Page:Barbour--Metipoms Hostage.djvu/207



into the night the war-dance continued. As men tired and dropped from the circle that revolved about the leaping fire, others  took their places. Squaws, seated together near at hand, cried their warriors on to fresh  exertions. Old men nodded and watched and grunted approval, their rheumy eyes brightening again with memories. Medicine men, wearing their choicest ornaments, hideously  besmeared from forehead to ankle, capered  and chanted like evil things seen in a dream. And beneath the songs and wild cries, the steady, unvarying tum-tum-tum of the  drums sounded as sounds the beat of the  waves under the tumult of the tempest.

David watched from afar. He had no taste for such ceremonies, nor any sympathy. He had grown to appreciate many attributes of the Indians; their bravery and hardihood,  their honesty in their dealings with each  other, their faithfulness in friendship; but  this childish orgy by which they lashed themselves to a frenzy of bloodthirstiness, this