us."

The leader of this hostile display was the savage whom we have already introduced as Ossong. A Lenni Lennape, he was almost the last of his ferocious tribe, which, with the Miami, had been conquered and exterminated by the Iroquois, with whom he had now completely identified himself. His aspect was frightful! His forehead was low; with a short nose of great breadth; his ears were huge, and set high upon his head; his mouth was large, with teeth sharp and serrated like those of some voracious fish. His mantle of woven grass was trimmed with scores of human scalp-locks salted and dried, while rows of human teeth intermingled with glass beads and gilt regimental buttons and British coins (the relics of Colonel Parker's force) covered all his brown expansive chest. On his brawny shoulders hung the skin of a black bear; in front, he wore the fur of a racoon; his girdle, moccassins, and arms were ornamented with brilliant wampum beads, which rattled as he walked, and he brandished alternately a rifle, a tomahawk, and scalping-knife.

Two or three soldiers had already been dragged out of the ranks and slain to increase the general alarm; but as yet the _warwhoop_ had not been raised.

Perceiving a savage near him, who was placing his hands to his mouth and puffing out his cheeks, previous to raising that dreadful signal for a general onslaught, MacGillivray, unable longer to restrain the fury which boiled within him, drew the Highland _tack_ (_i.e._ steel pistol) from his belt and shot him dead.

"Rash man," exclaimed Munro, "we are lost!"

"Fix your bayonets, my lads, and bear back this naked rabble!" said MacGillivray, drawing his sword. "Remember, colonel, you are a kinsman of the House of Foulis; in an hour like this belie not your name!"

A thousand throats now uttered the horrible whoop of the Iroquois, and from a myriad echoes the vast forest encircling the shores of the Horican replied.

It was the death-knell of the _Yengees_; and now ensued that frightful episode of the war known in American history as the Massacre of Fort William Henry.

"In the name of God and the King, keep together, 60th--shoulder to shoulder, Royal Americans!" cried Munro; but his soldiers, crushed and impeded by the pressure, strove in vain to free their muskets and bear back the human tide that closed upon them. In the confusion poor old Munro lost his child, and with him all his soldierly coolness and self-possession. He became a prey to grief and distraction.

"Lochmoy! Lochmoy! stand by MacGillivray!" were the shouts of the Black Watch, as they flung aside their muskets, knapsacks, and cantines, and, unsheathing their dirks and claymores, closed hand-to-hand with the Iroquois, and hewed them down like children on every side.

"Dhia! o Dhia! my wife!" was the first thought of MacGillivray; and when last he saw Mary she was standing erect on the tumbril, the horses of which had been shot, wringing her hands in an attitude of despair, as the brown tide of the Iroquois swept round her like a living sea; and the last she saw of her husband was his form towering above all others, when combating bravely and making frantic efforts, with Alaster MacGregor, Ewen Chisholm, Bane the piper, and other Celtic swordsmen, to reach her; but by a horde of savages they were driven into the forest, and she saw them no more.

The French guard offered but a feeble resistance, and fled; then ensued a thousand episodes replete with horror! On all hands the unfortunate survivors of the siege were hewn down, slashed, stabbed, tomahawked, and scalped. Shrieks, groans, screams, prayers, and wild entreaties for mercy, with the occasional explosions of musketry, rang through the forest; but above all other sounds, on earth or in the sky of heaven, rose the appalling whoop of the unglutted Iroquois.

One of Mary's companions--the widow--was literally hewn to pieces in a moment, while her children were whirled round by the feet, and had their brains dashed out against the trees; her other friend, the wife of Captain Dacres, a fair-haired and pretty young Englishwoman, was torn from her side. The glittering hatchet of one Indian cleft her head to the nose, while another caught her body as it was falling, and by a single sweep of his knife shred off her scalp, and waved the silken curls as a trophy above his head. Mary was to be their next victim; but ere they could drag her down she flung herself at the feet of Ossong, and, clasping his moccassined legs, said in his own language--

"I will pray the Great Spirit that he pardon you my death; but do not torture me; do not make me suffer--I am a weak woman, and about to become a mother."

