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Updated: June 17, 2025
"I suppose so: but how did you find out so much, and, also, effect my release from the savages?" Fearless Frank leaned up against the tree which had been used as the torture-stake, and related what is already known to the reader. When he had finished, the rescued captive seized his hand between both her own, and thanked him warmly.
Let the white man die at the torture-stake." One by one the chiefs gave their voice for death. Shaken for but a moment, the ancient inherited barbarism which was their very life reasserted itself, and they could decide no other way. One, two, three of the sachems gave no answer, but sat in silence.
In the earlier morning the Hurons had crept up to within a rifle shot of the encampment, and at an opportune moment when all the scouts and runners were round the torture-stake, they had reached the hillside from which they rode into the village before the inhabitants knew what had happened. Not an Indian raised a weapon.
Indian slavery was always terrible; but to be slaves to the brutal Indians of the north, starved, beaten, mutilated, chilled, and benumbed in a land of perpetual frost; to perish at last in the bleak snow and winter of almost arctic coasts, that was a fate worse than the torture-stake. Dreadful as it was, not a chief asked for mercy.
"I gave up all to come and tell you of God, and you have condemned me to die at the torture-stake," said the soft, low voice, sending through their stern hearts its thrill and pathos for the last time. "But you shall not bring this blood-stain upon your souls. The hand of the Great Spirit is on me; he takes me to himself. Remember what I have said. The Great Spirit loves you.
That all that is baddest is the best POWER, and the hardest stone for the highest creator; and that man must become better AND badder: Not to THIS torture-stake was I tied, that I know man is bad, but I cried, as no one hath yet cried: "Ah, that his baddest is so very small! Ah, that his best is so very small!"
That giant body, surmounted by the huge broad face, could belong to none other than the Wyandot, Sau-ga-nash, him who had spoken for the warriors of this tribe before the torture-stake. He stood erect and rigid, his stern, questioning eyes upon us, his lips a thin line of repression.
"It was he," said Du Lhut, nodding towards the dying warrior, who lay with his head in a horrible puddle, and his grotesque features contorted into a fixed smile. "It's a custom they have when they get their death-blow. I've known a Seneca chief laugh for six hours on end at the torture-stake. Ah, he's gone!"
But do you suppose it would not be murder to put you ashore, as you suggest, at the first land that we reach? Why, boy, were I to do so, within six hours you would be in the hands of the natives, and lashed to the torture-stake! And would not your death then be just as much my act as though I were to shoot you through the head this moment?"
A friendly hand-shake between the youth and the Sioux chieftain, a word from the latter to the grim painted warriors, and the next instant the glade was cleared of the savages. Fearless Frank then hastened to approach the insensible captive, and, with a couple sweeps of his knife, cut the bonds that held her to the torture-stake.
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