Chapter 2: Friends In Need
It was not to be surprised at that, after that terrible day and night, Charles should awake from the restless sleep into which he had dropped towards dawn in a state of high fever.
He lay raving in delirium for three days, whilst Humphrey sat beside him, putting water to his parched lips, striving to soothe and quiet him; often shuddering with horror as he seemed to see again with his brother's eyes those horrid scenes upon which the fevered man's fancy ever dwelt; waking sometimes at night in a sweat of terror, thinking he heard the Indian war whoop echoing through the forest.
Those were terrible days for Humphrey-days of a loneliness that was beyond anything he had experienced before. His brother was near him in the flesh, but severed from him by a whole world of fevered imaginings. Sometimes Humphrey found it in his heart to wish that the Indians would come back and make a final end of them both. All hope and zest and joy in life seemed to have been taken from him at one blow. He could neither think of the happy past without pangs of pain, nor yet face a future which seemed barren of hope and promise.
He could only sit beside his brother, tend him, nurse him, pray for him. But the words of prayer too often died away upon his lips. Had they not all prayed together, after the godly habit of the household, upon the very morning when this awful disaster fell upon them? Were these vast solitudes too far away for God to hear the prayers that went up from them?
Humphrey had never known what awful loneliness could engulf the human spirit till he sat beside the fevered man in the vast solitude of the primeval forest, asking in his heart whether God Himself had not forsaken them.
It was the hour of sundown, and Humphrey had gone outside for a breath of fresh air. He looked ten years older than he had done a few days back, when he had come whistling through the forest track, expecting to see the children bounding forth to meet him. His eyes were sunken, his face was pale and haggard, his dress was unkempt and ragged. There were no clever fingers now to patch tattered raiment, and keep things neat and trim.
There was an unwonted sound in the forest! It was distant still. To some ears it would have been inaudible; but Humphrey heard it, and his heart suddenly beat faster.
The sound was that of approaching steps-the steps of men. A few minutes more and he heard the sound of voices, too. He had been about to dash into the shed for his gun, but the fresh sounds arrested his movement.
He had ears as sharp as those of an ambushed Indian, and he detected in a moment that the men who were approaching the clearing were of his own nationality. The words he could not hear, but he could distinguish the intonation. It was not the rapid, thin-sounding French tongue; it was English-he was certain of it! And a light leaped to his eyes at the bare thought of meeting a brother countryman in this desolate place.
Probably it was some other settler, one of that hardy race that fringed the colony on its western frontier. Miles and miles of rolling forest lay between these scattered holdings, and since war was but lately begun, nothing had been done for the protection of the hapless people now becoming an easy prey of the Indians stirred up to molest them.
Humphrey knew none of their neighbours. Forest travelling was too difficult and dangerous to tempt the settler far away from his own holding. If it were one of these coming now, most likely he too had suffered from attack or fear of attack, and was seeking a friend in the nearest locality.
He stood like one spellbound, watching and waiting. The sound of steps drew nearer to the fringe of obscuring forest trees; the sound of voices became plainer and more plain. In another minute Humphrey saw them-two bronzed and stalwart men-advancing from the wood into the clearing. They came upon it unawares, as was plain from their sudden pause. But they were white men; they were brothers in this wild land. There was something like a sob in Humphrey's throat, which he hastily swallowed down, as he advanced with great strides to meet them.
"You are welcome," he said. "I had thought the Indians had left no living beings behind them in all this forest save my brother and myself."
No introductions were needed in this savage place; the face of every white man lit up at sight of a like countenance, and at the sound of the familiar tongue. The men shook hands with a hearty grip, and one said to Humphrey:
"You have had Indians here?"
Humphrey made an expressive gesture with his hand.
"This was a week ago as fair a holding as heart of man could wish to see in this grim forest. You see what is left today!"
"Your house is burnt down, as we plainly see. Have you lost aught beside? Has human blood been spilt?"
"The corpse of my venerable father, and that of a bold baby boy, lie beneath yon heap of ruins which made their funeral pyre. In yonder grave lie the mingled corpses of my brother's wife and four fair children, hacked to death and half burnt by the savages. And yet this work is not the work of savages alone. With them we have dwelt at peace these many years. The shame, the horror, the disgrace of it is that we owe these horrors to the white sons of France, who hound on the savages to make these raids, and stand by to see them do their bloody work!"
The two strangers exchanged glances-meaning glances-and one of them laid a hand upon Humphrey's shoulder, looking earnestly into his eyes the while.
"Is it so in very truth? So have we heard in whispers, but it was a thing we could scarce believe. We have travelled far from the lands of the south to join our brethren of the English race. We heard rumours of wars cruel and bloody. Yet it seemed to us too strange a thing to believe that here, amid the hostile, savage Indians, white man could wage war with white man, and take the bloody heathen man as his ally, instead of the brother who bears the name of Christ!"
Humphrey looked with some wonder and fascination into the face of the youth who spoke. It was a refined and beautiful face, notwithstanding the evidences of long exposure to sun and wind. The features were finely cut, sensitive and expressive, and the eyes were very luminous in their glance, and possessed strangely penetrating powers. In stature the young man was almost as tall as Humphrey, but of a much slighter build; yet he was wiry and muscular, as could well be seen, and plainly well used to the life of the wild woodlands. His dress was that of the backwoods, dressed deerskin being the chief material used. Both travellers wore moccasins on their feet, and carried the usual weapons of offence and defence.
Yet Humphrey felt as though this man was in some sort different from those he had met in the woods at rare times when out hunting. His voice, his words, his phraseology seemed in some sort strange, and he asked him wonderingly:
"From whence are you, friends?"
"From the land of the far south-from the rolling plains of the giant Mississippi, that vast river of which perchance you have heard?"
"Ay, verily," answered Humphrey, with a touch of bitterness in his tone. "I have heard of that great river, which the French King claims to have discovered, and which they say he will guard with a chain of forts right away from Canada, and will thus command all the New World of the West, pinning us English within the limits of that portion of land lying betwixt the ocean and the range of the Allegheny Mountains," and Humphrey waved his hand in that direction, and looked questioningly at the men before him.
He had an impression that all who came from the far south, from the colony of Louisiana, as he had heard it called, must be in some sort French subjects. And yet these men spoke his own tongue, and seemed to be friends and brothers.
"That was the chimera of the French Monarch more than a century ago. Methinks it is little nearer its accomplishment now than when our forefathers, acting as pioneers, made a small settlement in a green valley near to the mouth of the giant river, waiting for the King to send his priests and missionaries to convert the heathen from their evil ways, and found a fair Christian realm in that fair land."
"Then were your forefathers French subjects?" asked Humphrey, rather bewildered. "If so, how come you to speak