arms appear to be stretched out to their full
extent, and held as in the grasp of some invisible hand! My head, too,
is fixed: I can neither turn nor move it. A cord traverses across my
cheeks. There is something between my teeth. A piece of wood it
appears to be? It gags me, and half stifles my breathing! Am I in
human hands? or are they fiends who are thus clutching me?

Anon my senses grow stronger, but wild fancies still mock me: I am yet
uncertain if it be life! What are those dark objects passing before my
eyes? They are birds upon the wing--large birds of sable plumage. I
know them. They are vultures. They are of the earth. Such could not
exist in a region of spirits? Ah! those sounds! they are weird enough
to be deemed unearthly--wild enough to be mistaken for the voices of
demons. From far beneath, they appear to rise--as if from the bowels of
the earth, sinking and swelling in prolonged chorus. I know and
recognise the voices: they are human. I know the chaunted measure: it
is the death-song of the Indian! The sounds are suggestive. I am not
dreaming--I am not dead. I am awake, and on the earth.

Memory comes to my aid. By little and little, I begin to realise my
situation. I remember the siege--the smoke--the confused conflict--all
that preceded it, but nothing after. I thought I had been killed. But
no--I live--I am a captive. My comrades--are _they_ alive? Not likely.
Better for them, if they be not. The consciousness of life need be no
comfort to me. In that wild chaunt there is breathing a keen spirit of
vengeance. Oh! that I had not survived to hear it! Too surely do I
know what will follow that dirge of death. It might as well be my own!

I am in pain. My position pains me--and the hot sun glaring upon my
cheek. My arms and limbs smart under thongs that bind too tightly. One
crosses my throat that almost chokes me, and the stick between my teeth
renders breathing difficult. There is a pain upon the crown of my head,
and my skull feels as if scalded. Oh Heavens! _have they scalped me_?
With the thought, I endeavour to raise my hand. In vain: I cannot budge
either hand or arm. Not a finger can I move; and I am forced to remain
in horrid doubt as to whether the _hair_ be still upon my head--with
more than a probability that it is gone! But how am I confined? and
where? I am fast bound to something: every joint in my body is fixed
and immobile, as if turned to stone!