The smoke now came thick and heavy around us--each moment growing denser as the fire approached--while the heated atmosphere was no longer endurable. Already it stifled our breathing.

Destruction stared us in the face, and men shouted in despair. But the roar of the burning pines drowned their voices, and one could not hear even his comrade who was nearest. Their looks were significant--for before the smoke fell, the glade was lit up with intense brilliance, and we could see one another with unnatural distinctness. In the faces of all appeared the anxiety of awe.

Not long continued I to share it. Too much blood had escaped from my neglected wound; I tried to make into the open ground, as I saw others doing; but, before I got two steps from the tree, my limbs tottered beneath me, and I fell fainting to the earth.

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 rec.u.mbent 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, Ma.s.sa George! you lib--thank be to Gorramighty, you lib. Keep up ya heart, young ma.s.sa--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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

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, ma.s.sa," 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 circ.u.mstances that surrounded them. I saw they were the princ.i.p.al 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 circ.u.mstances, well marked upon my memory, rose freshly before me.

Here again was the hand of Arens Ringgold. O G.o.d, 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, Ma.s.s'r George, dat's all."

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

"Lor, Ma.s.sr 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'

Ma.s.s' Hickman de same; but Ma.s.s' Hickman 'clare he see um for hisself-- an' so too Ma.s.s' 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 c.o.o.n 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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.

"Ma.s.s' Hickman," cried he, "if dey want more proof, I b'lieve dis n.i.g.g.e.r can gib it. One ob de bullets miss young ma.s.s'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?"