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Page 51
CHAPTER X.
THE RENEGADE AND HIS PRISONERS.
The feelings in the breasts of Algernon and Ella, as they reluctantly
moved onward, captives to a savage, bloodthirsty foe, are impossible
to be described. To what awful end had fate destined them? and in what
place were they to drain the last bitter dregs of woe? How much anguish
of heart, how much racking of soul, and how much bodily suffering was
to be their portion, ere death, almost their only hope, would set them
free? True, they might be rescued by friends--such things had been
done--but the probability thereof was as ten to one against them; and
when they perceived the care with which the renegade sought to destroy
all vestiges of their course, their last gleam of hope became nearly
extinguished.
We have previously stated that Ella was left unbound; but wherefore,
would perhaps be hard to conjecture; unless we suppose that the
renegade--feeling for her that selfish affection which pervades the
breasts of all beings, however base or criminal, to a greater or less
degree--fancied it would be adding unnecessary cruelty to bind heir
delicate hands. Whatever the cause, matters but little; but the fact
itself was of considerable importance to Ella; who took advantage of
her freedom, in passing the bushes before noticed, to snatch a leaf
unperceived, whereon, by great adroitness, she managed to trace with a
pin a few almost illegible characters; and also, in ascending the bank,
which she was allowed to do in her own way, to throw down with her foot
the stone, break the twig at the same instant, and pin the leaf to it,
in the faint hope that an old hunter might follow on the trail, who,
if he came to the spot, would hardly fail to notice it.
The freedom thus given to Ella, and the deference shown her by the
renegade and his allies--who appeared to treat her with the same respect
they would have done the wife of their chief--were in striking contrast
with their manners toward Algernon, on whom they seemed disposed to vent
their scorn by petty insults. Believing that his doom was sealed, he
became apparently resigned to his fate, nor seemed to notice, save with
stoical indifference, any thing that took place around him. This quiet,
inoffensive manner, was far from pleasing to Girty, who would much
rather have seen him chafing under his bondage, and manifesting a desire
to escape its toil. But if this was the outward appearance, not so was
the inward feelings of our hero. He knew his fate--unless he could
effect an escape, of which he had little hope--and he nerved himself to
meet and seem to his captors careless of it; but his soul was already on
the rack of torture. This was not for himself alone; for Algernon was a
brave man, and in reality feared not death; though, like many another
brave man, be had no desire to die at his time of life, especially with
all the tortures of the stake, which he knew, from Girty's remark, would
be his assignment; but his soul was harrowed at the thought of Ella--her
awful doom--and what she might be called upon to undergo: perhaps a
punishment a thousand times worse than death--that of being the
pretended wife, but in reality the mistress, of the loathsome renegade.
This thought to him was torture--almost madness--and it was only by the
most powerful struggle with himself, that he could avoid exposing his
feelings.
For a time, after ascending the rocky bank of the stream and gaining the
hill, the renegade and his Indian allies, with their captives, moved
silently onward at a fast pace; but at length, slackening his speed
somewhat, Girty approached the side of Algernon, who was bound in a
manner similar to Younker, with his wrists corded to a cross bar behind
his back; and apparently examining them a moment or two, in a sneering
tone, said:
"How-comes it that the bully fighter of the British, under the cowardly
General Gates, should be so tightly bound, away out in this Indian
country, and a captive to a _renegade_ agent?--ha, ha, ha!"
The pale features of Algernon, as he heard this taunt, grew suddenly
crimson, and then more deadly white than ever--his fingers fairly worked
in their cords, and his respiration seemed almost to stifle him--so
powerfully were his passions wrought upon by the cowardly insults of his
adversary; but at last all became calm and stoical again; when turning
to Girty, he coolly examined him from head to heel, from heel to head;
and then moving away his eyes, as if the sight were offensive to him,
quietly said:
"An honest man would be degraded by condescending to hold discourse with
so mean a _thing_ as Simon Girty the renegade."
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