Chapter 14

"Thou mild, sad mother--
Quit him not so soon!
Mother, in mercy, stay!
Despair and death are with him; and canst thou,
With that kind, earthward look, go leave him now?"

Dana.

When these precautions were taken, the females returned to their several
look-outs; and Ruth, whose duty it was in moments of danger to exercise a
general superintendence, was left to her meditations and to such
watchfulness as her fears might excite. Quitting the inner rooms, she
approached the door that communicated with the court, and for a moment
lost the recollection of her immediate cares in a view of the imposing
scene by which she was surrounded.

By this time, the whole of the vast range of out-buildings, which had been
constructed, as was usual in the Colonies, of the most combustible
materials and with no regard to the expenditure of wood, was wrapt in
fire. Notwithstanding the position of the intermediate edifices, broad
flashes of light were constantly crossing the court itself, on whose
surface she was able to distinguish the smallest object, while the heavens
above her were glaring with a lurid red. Through the openings between the
buildings the quadrangle, the eye could look out upon the fields, where
she saw every evidence of a sullen intention on the part of the savages to
persevere in their object. Dark, fierce-looking, and nearly naked human
forms were seen flitting from cover to cover while there was no stump nor
log within arrow's-flight of the defences, that did not protect the person
of a daring and indefatigable enemy. It was plain the Indians were there
in hundreds, and as the assaults continued after the failure of a
surprise, it was too evident that they were bent on victory, at some
hazard to themselves. No usual means of adding to the horrors of the scene
were neglected. Whoops and yells were incessantly ringing around the
place, while the loud and often-repeated tones of a conch betrayed the
artifice by which the savages had so often endeavored, in the earlier part
of the night, to lure the garrison out of the palisadoes. A few scattering
shot, discharged with deliberation and from every exposed point within the
works, proclaimed both the coolness and the vigilance of the defendants.
The little gun in the block-house was silent, for the Puritan knew too
well its real power to lessen its reputation by a too frequent use The
weapon was therefore reserved for those moments of pressing danger that
would be sure to arrive.

On this spectacle Ruth gazed in fearful sadness. The long-sustained and
sylvan security of her abode was violently destroyed; and in the place of
a quiet which had approached as near as may be on earth to that holy peace
for which her spirit strove, she