The Deerslayer (Barnes & Noble Classics) - James Fenimore Cooper [231]
“You cannot mean to give yourself up ag‘in to them murdering savages, Deerslayer!” he said, quite as much in angry remonstrance as with generous feeling. “’Twould be the act of a madman or a fool!”
“There’s them that thinks it madness to keep their words, and there’s them that don’t, Hurry Harry. You may be one of the first, but I’m one of the last. No redskin breathing shall have it in his power to say that a Mingo minds his word more than a man of white blood and white gifts, in anything that consarns me. I’m out on a furlough, and if I’ve strength and reason, I’ll go in on a furlough afore noon tomorrow!”
“What’s an Injin, or a word passed, or a furlough taken from creatur’s like them, that have neither souls nor names?”
“If they’ve got neither souls nor names, you and I have both, Harry March, and one is accountable for the other. This furlough is not, as you seem to think, a matter altogether atween me and the Mingos, seeing it is a solemn bargain made atween me and God. He who thinks that he can say what he pleases, in his distress, and that ‘twill all pass for nothing, because ’tis uttered in the forest, and into redmen’s ears, knows little of his situation, and hopes, and wants. The words are said to the ears of the Almighty. The air is his breath, and the light of the sun is little more than a glance of his eye. Farewell, Harry; we may not meet ag’in; but I would never wish you to treat a furlough, or any other solemn thing that your Christian God has been called on to witness, as a duty so light that it may be forgotten according to the wants of the body, or even according to the cravings of the spirit.”
March was now glad again to escape. It was quite impossible that he could enter into the sentiments that ennobled his companion, and he broke away from both with an impatience that caused him secretly to curse the folly that could induce a man to rush, as it were, on his own destruction. Deerslayer, on the contrary, manifested no such excitement. Sustained by his principles, inflexible in the purpose of acting up to them, and superior to any unmanly apprehension, he regarded all before him as a matter of course, and no more thought of making any unworthy attempt to avoid it, than a Mussulman thinks of counteracting the decrees of Providence. He stood calmly on the shore, listening to the reckless tread with which Hurry betrayed his progress through the bushes, shook his head in dissatisfaction at the want of caution, and then stepped quietly into his canoe. Before he dropped the paddle again into the water, the young man gazed about him at the scene presented by the starlit night. This was the spot where he had first laid his eyes on the beautiful sheet of water on which he floated.l If it was then glorious in the bright light of summer’s noontide, it was now sad and melancholy under the shadows of night. The mountains rose around it, like black barriers to exclude the outer world, and the gleams of pale light that rested on the broader parts of the basin were no bad symbols of the faintness of the hopes that were so dimly visible in his own future. Sighing heavily, he pushed the canoe from the land, and took his way back with steady diligence towards the ark and the castle.
CHAPTER XXIV
“Thy secret pleasures turned to open shame;
Thy private feasting to a public fast;
Thy smoothing titles to a ragged name;
Thy sugared tongue to bitter wormwood taste;
Thy violent vanities can never last.”
Rape of Lucrece
JUDITH WAS WAITING THE return of Deerslayer, on the platform, with stifled impatience, when the latter reached the hut. Hist and Hetty were both in a deep sleep, on the bed usually occupied by the