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From behind him still were heard the shouts and shrieks that were mingled with the reports of the guns and the whoops of the excited Indians. Somehow, in spite of his peril, the beat of the young settler's heart seemed to be almost normal. He watched a little field mouse that fearlessly peered up at him from the ground.
Wild shrieks of "It's father! It's father!" rent the air. "It's father!" "Fardie! Fardie, don't come up!" "Father, don't come up!" "Father, it's your present!" There was hasty scurrying of feet, racing to and fro, and further shrieks. Langshaw waited, smiling. It was evidently a "boughten" gift, then; the last had been a water pitcher, much needed in the household.
The ghosts of the million joys, he has slain wail amid its ghastly desolations; there are sounds of sobbing orphans there; echoes of widows' shrieks; and the lamentations of fond mothers and wives, heart-broken, vex the realm; youth and age lie here dishonored together; in vain the sweetheart begs her lover to return from its fatal mists; in vain the pure sister calls with trembling tongue for her erring brother.
Mrs. Snagsby replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an unresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook's Court re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she has to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano.
I do not know how long this fit of madness lasted, but I can still feel the relentless hardness of the box that imprisoned me; I can still hear the storm of shrieks and sobs with which I filled it; a remaining glimmer of reason made me try to stop, but I could not do so. Great exhaustion followed. I lay waiting for death in a state of somnolent pain.
A score of women, who had lost husbands, brothers, sons, or more distant relatives, set up at once the most dismal shrieks and groans and wailings, which continued at intervals till late at night; and as the chief houses in the village were crowded together round that which I occupied, our situation was anything but agreeable.
At last there were wild shrieks that I knew came from no human throats. The fire must have reached the horses. Mr. Morris sprang up, then sank back again. He wanted to go, yet he could be of no use. There were hundreds of men standing about, but the fire had spread so rapidly, and they had so little water to put on it, that there was very little they could do.
The shrieks had gradually ceased; now and then the cry of some strong swimmer, who had hitherto bravely buffeted the sea, was heard ere he sank for the last time. Daylight was just breaking when, as I was standing up in the stern-sheets, I saw a person clinging to a piece of timber, and I determined, if possible, to save him.
Those persons had, as I observed, removed themselves to a distance from the rest of our shipwrecked band. We had retired to tents for the night, and had lain down to sleep, when after some time I was awoke by sounds of shouting and laughter, followed by shrieks and cries, which seemed to come up from the beach where the captain and his associates had taken up their quarters.
Here here I dwelt, till age, premature age, has stamped its ghastly features on my countenance scorned and insulted where I was once obeyed, and compelled to bound the revenge which had once such ample scope, to the efforts of petty malice of a discontented menial, or the vain or unheeded curses of an impotent hag condemned to hear from my lonely turret the sounds of revelry in which I once partook, or the shrieks and groans of new victims of oppression."
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