Chapter 17

There, ye wise saints, behold your light, your star,
Ye would be dupes and victims and ye are.
Is it enough? or, must I, while a thrill
Lives in your sapient bosoms, cheat you still?"

Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh, "The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan"

The fire, the canoe, and the spring, near which Deerslayer commenced
his retreat, would have stood in the angles of a triangle of tolerably
equal sides. The distance from the fire to the boat was a little
less than the distance from the fire to the spring, while the
distance from the spring to the boat was about equal to that between
the two points first named. This, however, was in straight lines,
a means of escape to which the fugitives could not resort. They
were obliged to have recourse to a detour in order to get the cover
of the bushes, and to follow the curvature of the beach. Under
these disadvantages, then, the hunter commenced his retreat,
disadvantages that he felt to be so much the greater from his
knowledge of the habits of all Indians, who rarely fail in cases
of sudden alarms, more especially when in the midst of cover,
immediately to throw out flankers, with a view to meet their foes
at all points, and if possible to turn their rear. That some such
course was now adopted he believed from the tramp of feet, which
not only came up the ascent, as related, but were also heard, under
the first impulse, diverging not only towards the hill in the rear,
but towards the extremity of the point, in a direction opposite
to that he was about to take himself. Promptitude, consequently
became a matter of the last importance, as the parties might meet
on the strand, before the fugitive could reach the canoe.

Notwithstanding the pressing nature of the emergency, Deerslayer
hesitated a single instant, ere he plunged into the bushes that lined
the shore. His feelings had been awakened by the whole scene, and
a sternness of purpose had come over him, to which he was ordinarily
a stranger. Four dark figures loomed on the ridge, drawn against
the brightness of the fire, and an enemy might have been sacrificed
at a glance. The Indians had paused to gaze into the gloom, in
search of the screeching hag, and with many a man less given to
reflection than the hunter, the death of one of them would have
been certain. Luckily he was more prudent. Although the rifle
dropped a little towards the foremost of his pursuers, he did not
aim or fire, but disappeared in the cover. To gain the beach, and
to follow it round to the place where Chingachgook was already in
the canoe, with Hist, anxiously waiting his appearance, occupied but
a moment. Laying his rifle in the bottom of the canoe, Deerslayer
stooped to give the latter a vigorous shove from