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Osceola the Seminole: or, The Red Fawn of the Flower Land

Chapter Eighty Seven
A Jury Amid the Fire

I had a last thought, as I fell. It was that my life had reached its termination – that in a few seconds my body would be embraced by the flames, and I should horribly perish. The thought drew from me a feeble scream; and with that scream my consciousness forsook me. I was as senseless as if dead – indeed, so far as sensibility went, I was dead; and, had the flames at that moment swept over me, I should not have felt them. In all probability, I might have been burned to a cinder without further pain.

During the interval of my unconsciousness, I had neither dream nor apparition. By this, I knew that my soul must have forsaken its earthly tenement. It may have been hovering above or around, but it was no longer within me. It had separated from my senses, that were all dead.

Dead, but capable of being restored to life, and haply a restorative was at hand, with one capable to administer it.

When my soul returned, the first perception I had was that I was up to my neck in water. I was in the pond, and in a recumbent position – my limbs and body under the water, with only my head above the surface, resting against the bank. A man was kneeling over me, himself half immersed.

My returning senses soon enabled me to tell who the man was – my faithful Jake. He had my pulse in his hand, and was gazing into my features with silent earnestness. As my open eyes replied to his gaze, he uttered an exclamation of joy, and the words: “Golly, Massa George! you lib – thank be to Gorramighty, you lib. Keep up ya heart, young massa – you’s a gwine to git ober it – sartin, your a gwine to git ober it.”

“I hope so, Jake,” was my reply, in a weak voice; but, feeble though it was, it roused the faithful fellow into a transport of delight, and he continued to utter his cheering ejaculations.

I was able to raise my head and look around. It was a dread spectacle that on all sides greeted my eyes, and there was plenty of light wherewith to view it. The forest was still on fire, burning with a continued roar, as of thunder or a mighty wind – varied with hissing noises, and loud crackling that resembled the platoon firing of musketry. One might have fancied it a fusilade from the Indians, but that was impossible. They must have long since retreated before the spreading circle of that all-consuming conflagration. There was less flame than when I had last looked upon it; and less smoke in the atmosphere. The dry foliage had been suddenly reduced to a cinder, and the twiggy fragments had fallen to the earth, where they lay in a dense bed of glowing embers.

Out of this rose the tall trunks, half stripped of their branches, and all on fire. The crisp scaling bark had caught freely, and the resinous sapwood was readily yielding to the flames. Many had burned far inwards, and looked like huge columns of iron heated to redness. The spectacle presented an aspect of the infernal world.

The sense of feeling, too, might have suggested fancies of the same region. The heat was intense to an extreme degree. The atmosphere quivered with the drifting caloric. The hair had crisped upon our heads – our skins had the feel of blistering, and the air we inhaled resembled steam from the ’scape pipe of an engine.

Instinctively I looked for my companions. A group of a dozen or more were upon the open ground near the edge of the pond, but these were not all. There should have been nearer fifty. Where were the others? Had they perished in the flames? Where were they?

Mechanically, I put the question to Jake.

“Thar, massa,” he replied, pointing downwards, “Tha dey be safe yet – ebbery one ob un, I blieve.”

I looked across the surface of the pond. Three dozen roundish objects met my glance. They were the heads of my companions. Like myself, their bodies were submerged, most of them to the neck. They had thus placed themselves to shun the smoke, as well as the broiling heat.

But the others – they on the bank – why had they not also availed themselves of this cunning precaution? Why were they still standing exposed to the fierce heat, and amid the drifting clouds of smoke?

The latter had grown thin and gauze-like. The forms of the men were seen distinctly through it, magnified as in a mist. Like giants they were striding over the ground, and the guns in their hands appeared of colossal proportions. Their gestures were abrupt, and their whole bearing showed they were in a state of half frenzied excitement.

It was natural enough amidst the circumstances that surrounded them. I saw they were the principal men of our party. I saw Hickman and Weatherford both gesticulating freely among them. No doubt they were counselling how we should act.

This was the conjecture I derived from my first glance; but a further survey of the group convinced me I was in error. It was no deliberation about our future plans. In the lull between the volleys of the crackling pines, I could hear their voices. They were those of men engaged in angry dispute. The voices of Hickman and Weatherford especially reached my ear, and I perceived they were talking in a tone that betokened a high state of indignation.