Ossong grinned hideously, and grasping her by the hair raised his scalping-knife; but at that moment his hand was grasped from behind. He turned furiously, and was confronted by Orono.

"Spare her!" said the latter, in his guttural tones.

"For what? My ears are not as the ears of an ass, therefore I hear not follies; nor of a fox, therefore I hear no lies!" responded the fierce savage; "spare her for what?"

"The wigwam of Orono."

Ossong laughed scornfully, and turned away in search of other victims, which he found but too readily.

Mary clung to her preserver. She gave a wild and haggard glance over that forest scene, in the recesses of which the shrieks of the destroyer and destroyed were already dying away--over that wilderness of red-coated dead, of mothers and their children, gashed, hewn and dismembered, scalped and mutilated--over the debris of scattered muskets, torn standards, and broken drums, rifled baggage, open knapsacks, hats, and powdered wigs--everywhere blood, death, and disorder! Then the light seemed to go out of her eyes; she became senseless, and remembered no more.

Saved by the French, Colonels Munro and Young with three hundred fugitives reached Albany; and General Webb, when all was over, sent out five hundred men from Fort Edward to glean up survivors and bury the dead. Our soldiers perished in the forest in scores under every species of torture, wounds, thirst and fatigue; many were flayed and roasted alive by the Iroquois; others were stripped nude, scalped, and made a mark for bullets or tomahawks till death relieved them of their misery.

"Thus," says Smollett, "ended (with the fall of Fort William Henry) the third campaign in America, where, with an evident superiority over the enemy, an army of twenty thousand regular troops, a great number of provincial forces, ana a prodigious naval power--not less than twenty ships of the line--we abandoned our allies, exposed our people, suffered them to be cruelly massacred in sight of our troops, and relinquished a large and valuable tract of country, to the eternal disgrace and reproach of the British name!"

Three of the Black Watch alone escaped this massacre--viz., Ewen Chisholm, with Alaster MacGregor--whose adventures were somewhat remarkable--and another, of whom hereafter.

Duncan MacGregor, a soldier from Glengyle, and as some averred a son of the venerable _Glhun Dhu_, who was captain of Doune Castle under Prince Charles, fell mortally wounded by a bullet from the rifle of an Indian in the woods. On finding himself dying, he begged his clansman Alaster to convey his little all--a few pounds of back pay and prize-money--to his aged and widowed mother. Faithful to the trust reposed in him by his expiring friend, this poor fellow bore the money about with him, untouched, throughout the most arduous struggles of the American campaign, during a long captivity in France, and amid the urgent necessities of nearly ten years of privation, until he reached Glengyle, and then he handed to the mother of his comrade the money, still wrapped in the moccassin of a Pawnee, whom he had slain at Fort William Henry.

Ewen Chisholm, one of the eight faithful men of the Coire-gaoth in Glenmorriston, survived the war in America, but was slain when the Black Watch was at Guadaloupe, in 1759; and his death is thus recorded in the _Edinburgh Chronicle_ for that year, which contains a letter from Ensign Grant--known as Alaster the One-handed--detailing the circumstance:--

"When the troops were to embark, the outposts were called in. This soldier (Chisholm) had been placed as a single sentinel by his captain. When summoned to come off, he refused, unless his captain who had appointed him his post would personally give him orders. He was told that his captain and most of the troops were embarked, and that unless he came off he would be taken prisoner; he still refused, and said he would keep his station. When the troops were all on board the ships, they saw a party of forty or fifty men coming towards him; he retired a little, and setting his back to a tree, fired his gun at them, then, throwing it aside, he drew his sword, rushed amongst them, and after making considerable havoc was cut to pieces."

Such was the end of Ewen Chisholm; but to resume:--

The noon of the next day--the 11th August--was passed before Mary became fully alive to the desolate nature of her position--to all that she had lost and suffered--and to the circumstance that in her delirium she had become the mother of a little daughter.

