Again, as in the late battle, it was the trivial things that moved me most.  Chief among them the grinning row of dead Indians propped against the fallen tree is the constant background for all the memory pictures of that waiting interval, and I can see those stiffening corpses now, some erect, as if defying us; some lopping this way or that, as if their bones had gone to water at the touch of the steel.

I know not why these poor relics of mortality should have held me fascinated as they did.  Yet when I would look away, through the vista to where the light of the great fire in the savanna camp played luridly upon the Indian lodges, or, nearer at hand, upon the savages gathering the wood to burn us with, this ghastly file of the dead drew me irresistibly, and I must needs pass the fearsome figures in review again, marking the staring eyes and unnatural postures, and the circular blood-black patches on the heads of the three peace-men whom Yeates and the Catawba had scalped.

While they were making ready for the burning, our executioners were strangely silent; but when the work was done they formed in a semicircle to front the row of corpses and set up a howling chant that would have put a band of Mohammedan dervishes to the blush.

“’Tis the death song for the slain,” said Richard; and while it lasted, this moving tableau of naked figures, keeping time in a weird stamping dance to the rising and falling ululation of the chant, held us spellbound.

But we were not long suffered to be mere curious onlookers.  In its dismalest flight the death song ended in a shrill hubbub, and the dancers turned as one man to face us.

I hope it may never be your lot, my dears, to meet and endure such a horrid glare of human ferocity as that these wrought-up avengers of blood bent upon us.  ’Twas more unnerving than aught that had gone before; more terrible, I thought, than aught that could come after.  Yet, as to this, you shall judge for yourselves.

The pause was brief, and when a lad ran up to cut the thongs that bound us from the middle up, the torture-play began in deadly earnest.  Whilst the Indian youth was slashing at the deerskin, Richard gave me my cue.

“’Tis the knife and hatchet play; they are loosing us to give us freedom to shrink and dodge.  Look straight before you and never flinch a hair, as you would keep the life in you from one minute to the next!”

“Trust me,” said I.  “We must eke it out as long as we can, if only to give our dear lady time for another prayer or two.  Mayhap she will name us in them; God knows, our need is sore enough.”

The lad ran back, and a warrior stood out, juggling his tomahawk in air.  He made a feint to cast it at Richard, but instead sent it whizzing at me.

That first missile was harder to face unflinching than were all the others.  I saw it leave the thrower’s hand; saw it coming straight, as I would think, to split my skull.  The prompting to dodge was well-nigh masterful enough to override the strongest will.  Yet I did make shift to hold fast, and in mid flight the twirling ax veered aside to miss me by a hair’s-breadth, gashing the tree at my ear when it struck.