a moment for hesitation, and ere Judith had ceased speaking
her paddle was in the water. The distance to the point, in a direct
line, was not great, and the impulses under which the girls worked were
too exciting to allow them to waste the precious moments in useless
precautions. They paddled incautiously for them, but the same excitement
kept others from noting their movements. Presently a glare of light
caught the eye of Judith through an opening in the bushes, and steering
by it, she so directed the canoe as to keep it visible, while she got as
near the land as was either prudent or necessary.
The scene that was now presented to the observation of the girls was
within the woods, on the side of the declivity so often mentioned, and
in plain view from the boat. Here all in the camp were collected, some
six or eight carrying torches of fat-pine, which cast a strong but
funereal light on all beneath the arches of the forest. With her
back supported against a tree, and sustained on one side by the young
sentinel whose remissness had suffered Hetty to escape, sat the female
whose expected visit had produced his delinquency. By the glare of the
torch that was held near her face, it was evident that she was in the
agonies of death, while the blood that trickled from her bared bosom
betrayed the nature of the injury she had received. The pungent,
peculiar smell of gunpowder, too, was still quite perceptible in the
heavy, damp night air. There could be no question that she had been
shot. Judith understood it all at a glance. The streak of light had
appeared on the water a short distance from the point, and either the
rifle had been discharged from a canoe hovering near the land, or it had
been fired from the ark in passing. An incautious exclamation, or laugh,
may have produced the assault, for it was barely possible that the aim
had been assisted by any other agent than sound. As to the effect, that
was soon still more apparent, the head of the victim dropping, and the
body sinking in death. Then all the torches but one were extinguished--a
measure of prudence; and the melancholy train that bore the body to the
camp was just to be distinguished by the glimmering light that remained.
Judith sighed heavily and shuddered, as her paddle again dipped, and
the canoe moved cautiously around the point. A sight had afflicted her
senses, and now haunted her imagination, that was still harder to be
borne, than even the untimely fate and
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