She was lying on a bed of soft furs of various kinds, within a hut formed by branches and matting tied to poles, and covered with broad pieces of bark. Upon these poles hung various Indian weapons, at the sight of which she closed her swimming eyes as the memory of her husband and the horrors of yesterday rushed upon her. An old Indian woman, hideous as a tawny skin full of wrinkles and streaked with paint could make her, sat near, squatted on the ground like a Burmese idol; but this ancient squaw was nursing the new-born infant tenderly, and with care placed it in the bosom of Mary, who wept and moaned with sorrow and joy as she pressed it in her arms, and the new emotions of a mother woke within her; but again the light seemed to pass from her eyes, and a faintness came over her. Then starting, she sought to shake it off that she might look upon her child, and strive to trace the features of Roderick in her face; but the weakness she suffered was too great--she sank back upon the bed of furs, and lay still, and to all appearance asleep, though tears were oozing fast from her long black lashes.

Close by, behind a matting, crouched an Indian warrior. This person was Orono concealing himself, for the honest creature felt instinctively, that at such a critical time his presence or his aspect might very naturally excite the terror of the desolate patient. Two terrible questions were ever on the tongue and in the heart of the latter.

"Was Roderick safe?"

If so, how were she and her babe to join him?

At last she remembered Orono, who had preserved her, and on the third day, though weak, and though she knew it not--dying--she inquired of the squaw where he was.

"Here," replied the watchful Indian, stepping forward, while his eyes beamed with pleasure, on finding that he was not forgotten.

"My husband, Orono--know you aught of my husband?"

The Indian shook his head.

"When did you last see him?" she asked, imploringly.

"Fighting against a hundred braves in the forest, where the pawaws of the French have put up two trees, _thus_," said he, crossing his fingers to indicate a cross made by the Jesuits near the Horican.

"Alas! my mother taught me that the way of the cross was the way to heaven. Oh, my husband!--and that at the foot of that cross I should give up my whole heart. God, who bringeth good out of evil, will order all things for the best; but can this be, if my husband, my friend, my protector, the father of my babe, be slain? May he not have been preserved for himself and this little one? Oh, yes--God is kind. His will is adorable," continued the poor girl, kissing her babe in a wild rapture of resignation and despair.

She recalled with sorrow and horror the many whom she had seen so barbarously destroyed, and others whom she believed to have perished; the brave soldiers, the kind old colonel, and the poor little boy, his son, to whom she had been almost a mother, during the terrors of the recent siege. Their voices lingered in her ear; their faces hovered before her.

Orono visited the place where he had last seen the "white chief," as he not inaptly named MacGillivray; but could discover no trace of him. Many of the dead had already been interred by the soldiers of Montcalm, who now possessed the shattered remains of Fort William Henry; others had been devoured by wild animals. No body answering the description of Roderick had been, found or seen among the slain by the Iroquois. He was known to have a gold bracelet of Mary's, rivetted round his sword arm; but that might have been cut off, or buried with him, undiscovered.

Mary felt a great repugnance for the old squaw; yet the poor Indian was kind and attentive in her own barbarous fashion; and the patient, while her heart was swollen almost to bursting, conversed with her, in the hope of obtaining surer protection for her little one, and discovering some traces of its father.

"What would it avail you, were he found?" asked the squaw.

"Why?"

"The Red warriors would immediately take his scalp, for the oracles of the pawaws have driven them mad. After three days of conjuration, they have told us--"

"They--are the pawaws a tribe of the Iroquois?"

"They are our wise men--our oracles."

"And they told--what?"

"That the devils would not hinder the pale faces from being masters of our country. We have fought bravely; but the brandy, the gold and silver of the Yengees are more powerful than the prophesies of the lying pawaws or the knives of our warriors."

"Every Red man in the land has dug up the war-hatchet," said a strange guttural voice; "the print of the white moccassins will soon be effaced on the prairies and in the woods--their graves alone will remain--their scalps and their bones."

The old squaw started nimbly forward, and poor Mary pressed her little naked babe closer to her breast, on seeing the towering form of Ossong, streaked with his ghastly war paint, appear between her and the door of the wretched wigwam in which she lay so helplessly at his mercy.

