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"Tohomish will be at the council and speak for his chief and his tribe?" asked Multnomah, in a tone that was half inquiry, half command; for the seer whose mysterious power as an orator gave him so strong an influence over the Indians must be there. Tohomish's haggard and repulsive face had settled back into the look of mournful apathy habitual to him.
He knew it, but it only made his despotic will the stronger. Against the opposition of the council and the warning of Tohomish, against tomanowos and Spee-ough, ominous as they were even to him, rose up the instinct which was as much a part of him as life itself, the instinct to battle and to conquer.
He saw it, and began to speak of the battles they themselves had fought and the victories they had gained. More than one dark cheek flushed darker and more than one hand moved unconsciously to the knife. He alluded to the recent war and to the rebellious tribe that had been destroyed. "That," said he, "was the people Tohomish saw passing over the death-trail in his dream.
There was an instant's silence; then in a murmur like the rush of the sea came back the voice of the multitude. "Tohomish! Tohomish! he is greatest!" "He is greatest," said Multnomah. But Tohomish, sitting there dejectedly, seemed neither to see nor hear. "To-morrow," said the war-chief, "while the sun is new, the chiefs will meet in council and the great talk shall be ended.
It is the black secret, the secret of the coming trouble, that makes Tohomish's voice like the voice of a pine; so that men say it has in it sweetness and mystery and haunting woe, moving the heart as no other can. And if he tells the secret, eloquence and life go with it. Shall Tohomish tell it?
And you must be the most eloquent of all at the great council; for there the arm of Multnomah and the voice of Tohomish must bend the bad chiefs before them." His accents had the same undertone of arbitrary will, of inflexible determination, that had been in them when he spoke in the council.
Tohomish himself would not have dared to repeat those names in the charnel hut, lest those whom he invoked should spring upon him and tear him to pieces. No more potent or more perilous charm was known to the Indians. Ever as Multnomah chanted, the sullen roar of the volcano came like an undertone and filled the pauses of the wild incantation.
He had not, since the council, attempted to change the chief's decision by a single word, but seemed to have resigned himself with true Indian fatalism to that which was to come. "Tohomish will go to the council," he said in those soft and lingering accents, indescribably sweet and sad, with which his degraded face contrasted so strongly.
"I cannot," he thought, though he yearned to go to her. "I cannot go; I must be faithful to my mission." Many chiefs came that night to his lodge; among them, to his surprise, Tohomish the seer. Long and animated was Cecil's talk; beautiful and full of spiritual fervor were the words in which he pointed them to a better life. Tohomish was impassive, listening in his usual brooding way.
They were men whose hearts had been touched before by Cecil, and who were already desiring the better life They could not condemn their teacher. At length it came to Tohomish. He arose. His face, always repulsive, was pallid now in the extreme. The swathed corpses on mimaluse island looked not more sunken and ghastly.
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