ised when I
found I could not rise. Men had sprung up silently around me, and I was
pinned by many hands.

They trussed me with ropes, binding my hands cruelly behind my back,
and swathing my legs till not a muscle could move. My pistols hung
idle, and the ropes drove the hafts into my flesh. This is the end,
thought I, and I did not even grieve at my impotence. My courage now
was of the passive kind, not to act but to endure. Always I kept
telling myself that I must be brave, for Ringan had praised my courage,
and I had a conviction that nothing that man could do would shake me.
Thanks be to God, my quick fancy was dulled, and I did not try to look
into the future. I lived for the moment, and I was resolved that the
moment should find me unmoved.

They carried me to where their horses were tied up in a glade, and
presently we were galloping towards the hills, myself an inert bundle
strapped across an Indian saddle. The pain of the motion was great, but
I had a kind of grim comfort in bearing it. After a time I think my
senses left me, and I slipped into a stupor, from which I woke with a
fiery ache at every joint and eyes distended with a blinding heat. Some
one tossed me on the ground, where I lay with my cheek in a cool, wet
patch of earth. Then I felt my bonds being unloosed, and a strong arm
pulled me to my feet. When it let go I dropped again, and not till many
hands had raised me and set me on a log could I look round at my
whereabouts.

I was in a crook of a hill glen, lit with a great radiance of
moonlight. Fires dotted the flat, and Indian tents, and there seemed to
me hundreds of savages crowding in on me. I do not suppose that I
showed any fear, for my bodily weakness had made me as impassive as any
Indian.

Presently a voice spoke to me, but I could not understand the words. I
shook my head feebly, and another spoke. This time I knew that the
tongue was Cherokee, a speech I could recognize but could not follow.
Again I shook my head, and a third took up the parable. This one spoke
the Powhatan language, which I knew, and I replied in the same tongue.

There was a tall man wearing in his hair a single great feather, whom I
took to be the chief. He spoke to me through the interpreter, and asked
me whence I came.

I told him I was a hunter who had strayed in the hills. He asked where
the other was.

"He is dead," I said, "dead of your knives. But five of your braves
atoned for him."

"You speak tru