in broken English as well as in their own
tongue, Nathan regarded no more than their taunts and menaces, replying
to these, as to all, only with a wild and haggard stare, which seemed to
awe several of the younger warriors, who began to exchange looks of
peculiar meaning. At last, as they drew nearer the fire, an old Indian
staggered among the group, who made way for him with a kind of respect,
as was, indeed, his due,--for he was no other than the old Black-Vulture
himself. Limping up to the prisoner, with as much ferocity as his
drunkenness would permit, he laid one hand upon his shoulder, and with
the other aimed a furious hatchet-blow at his head. The blow was arrested
by the renegade Doe, or Atkinson, who made his appearance at the same
time with Wenonga, and muttered some words in the Shawnee tongue, which
seemed meant to soothe the old man's fury.

"Me Injun-man!" said the chief, addressing his words to the prisoner, and
therefore in the prisoner's language,--"Me kill all white-man! Me
Wenonga: me drink white-mans blood! me no heart!" And to impress the
truth of his words on the prisoner's mind, he laid his right hand, from
which the axe had been removed, as well as his left, on Nathan's
shoulder, in which position supporting himself, he nodded and wagged his
head in the other's face, with as savage a look of malice as he could
infuse into his drunken features. To this the prisoner replied by bending
upon the chief a look more hideous than his own, and indeed so strangely
unnatural and revolting, with lips so retracted, features so distorted by
some nameless passion, and eyes gleaming with fires so wild and
unearthly, that even Wenonga, chief as he was, and then in no condition
to be daunted by anything, drew slowly back, removing his hands from the
prisoner's shoulder, who immediately fell down in horrible convulsions,
the foam flying from his lips, and his fingers clenching like spikes of
iron into the flesh of two Indians that had hold of him.

Taunts, questions, and whoops were heard no more among the captors, who
drew aside from their wretched prisoner, as if from the darkest of their
Manitoes, all looking on with unconcealed wonder and awe. The only
person, indeed, who seemed undismayed at the spectacle, was the renegade,
who, as Nathan shook and writhed in the fit, beheld the corner of a piece
of parchment projecting from the bosom of his shirt, and looking vastly
like that identical instrument he had seen