Page:Peterson's Magazine 1842, Volume I.pdf/25

20 their hatchets soon fell in terrible rapidity. Jane's heart died within her, for she knew that not the slightest hope remained for her and Helen, if their assailants should succeed. With a throbbing heart therefore she gazed on the door, grasping the musket firmly, however, as she looked, and turning momently to the alarmed being at her side to whisper words of hope and consolation. But events were now coming to a crisis. They crowded on each other in fearful rapidity. Louder and louder swelled the wild shouts of the savages outside, and fiercer and more fierce were the blows that they hailed on the door, which already began to quiver beneath the repeated strokes. And now with one long wild shout a panel fell in-another and another blow succeeded; and at each stroke the door shivered as if about to fall. At this crisis a dusky form flitted past the shattered panel on the outside, and Jane availing herself of the oversight, raised her piece, but reflecting that it would be of greater service to her in the very moment of the onset she lowered the muzzle. As she did so she heard a noise behind her, followed by a shriek from her cousin- for Helen had now sank almost fainting with terror into a chair— and turning quickly around she saw a tall brawny savage who had just leaped through the casement, and the sound of whose feet alighting on the floor had attracted her attention. The wily barbarian had availed himself of the undivided attention which Jane bestowed on the yielding door to remove the corpse of his leader from the window and thus obtain an entrance. For the first moment during that eventful hour, Jane was too paralyzed to act. The Indian seized the favorable instant, and springing like a panther on the amazed girl, wrenched the musket from her hand with the speed of thought, accompanying the action with a yell of savage delight— and then unsheathing his tomahawk, he raised it aloft and whirled it in rapid, uncertain circles around his head, as ifmomently about to strike his prey, yet delaying the blow, from instant to instant, to enjoy the agonies of his victims-and in his triumphant smile, his exulting smile, and the expression of savage pleasure imprinted on his features might be read the gratification which he felt in subjecting his victims to this fiendish torment. Meantime Jane had sank down on her knees beside Helen, and the two cousins were clasped in each others arms, awaiting the death which was now inevitable—yet even in that moment it was touching to behold the heroism with which Jane covered, as much as possible, the form of Helen with her own, seeming like a Niobe endeavoring to shroud her cousin from the destroyer's stroke. All this had passed with the rapidity of thought. The intruder's appearance, the loss of the musket, the malicious torture of the Indian, and the last convulsive embraces of the maidens, had scarcely occupied a longer period than that of a few seconds. Who can tell the thoughts that meanwhile rushed, like an army of freed and wild spectres, through the souls of the two maidens? Oh! is not a whole life crowded into the hour of death? Yet the cousins thought not, in that awful moment, wholly of themselves,-for there were wild outpourings of their hearts to those dear ones whom they should never see again. And little did the manly bosoms of their lovers reck of the peril which surrounded Jane and Helen. So young, so fair, so full of hope, so fit to make this world a heaven-and yet to die this fearful death, unsoothed, unknelled, far from their family, forever hidden from the eyes of friendship and love! But the moments of their existence were now numbered-the last grain of sand was about falling from the glass. Drawing Helen convulsively to her bosom, and lifting her dark lustrous eye upward in a wild appeal to heaven. Jane tore her thoughts from earth and breathed a final prayer to heaven. For the last time the weapon of the savage swung on high. The flash of the polished blade gleamed wildly in the shadowy twilight across the sight of Jane and she could hear the whistling of the keen weapon as it cut the air in its descent-but, at that instant, clear, sharp and ringing, the bullet of a rifle sang across the twilight, and giving a sudden leap upwards the savage fell dead at the feet of Jane, his tomahawk making a circuit and striking harmlessly in the floor as he staggered to the ground, -— while, wild and loud, rising even over the crack of the piece, swelled out the shout of a well known voice, and almost instantaneously a tall form sprang in through the casement, revealing to the astonished eyes of the maidens, the brother of Jane and the lover of Helen Devereux. On the moment too a giant's blow sent the door reeling from its hinges, and an officer in the continental uniform dashed into the room, followed by a score of soldiers.

"Jane—thank God she is safe!" exclaimed the officer as he sprang forward and caught in his arms the heroic girl, who now that the danger was past swooned away.

"And Helen—poor, poor girl!—the savage bloodhounds have almost been your death!" said her athletic lover as he bore her inanimate form toward the casement, and dashed over her face the water in a flower vase that stood on a table nigh.

It was some hours later in the evening, and in place of the tumult which had marked the twilight, a holy silence reigned around the cottage and on the surrounding forest. The moon rode high in heaven, shining from a cloudless sky with a calm and mystic light, like that shed from the countenance of a Sybil. The shadows of the old woods without lay weird and solemn on the landscape, while the little waterfall sent up a low murmuring sound as if in unison with the scene.

By the same window at which they sat when we first introduced them to the reader, again sat the cousins; but now their lovers were at their side, and their talk was less gay than before. Every vestige of the late struggle