At this moment, the smoke drifting aside, discovered a group still further from the edge of the pond. There were six men standing in threes, and I perceived that the middle man of each three was tightly grasped by the two others. Two of them were prisoners! Were they Indians? two of our enemies, who, amid the confusion of the fire, had strayed into the glade, and been captured?

It was my first thought; but at that instant, a jet of flame, shooting upwards, filled the glade with a flood of brilliant light. The little group thus illuminated could be seen as distinctly as by the light of day.

I was no longer in doubt about the captives. Their faces were before me, white and ghastly as if with fear. Even the red light failed to tinge them with its colour; but wan as they were, I had no difficulty in recognising them. They were Spence and Williams.

Chapter Eighty Eight
Quick Executioners

I turned to the black for an explanation, but before he could make reply to my interrogatory, I more than half comprehended the situation.

My own plight admonished me. I remembered my wound – I remembered that I had received it from behind. I remembered that the bullet that struck the tree, came from the same quarter. I thought we had been indebted to the savages for the shots; but no, worse savages – Spence and Williams were the men who had fired them!

The reflection was awful – the motive mysterious.

And now returned to my thoughts the occurrences of the preceding night – the conduct of these two fellows in the forest – the suspicious hints thrown out by old Hickman and his comrades, and far beyond the preceding night, other circumstances, well marked upon my memory, rose freshly before me.

Here again was the hand of Arens Ringgold. O God, to think that this arch-monster —

“Dar only a tryin’ them two daam raskell,” said Jake, in reply to the interrogatory I had put, “daat’s what they am about, Mass’r George, dat’s all.”

“Who?” I asked mechanically, for I already knew who were meant by the “two daam raskell.”

“Lor, Massr George? doant you see um ober yonder – Spence an’ William – golly! tha’r boaf as white as peeled pumpkins! It war them that shot you, an’ no Indians, arter all. I knowd dat from tha fust, an’ I tol’ Mass’ Hickman de same; but Mass’ Hickman ’clare he see um for hisself – an’ so too Mass’ Weatherford – boaf seed ’um fire tha two shots. Thar a tryin’ ’on ’em for tha lives, dat’s what tha men am doin’.”

With strange interest I once more turned my eyes outward, and gazed, first at one group, then the other. The fire was now making less noise – the sapwood having nearly burnt out – and the detonations caused by the escape of the pent gases from the cellular cavities of the wood had grown less frequent. Voices could be heard over the glade, those of the improvised jury.

I listened attentively. I perceived that a dispute was still raging between them. They were not agreed upon their verdict – some advocating the immediate death of the prisoners; while others, adverse to such prompt punishment, would have kept them for further inquiry.

There were some who could not credit their guilt – the deed was too atrocious, and hence improbable; under what motive could they have committed it? At such a time, too, with their own lives in direst jeopardy?

“Ne’er a bit o’ jeppurdy,” exclaimed Hickman in reply to the interrogatory, “ne’er a bit o’ jeppurdy. Thar haint been a shot fired at eyther on ’em this hul day. I tell ye, fellers, thar’s a un’erstannin’ ’atween them an’ the Indyens. Thar no better’n spies, an’ thar last night’s work proves it; an’ but for the breakin’ out of the fire, which they didn’t expect, they’d been off arter firin’ the shots. ’Twar all bamfoozle about thar gettin’ lost – them fellers git lost, adeed! Both on ’em knows these hyar wuds as well as the anymals thet lives in ’em. Thum both been hyar many’s the time, an’ a wheen too often, I reckin. Lost! wagh! Did yez iver hear o’ a coon gittin’ lost?” Some one made reply, I did not hear what was said, but the voice of the hunter again sounded distinct and clear.

“Ye palaver about thar motive – I s’pose you mean thar reezuns for sech bloody bizness! Them, I acknullidge, aint clar, but I hev my sespicions too. I aint a gwine to say who or what. Thar’s some things as mout be, an’ thar’s some as moutn’t; but I’ve seed queer doin’s in these last five yeern, an’ I’ve heern o’ others; an if what I’ve heern be’s true – what I’ve seed I know to be – then I tell ye, fellers, thar’s a bigger than eyther o’ thesen at the bottom o’ the hul bizness – that’s what thar be.”

“But do you really say you saw them take aim in that direction; are you sure of that?”

This inquiry was put by a tall man who stood in the midst of the disputing party – a man of advanced age, and of somewhat severe aspect. I knew him as one of our neighbours in the settlement – an extensive planter – who had some intercourse with my uncle, and out of friendship for our family had joined the pursuit.

