n no more: but
his pursuers had already surrounded him. They secured him without
difficulty, carried him to the shore, and there binding his hands
behind him with a strong grape-vine, led him towards their village.

The young Mohegan, finding all attempt to escape useless, resigned
himself to his fate, with all the indifference which an Indian always
assumes, though he may not feel it. At first he scarcely thought that
he should be put to death, for he knew that the people into whose
hands he had fallen were celebrated throughout the land for the
mildness of their character, and their disposition to mercy; and he
relied still more on their known dread of his own warlike and
formidable tribe, equally famous for their disposition to have blood
for blood, and to suffer no grass to grow in their paths till they had
tasted the sweets of revenge. However, he prepared himself for the
worst, and began to steel his heart against the fear of death. He did
well, for, soon after they began their march, his captors commanded
him to sing his death-song. The youth obeyed, and in a strong deep
chant began the customary boast of endurance and defiance of pain. He
sung of the glories of his nation, and how often they had made the
hearts of their enemies, of his captors, leap with fear, and their
knees shake, by their wild halloo of war. He told them that, though
his years were few, he had seen a Northern die in his grasp; though
his eyes were but young, they had looked on the last struggle of one
of their brothers. He took up the strain at intervals, and in the
pauses his conductors preserved a deep and stern silence.

At length the party came upon a kind of path in the woods, which they
followed for a considerable distance, and then suddenly stopped short.
All at once a long shrill startling cry burst from them. It was the
death-cry for their drowned companion. It rang through the old woods,
and was returned in melancholy echoes from the neighbouring mountains.
At its frightful sound the birds flew up from their nestling-places in
the leafy thicket; the eagle, and the hawk, and the raven, soared
aloft; and the deer was seen scampering away to a safer and more
distant covert. When the last of their cries had died away, the party
put their hands to their mouths, and uttered a second cry, modulated
into wild notes by the motion of their fingers. An interval of silence
ensued, which was at length broken by a confused sound of shrill
voice