Chapter IX

He turned him round, and fled amain With hurry and dash to the beach again; He twisted over from side to side, And laid his cheek to the cleaving tide; The strokes of his plunging arms are fleet, And with all his might he flings his feet, But the water-sprites are round him still, To cross his path and work him ill. --The Culprit Fay.

The first step in the conjuration of the bee-hunter was, to produce an impression on the minds of his untutored observers, by resorting to a proper amount of mummery and mystical action. This he was enabled to do with some effect, in consequence of having practised as a lad in similar mimicry, by way of pastime. The Germans, and the descendants of Germans in America, are not of a very high class, as respects education, taken as a body, and they retain many of the most inveterate of the superstitions of their Teutonic ancestors. Although the bee-hunter himself was of purely English descent, he came from a State that was in part peopled by these Germans and their descendants; and, by intercourse with them, he had acquired a certain knowledge of their notions on the subject of necromancy, that he now found was of use. So far as gravity of mien, solemn grimaces, and unintelligible mutterings were concerned, le Bourdon played his part to admiration; and by the time he had led the party half the distance he intended to go, our necromancer, or "medicine- man," had complete possession of the imaginations of all the savages, the two or three chiefs already mentioned alone excepted. At this stage of the proceedings occurred a little incident, which goes to prove the disposition of the common mind to contribute in deceiving itself, and which was of considerable assistance to le Bourdon, in maintaining his assumed character.

It will be remembered that the place where the Indians had found their strongest scent was on the hill-side, or the spot where the half-filled barrel had let out most of its contents. Near this spot their new fire was still brightly blazing, and there Wolfseye remained, regaling one of his senses, at least, with an odor that he found so agreeable. But the bee-hunter knew that he should greatly increase the wonder of the savages by leading them to a new scent- spot, one to which there was no visible clew, and where the odor was probably much stronger than on the hill-side. Accordingly he did not approach the fire, but kept around the base of the hill, just enough within the influence of the light to pick his way readily, and yet so distant from it as to render his countenance indistinct and mysterious. No sooner, however, had he got abreast of the scent-spot known to the savages, than the crowd endeavored to lead him toward it, by gestures and hints, and, finally, by direct intimations that he was going astray. All this our "medicine-man" disregarded; he held his way steadily and solemnly toward that place at the foot of the hill where he knew that the filled barrel