Activate Javascript or update your browser for the full Digital Library experience.
Previous Page
–
Next Page
OCR
7
aa
MALAESKA’S JOURNEY. 83
“Stay! It will take many days to reach Manhattan— take
something to eat, or you will starve on the way,’ said Martha, com-
passionately, : .
‘* Malaeska has her bow and arrow, and she can use them; but
she thanks the white maiden. A piece of bread for the boy — he
has cried to his mother many times for food; but her bosom was
full of tears, and she had none to give him,”
Martha ran to the cupboard and brought forth a large fragment of
bread and acup milk. When the child saw the food, he uttered a soft,
hungry murmur, and his litttle fingers began to work eagerly on his
mother’s neck. Martha held the cup to his lips, and smiled through
her tears to see how hungrily he swallowed, and with what a satistied
and pleased look his large, black eyes were turned up to hers as he
drank. When the cup was withdrawn, the boy breathed a deep
sigh of satisfaction, and let his head fall sleepily on his mother’s
' shoulder; her Jarge eyes seemed full of moonlight, and a gleam. of
pleasure shot athwart her sad features; she unbound a bracelet of
wampum from her'arm and placed it in Martha’s ‘hand. ‘The next
instant she was lost in the darkness without. 'The kind settler rushed
out, and hallooed for her to come back; but her step was like that of a
fawn, and while he was wandering fruitlessly around the settlement,
she reached the margin of the creek; and, unmooring a canoe,
which lay concealed in the sedge, placed herself in it, and shot round
the point to the broad bosom of. the Hudson.
Night and morning, for many successive days, that frail canoe
glided down the current, amid the wild and beautiful scenery of the
Highlands, and along the park-like shades of a more level country.
There was something in the sublime and lofty handiwork of God
which fell soothingly on the sad heart of the Indian. Ter thoughts
were continually dwelling on.the words of her dead husband, ever
picturing: to themselves the land of spirits where he had. promised
that she should-join him. The perpetual change of scenery, the sun-.
shine playing with the foliage, and the dark, heavy masses of shad-
ow, flung from the forests and rocks on either hand, were continual-
ly exciting her untamed imagination-to comparison with the heayen
‘of her wild fancy. It seemed, at times, as if she had but to‘close
her eyes and open them again to be in the presence of her lost one.
There was something heavenly in the solemn, perpetual flow of the
river, and in the music of the leaves as they rippled to the wind,
that went to the poor widow’s heart like the soft’ voice of: a friend. -
After a day or two, the gloom which hung about her young brow,
partially departed. Her cheeks again dimpled to the happy laugh of
her child, and when he nestled down to slecp in the furs at the bot-
tom of the canoe, her soft, plaintive lullaby would steal over the wa-
ters like the song of a wild bird seeking in vain for its mate:
Malaeska never went on shore, except to gather wild fruit, and
occasionally to killa bird, which her true arrow seldom failed to
bring down. She would strike a fire and prepare her game in somo