"What seek _you_ in the dwelling of Orono?" demanded the Indian woman with some asperity.

"Neither the squaw nor the papoose of the white man," replied Ossong, scornfully.

"It is well. You are in your native land, and can find the bones of your fathers; but here the poor squaw of the white chief is a stranger."

"And Orono will protect her," added the other savage, who bore that name, stepping proudly forward.

"The pawaws say our fathers come from the rising sun, and that we must go towards the place of its setting---that _there_ is the future home of the Red man," said Ossong, as a savage glare lit up his eyes and he played with his scalping-knife; "shall even one pale face be permitted to live, if such things are said? Go--Orono has become a woman!"

With this taunt, the most bitter that can be made to an Indian, Ossong waved his hand, and strode away with a sombre air of fury and disdain.

As he left the hut, a glittering ornament which hung at his neck caught the eye of Mary. She uttered a faint cry, for she was weak and feeble, and while clutching her babe in one arm, strove to raise her attenuated form with the other. She endeavoured to call back Ossong; but her voice failed, and she sank despairingly on her bed of skins. Among the gewgaws which covered the broad breast of Ossong, to her horror, she had discovered the gilt regimental gorget of her husband, which she knew too well, by its silver thistle, as there had been no other officer of Highlanders but be in Fort William Henry.

The eyes of Orono gleamed brightly; he, too, had detected the cause of her agitation, and he said,

"It is an ornament of the pale chief, worn by Ossong."

"It was my husband's! Oh, Orono, ask him--for pity, ask him, where, when, how he obtained possession of it."

"Ossong is fierce as a Pequot," said the Iroquois, sadly.

"Ask him, lest I die!" exclaimed Mary, passionately.

"Ossong in a strong and fierce warrior," replied the savage, gently; "I will steal it for you, if I can. Ossong is cruel. Listen; he found a pale face on the shore of the Horican; he was wounded and feeble, so Ossong stripped and bound him to a gum-tree, where he roasted him with sedge-grass, and, before death, forced him to eat his own ears, which were cut off by a scalping-knife."

"Oh, my husband!" exclaimed Mary, in despair; "and a fiend such as this has had his hands on you!"

"I fear me," said Orono, shaking his head, "that he you weep for has gone to where the sun hides itself at night."

"What mean you, Orono?"

"Away beyond the great prairies of the buffaloes--to the place of sleep--the wigwam of grass, where the Indian sleeps sounder than even the fire-water of the white man can make him."

"Alas! you mean the grave?"

The Iroquois nodded his head, and relapsed into silence, while with a low moan at a suggestion which seemed to fulfil her own fears, and seemed only too probable, Mary fell back and became, to all appearance, insensible.

Several days passed, during which she hovered between time and eternity; but nothing, even in civilized life, could surpass the watchful kindness and attention of the poor but grateful savage on whose mercy she found herself thrown. _How_ Ossong became possessed of the regimental gorget--whether he had found it in the wood, or torn it from her husband's neck when dead, Orono could never discover, as his tawny compatriot was animated in no measured degree by the worst attributes of the American Indian--craft, timidity, fickleness, ferocity, revenge, and quickness of apprehension. Hence there were no means of wresting the important--perhaps dreadful--secret from him. He was soon after shot in a skirmish by the soldiers of Fort Edward, and the story of the gilded badge perished with him.

"Oh, never to see my dear, dear husband again--never, in this dreary world! It is a terrible blow--a dreadful and soul-crushing conviction!" Mary continued to exclaim, "God has required many sacrifices of me; but that Roderick should never see the wee pet-lamb I have brought into this vale of woe is the bitterest thought of all; and to what a fate shall I leave it! My heart is like a stone--my brain a chaos."

"Remain and be the squaw of Orono; he is good and gentle, and will love the lonely pale face, and will teach her to hoe rice," said the enterprising proprietor of the wigwam, who also possessed a valuable property in wampum and scalp-locks.