“Sure,” echoed the old hunter with emphasis, and not without some show of indignation; “didn’t me an’ Jim Weatherford see ’em wi’ our own two eyes? an’ thar good enough, I reckin, to mark sich varmints as them. We’d been a watchin’ ’em all day, for we knowd thar war somethin’ ugly afoot. We seed ’em both fire acrost the gleed – an’ sight plum-centre at young Randolph; besides, the black himself sez that the two shots comed that away. What more proof kin you want?”

At this moment I heard a voice by my side. It was that of Jake, calling out to the crowd.

“Mass’ Hickman,” cried he, “if dey want more proof, I b’lieve dis nigger can gib it. One ob de bullets miss young mass’r, an’ stuck in da tree; yonner’s the verry tree itself, that we wa behind, it ain’t burn yet, it no take fire; maybe, gen’lem’n, you mout find tha bullet tha still? maybe you tell what gun he ’longs to?”

The suggestion was instantly adopted. Several men ran towards the tree behind which Jake and I had held post; and which, with a few others – near it, for some reason or other – had escaped the flames, and still stood with trunks unscathed in the foreground of the conflagration.

Jake ran with the rest and pointed out the spot.

The bark was scrutinised, the hole found, and the leaden witness carefully picked out. It was still in its globe shape, slightly torn by the grooves of the barrel. It was a rifle ballet, and one of the very largest size.

It was known that Spence carried a piece of large calibre. But the guns of all the party were paraded, and their measure taken. The bullet would enter the barrel of no other rifle save that of Spence.

The conclusion was evident – the verdict was no longer delayed. It was unanimous, that the prisoners should die.

“An’ let ’em die like dogs as they are,” cried Hickman, indignantly raising his voice, and at the same time bringing his piece to the level, “Now, Jim Weatherford! look to yer sights! Let ’em go thar, fellers! an’ git yerselves out o’ the way. We’ll gie ’em a chance for thar cussed lives. They may take to yonner trees if they like, an’ git ’customed to it – for they’ll be in a hotter place than that afore long. Let ’em go I let ’em go! I say, or by the tarnal I’ll fire into the middle o’ ye!”

The men who had hold of the prisoners, perceiving the menacing attitude of the hunter, and fearing that he might make good his words, suddenly dropped their charge, and ran back towards the group of jurors.

The two wretches appeared bewildered. Terror seemed to hold them speechless, and fast glued to the spot. Neither made any effort to leave the ground. Perhaps the complete impossibility of escape was apparent to them, and prostrated all power to make the attempt. Of course, they could not have got away from the glade. Their taking to the trees was only mockery on the part of the indignant hunter. In ten seconds, they would have been roasted among the blazing branches.

It was a moment of breathless suspense. Only one voice was heard – that of Hickman:

“Now Jim, you sight Spence – gie tother to me.” This was said in a hurried undertone, and the words had scarcely passed, when the two rifles cracked simultaneously.

The execution was over. The renegades had ceased to live.

This speedy punishment of convicted rascals is a severe commentary upon the more refined proceedings of our judicial trials, in which every effort is made, and every argument strained to enable the culprit – known to be guilty – to escape the punishment due to his crimes, a result which is generally effected, either by some legal technicality or political machinery.

Chapter Eighty Nine
An Enemy Unlooked For

As, upon the stage of a theatre, the farce follows the grand melodrama, this tragic scene was succeeded by an incident ludicrous to an extreme degree. It elicited roars of laughter from the men, that, under the circumstances, sounded like the laughter of madmen; maniacs indeed might these men have been deemed – thus giving way to mirth, with a prospect before them so grim and gloomy – the prospect of almost certain death, either at the hands of our savage assailants, or from starvation.

Of the former we had no present fear. The flames that had driven us out of the timber, had equally forced them from their position; and we knew they were now far from us. They could not be near.

Now that the burnt branches had fallen from the pines, and the foliage was entirely consumed, the eye was enabled to penetrate the forest to a great distance. On every side we commanded a vista of at least a thousand yards, through the intervals between the red glowing trunks; and beyond this we could hear by the “swiz” of the flames, and the continual crackling of the boughs, that fresh trees were being embraced within the circle of conflagration, that was each moment extending its circumference.

The sounds grew fainter apace, until they bore a close resemblance to the mutterings of distant thunder. We had fancied that the fire was dying out; but the luminous ring around the horizon proved that the flames were still ascending. It was only that the noise came from a greater distance, that we heard it less distinctly.

