" shouted Hawkeye, answering the cry with his
own stentorian voice; "we have them now in face and back!"

The effect on the Hurons was instantaneous. Discouraged by an assault
from a quarter that left them no opportunity for cover, the warriors
uttered a common yell of disappointment, and breaking off in a
body, they spread themselves across the opening, heedless of every
consideration but flight. Many fell, in making the experiment, under the
bullets and the blows of the pursuing Delawares.

We shall not pause to detail the meeting between the scout and
Chingachgook, or the more touching interview that Duncan held with
Munro. A few brief and hurried words served to explain the state of
things to both parties; and then Hawkeye, pointing out the Sagamore to
his band, resigned the chief authority into the hands of the Mohican
chief. Chingachgook assumed the station to which his birth and
experience gave him so distinguished a claim, with the grave dignity
that always gives force to the mandates of a native warrior. Following
the footsteps of the scout, he led the party back through the thicket,
his men scalping the fallen Hurons and secreting the bodies of their own
dead as they proceeded, until they gained a point where the former was
content to make a halt.

The warriors, who had breathed themselves freely in the preceding
struggle, were now posted on a bit of level ground, sprinkled with
trees in sufficient numbers to conceal them. The land fell away rather
precipitately in front, and beneath their eyes stretched, for several
miles, a narrow, dark, and wooded vale. It was through this dense and
dark forest that Uncas was still contending with the main body of the
Hurons.

The Mohican and his friends advanced to the brow of the hill, and
listened, with practised ears, to the sounds of the combat. A few
birds hovered over the leafy bosom of the valley, frightened from their
secluded nests; and here and there a light vapory cloud, which seemed
already blending with the atmosphere, arose above the trees, and
indicated some spot where the struggle had been fierce and stationary.

"The fight is coming up the ascent," said Duncan, pointing in the
direction of a new explosion of firearms; "we are too much in the center
of their line to be effective."

"They will incline into the hollow, where the cover is thicker," said
the scout, "and that will leave us well on their flank. Go, Sagamore;
you will hardly be in time to g