ave been some
time awake and have partaken of food while you remained in stupor. Do
not look at me like that! I am not tired; I was borne all the way upon
a litter, never once placing foot upon the ground."

"Have you knowledge as to the hour?"

"Only that it must be well into the night."

I lifted my body into a more erect posture, finding myself stiff and
sore from head to foot, and glanced curiously around our prison-house.
In the centre was the blazing log, the sole bit of color my eyes could
perceive. Kneeling upon either side were the motionless figures of
four priests, robed from head to foot in black, their faces, darkened
by some pigment, appearing ghastly and repulsive under the flickering
flame. Their lips muttered in monotonous chant a weird incantation
which sent to my heart a chill of superstitious dread. High above the
altar, blackened by the constantly ascending cloud of smoke, swayed
uneasily a peculiar graven image of wood, hideous in disfigurement of
form and diabolical of visage, appearing to float upon outspread wings,
and gloating down upon us through eyes glittering ominously in the fire
sheen. At either extremity of the apartment, where I supposed were the
entrance and exit previously noted, stood those savages remaining on
guard, grim, naked fellows, whose restless eyes, gleaming in the glow,
followed our slightest movements, and whose weapons were constantly
uplifted as though they longed for some excuse to strike. It composed
a grewsome scene, savage, cruel, devilish, exhibiting within its gloomy
outlines small promise for the morrow.

The old Puritan was leaning heavily against a small stake driven into
the earth, resting his aching head upon one hand as he peered at me
from beneath thatched brows.

"You have a white face, Master Benteen," he ventured, wondrously soft
spoken for him, "yet if the heart remain strong and at peace with God,
the body will mend itself."

"The heart has never yet failed me," I returned, striving to speak
cheerfully, feeling that he would like to hear hearty English words
again. "I am glad to behold you safely recovered, friend; that was a
hard crack they landed on your skull."

"'T is not the will of the Almighty that I ignominiously perish at the
hands of the heathen," he responded in his old manner, and as his voice
roared out, not unlike a clap of thunder in that silence, I observed
how the savages about us started. "Again, and yet again hath He