hilistine
rascals is in our hands, and we will smite them hip and thigh!"

With this inspiring assurance he crept into the ravine; and Roland
following, they were soon in possession of a post commanding, not only
the spot occupied by the enemy, but the whole valley.

Peeping through the fringe of shrubs that rose, a verdant parapet, on the
brink of the gully, they looked down upon the savage party, now less than
forty paces from the muzzle of their guns, and wholly unaware of the fate
preparing for them. The scene of diversion and torment was over; the
prisoner, a man of powerful frame but squallid appearance, whose hat,--a
thing of shreds and patches,--adorned the shorn pate of one of the
Indians, while his coat, equally rusty and tattered, hung from the
shoulders of a second, lay bound under a tree, but so nigh that they
could mark the laborious heavings of his chest. Two of the Indians sat
near him on the grass keeping watch, their hatchets in their hands, their
guns resting within reach against the trunk of a tree overthrown by some
hurricane of former years, and now mouldering away. A third was engaged
with his tomahawk, lopping away the few dry boughs that remained on the
trunk. Squatting at the fire, which the third was thus labouring to
replenish with fuel, were the two remaining savages, who, holding their
rifles in their hands, divided their attention betwixt a shoulder of
venison roasting on a stick in the fire, and the captive, whom they
seemed to regard as destined to be sooner or later disposed of in a
similar manner.

The position of the parties precluded the hope Nathan had ventured to
entertain of getting them in a cluster, and so doing double execution
with each bullet; but the disappointment neither chilled his ardour nor
embarrassed his plans. His scheme of attack had been framed to embrace
all contingences; and he wasted no further time in deliberation. A
few whispered words conveyed his last instructions to the soldier; who,
reflecting that he was fighting in the cause of humanity, remembering his
own heavy wrongs, and marking the fiery eagerness that flamed from
Nathan's visage, banished from his mind whatever disinclination he might
have felt at beginning the fray in a mode so seemingly treacherous and
ignoble. He laid his axe on the brink of the gully at his side, together
with his foraging cap; and then, thrusting his rifle through the bushes,
took aim at one of the savages at the fire, Natha