from her person, with
ill-directed and trembling fingers; "take all, but give me my babe!"

The savage spurned the worthless rags, and perceiving that the shawl had
already become a prize to another, his bantering but sullen smile
changing to a gleam of ferocity, he dashed the head of the infant
against a rock, and cast its quivering remains to her very feet. For an
instant, the mother stood, like a statue of despair, looking wildly down
at the unseemly object, which had so lately nestled in her bosom and
smiled in her face; and then she raised her eyes and countenance towards
heaven, as if calling on God to curse the perpetrator of the foul deed.
She was spared the sin of such a prayer; for, maddened at his
disappointment, and excited at the sight of blood, the Huron mercifully
drove his tomahawk into her own brain. The mother sank under the blow,
and fell, grasping at her child, in death, with the same engrossing love
that had caused her to cherish it when living.

At that dangerous moment Magua placed his hands to his mouth, and raised
the fatal and appalling whoop. The scattered Indians started at the
well-known cry, as coursers bound at the signal to quit the goal; and,
directly, there arose such a yell along the plain, and through the
arches of the wood, as seldom burst from human lips before. They who
heard it listened with a curdling horror at the heart, little inferior
to that dread which may be expected to attend the blasts of the final
summons.

More than two thousand raving savages broke from the forest at the
signal, and threw themselves across the fatal plain with instinctive
alacrity. We shall not dwell on the revolting horrors that succeeded.
Death was everywhere, and in his most terrific and disgusting aspects.
Resistance only served to inflame the murderers, who inflicted their
furious blows long after their victims were beyond the power of their
resentment. The flow of blood might be likened to the outbreaking of a
torrent; and, as the natives became heated and maddened by the sight,
many among them even kneeled to the earth, and drank freely, exultingly,
hellishly, of the crimson tide.

The trained bodies of the troops threw themselves quickly into solid
masses, endeavoring to awe their assailants by the imposing appearance
of a military front. The experiment in some measure succeeded, though
far too many suffered their unloaded muskets to be torn from their
hands, in the vain hope of appeasing t