Our human foes must have been still further away, they must have retired before the widening rim of the conflagration. But they had calculated upon doing so before applying the torch. In all likelihood, they had retreated to the savanna, to await the result.

Their object in firing the forest was not so easily understood. Perhaps they expected that the vast volume of flame would close over and consume us, or, more like, that we should be smothered under the dense clouds of smoke. This might in reality have been our fate, but for the proximity of the pond. My companions told me, that their sufferings from the smoke had been dreadful in the extreme – that they should have been stifled by it, had they not thrown themselves into the pond, and kept their faces close to the surface of the water, which was several feet below the level of the ground. It had been to me an hour of unconsciousness. My faithful black had carried me lifeless, as he supposed, to the water, and placed me among the rest.

It was afterwards – when the smoke had partially cleared away – that the spies were brought to account. Hickman and Weatherford, deeply indignant at the conduct of these monsters, would not hear of delay. They insisted upon immediate punishment; and the wretches were seized upon, dragged out of the pond, and put upon their trial. It was at this crisis that my senses returned to me.

As soon as the dread sentence had been carried into execution, the ci-devant jurors came rushing back to the pond, and plunged their bodies into the water. The heat was still intense, and painful of endurance.

There were two only who appeared to disregard it, and still remained upon the bank. These were the two hunters.

Knives in hand, I saw them stooping over a dark object that lay near. It was the horse that Hickman had shot in the morning; and I now perceived the old hunter’s motive, that had hitherto mystified me. It was an act of that cunning foresight that characterised this man, apparently instinctive.

They proceeded to skin the horse, and, in a few seconds, had pealed off a portion of the hide – sufficient for their purpose. They then cut out several large pieces of the flesh, and laid them aside. This done, Weatherford stepped off to the edge of the burning timber, and presently returned with an armful of half consumed fagots. These were erected into a fire, near the edge of the pond; and the two, squatting down by its side, commenced broiling the pieces of horse-flesh upon sapling spits, and conversing as coolly and cheerily as if seated in the chimney corner of their own cabins.

There were others as hungry as they, who took the hint, and proceeded to imitate their example. The pangs of hunger were harder to bear than the hot atmosphere, and in a few minutes’ time, a dozen men might have been observed, grouped like vultures around the dead horse hacking and hewing at the carcass.

At this crisis occurred the incident which I have characterised as ludicrous.

With the exception of the few engaged in their coarse cuisine, the rest of us remained in the water. We were lying around the circular rim of the basin – our bodies parallel to one another, and our heads upon the bank. We were not dreaming of being disturbed by an intruder of any kind – at least for a time. We were no longer in fear of the fire, and our savage foemen were far off.

All at once, however, an enemy was discovered in an unexpected quarter – right in the midst of us.

Just in the centre of the pond, where the water was deepest, a monstrous form rose suddenly to the surface; at the same time that our ears were greeted with a loud bellowing, as if half a score of bulls were let loose into the glade.

In an instant, the water was agitated and lashed into foam, and the spray fell in showers around our heads.

Weird-like and sudden, as was the apparition, there was nothing mysterious about it. The hideous form, and deep barytone were well-known to all. It was simply an alligator.

But for its enormous size the presence of the reptile would scarce have been regarded; but it was one of the largest of its kind – its long body almost equalling the diameter of the pond, with huge gaunt jaws that seemed capable of swallowing a man at a single “gulp.” Its roar, too, was enough to inspire even the boldest with terror.

It produced this effect; and the wild frightened looks of those in the water – their confused plunging and splashing, as they scrambled to their feet and hastened to get out of it – their simultaneous rushing up the bank, and scattering off into the open ground – all contributed to form a spectacle ludicrous in the extreme.

In less than ten seconds’ time the great saurian had the pond to himself; where he continued to bellow, and lash the water in his rage.

He was not permitted to exult long in his triumph. The hunters, with several others, seized their rifles, and ran forwards to the edge of the pond, when a volley from a dozen guns terminated the monster’s existence.

Those who had been “ashore,” were already convulsed with laughter at the scared fugitives; but the latter, having recovered from their momentary affright, now joined in the laugh, till the woods rang with a chorus of wild cachinnations.

Could the Indians have heard us at that moment, they must have fancied as mad, or more likely dead, and that our voices were those of their own fiends, headed by Wykomé himself – rejoicing over the holocaust of their pale-faced foes.