athan's example, and threw himself upon the unlucky Indian,--a
youth, as it appeared, whose strength, perhaps at no moment equal to his
own, had been reduced by recent wounds,--and found that he had him
entirely at his mercy. This circumstance, and the knowledge that the
other Indians were now overpowered, softened the soldier's wrath; and
when Nathan, rushing to assist him, cried aloud to him to move aside,
that he might "knock the assassin knave's brains out," Roland replied by
begging Nathan to spare his life. "I have disarmed him," he cried--"he
resists no more--Don't kill him."

"To the last man of his tribe!" cried Nathan, with unexampled ferocity;
and, without another word, drove the hatchet into the wretch's brain.

The victors now leaping to their feet, looked round for the fifth savage
and the prisoner; and directed by a horrible din under the bank of the
stream, which was resounding with, curses, groans, heavy blows, and the
plashing of water, ran to the spot, where the last incident of battle was
revealed to them in a spectacle as novel as it was shocking. The Indian
lay on his back suffocating in mire and water; while astride his body sat
the late prisoner, covered from head to foot with mud and gore, furiously
plying his fists, for he had no other weapons, about the head and face of
his foe, his blows falling like sledge-hammers or battering-rams, with
such strength and fury that it seemed impossible any one of them could
fail to crush the skull to atoms; and all the while garnishing them with
a running accompaniment of oaths and maledictions little less emphatic
and overwhelming. "You switches gentlemen, do you, you exflunctified,
perditioned rascal? Ar'n't you got it, you niggur-in-law to old Satan?
you 'tarnal half-imp, you? H'yar's for you, you dog, and thar's for you,
you dog's dog! H'yar's the way I pay you in a small-change of
sogdologers!"

And thus he cried, until Roland and Nathan seizing him by the
shoulders, dragged him by main force from the Indian, who was found, when
they came to examine the body afterwards, actually pommelled to death,
the skull having been beaten in as with bludgeons.--The victor sprang
upon his feet, and roared his triumph aloud:--"Ar'n't I lick'd him
handsome!--Hurrah for Kentucky and old Salt--Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

And with that, turning to his deliverers, he displayed to
their astonished eyes, though disfigured by blood and mire, the
never-to-be-forgotten features of