"Quick,
men, quick, up with hatchet and cutlass, and take them
in the rear. If we are to die, let's die--" game, he
would perhaps have added, but death arrested the word
upon his lips; and his corpse rolled along the deck,
until its further progress was stopped by the stiffened
body of the unhappy Fuller.
Notwithstanding the fall of their brave leader, and the
whoopings of their enemies, the flagging spirits of the
men were for a moment excited by the announcement of the
return even of the small force of the axemen, and they
defended themselves with a courage and determination
worthy of a better result; but when, by the lurid light
of the torches, now lying burning about the decks, they
turned and beheld not their companions, but a fresh band
of Indians, at whose pouch-belts dangled the reeking
scalps of their murdered friends, they at once relinquished
the combat as hopeless, and gave themselves unresistingly
up to be bound by their captors.
Meanwhile the cousins experienced a renewal of all those
horrors from which their distracted minds had been
temporarily relieved; and, petrified with alarm, as they
lay in the solitary berth that contained them both,
endured sufferings infinitely more terrible than death
itself.
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