ht
of the torches, now lying burning about the decks, they turned and
beheld not their companions, but a fresh band of Indians, at whose
pouch-belts dangled the reeking scalps of their murdered friends, they
at once relinquished the combat as hopeless, and gave themselves
unresistingly up to be bound by their captors.

Meanwhile the cousins experienced a renewal of all those horrors from
which their distracted minds had been temporarily relieved; and,
petrified with alarm, as they lay in the solitary berth that contained
them both, endured sufferings infinitely more terrible than death
itself. The early part of the tumult they had noticed almost without
comprehending its cause, and but for the terrific cry of the Indians
that had preceded them, would have mistaken the deafening broadsides
for the blowing up of the vessel, so tremendous and violent bad been
the concussion. Nay, there was a moment when Miss de Haldimar felt a
pang of deep disappointment and regret at the misconception; for, with
the fearful recollection of past events, so strongly impressed on her
bleeding heart, she could not but acknowledge, that to be engulfed in
one general and disastrous explosion, was mercy compared with the
alternative of falling into the hands of those to whom her loathing
spirit bad been too fatally taught to deny even the commonest
attributes of humanity. As for Clara, she had not the power to think,
or to form a conjecture on the subject:--she was merely sensible of a
repetition of the horrible scenes from which she had so recently been
snatched, and with a pale cheek, a fixed eye, and an almost pulseless
heart, lay without motion in the inner side of the berth. The piteous
spectacle of her cousin's alarm lent a forced activity to the despair
of Miss de Haldimar, in whom apprehension produced that strong energy
of excitement that sometimes gives to helplessness the character of
true courage. With the increasing clamour of appalling conflict on
deck, this excitement grew at every moment stronger, until it finally
became irrepressible, so that at length, when through the cabin windows
there suddenly streamed a flood of yellow light, extinguishing that of
the lamp that threw its flickering beams around the cabin, she flung
herself impetuously from the berth, and, despite of the aged and
trembling female who attempted to detain her, burst open the narrow
entrance to the cabin, and rushed up the steps communicating with the
deck.