eed dashed aside, but the rifle was torn
from his own grasp, and the next moment he was clutched as in the embrace
of a bear, and pressed with suffocating force upon the breast of his
undaunted adversary.

"Brudder!" growled the savage, and the foam flew from his grinning
lips, advanced until they were almost in contact with the soldier's
face--"Brudder!" he cried, as he felt his triumph, and twined his arms
still more tightly around Roland's frame, "Long-knife nothing! hab a
scalp, Shawnee!"

With these words, he sprang from the broken floor of the passage, on
which the encounter began, and dragging the soldier along, made as if he
would have carried him off alive. But although in the grasp of a man of
much superior strength, the resolution and activity of Roland preserved
him from a destiny at once so fearful and ignoble. He exerted the
strength he possessed at the instant when the bulky captor was springing
from the floor to the broken ground beneath, and with such effect, that,
though it did not entirely release him from his grasp, it carried them
headlong to the earth together; whence, after a brief and blind struggle,
both rose together, each clutching at the weapon that promised soonest to
terminate the contest. The pistols of the soldier, which, as well as
Emperor's, the peaceful Nathan had taken the precaution to carry with him
into the ruin, had been forgotten in the suddenness and hurry of the
assault; his rifle had been wrested from his hands, and thrown he knew
not where. The knife, which, like a true adventurer of the forest, he had
buckled in his belt, was ready to be grasped; but the instinct of long
habits carried his hand to the broad-sword, which was yet strapped to his
thigh; and this, as he rose, he attempted to draw, not doubting that a
single blow of the trusty steel would rid him of his brown enemy. But the
Shawnee, as bold, as alert, and far more discreet, better acquainted,
too, with those savage personal rencontres which, make up so large a
portion of Indian warfare, had drawn his knife before he had yet regained
his footing; and before the Virginian's sword was half unsheathed, the
hand that tugged at it was again seized and held as in a vice, while the
warrior, elevating his own free weapon above his head, prepared, with a
laugh and whoop of triumph, to plunge it into the soldier's throat. His
countenance, grim with warpaint, grimmer with ferocious exultation, was
distinctly perceived, the