No torture that I ever heard of or could ever have conceived—­ no punishment, no agony, no Calvary ever has matched the hellish hideousness of the endless execution of this young man....  He was only twenty-two years old; only a lieutenant among the thousands who served their common motherland.  No man who ever lived has died more bravely; none, perhaps, as horribly and as slowly.  And it seemed as though in that powerful, symmetrical, magnificent body, even after it became scarcely recognizable as human, that the spark of life could not be extinguished even though it were cut into a million shreds and scattered to the winds like the fair body of Osiris.

And this is all I care to say how it was that my comrade died, save that he endured bravely; and that while consciousness remained, not one secret would he reveal; not one plea for mercy escaped his lips.

Parker died more swiftly and mercifully.

It was after sunset when the Senecas left the place, but the sky above was still rosy.  And as they slowly marched past the corpses of the two men whom they had slain, every Seneca drew his hatchet and shouted: 

“Salute!  O Roya-neh!” fiercely honoring the dead bodies of the bravest men who had ever died in the Long House.

On the following afternoon I ventured from my concealment, and was striving to dig a grave for my two comrades, using my knife to do it, when the riflemen of our advance discovered me across the river.

A moment later I looked up, my eyes blinded by tears, as the arm of the Sagamore was flung round my shoulders, and the hands of the Grey-Feather and Tahoontowhee timidly sought mine.

“Brother!” they said gently.

"Tekasenthos, O Sagamore!!’ I whispered, dropping my head on his broad shoulder.  “Issi tye-y-ad-akeron, akwah de-ya-kon-akor-on-don!”

[* “I weep, O Sagamore!  Yonder are lying bodies, yea, and of chiefs!”]

CHAPTER XXII

 MES ADIEUX

For my acquaintances in and outside of the army, and for my friends and relatives, this narrative has been written; and if in these pages I have seemed to present myself, my thoughts, and behaviour as matters of undue importance, it is not done so purposely or willingly, but because I knew no better method of making from my daily journal the story of the times and of the events witnessed by me, and of which I was a small and modest part.

It is very true that no two people, even when standing shoulder to shoulder, ever see the same episode in the same manner, or draw similar conclusions concerning any event so witnessed.  Yet, except from hearsay, how is an individual to describe his times except in the light of personal experience and of the emotions of the moment so derived?

In active events, self looms large, even in the crisis of supreme self-sacrifice.  In the passive part, which even the most active among us play for the greater portion of our lives, self is merged in the detached and impersonal interest which we take in what passes before our eyes.  Yet must we describe these things only as they are designed and coloured by our proper eyes, and therefore, with no greater hope of accuracy than to approximate to the general and composite truth.