THE FLORIDA POCAHONTAS CONTINUED. 169 



her lord and chief m the land — who had cradled his 

 head on her bosom — who had borne him sons — who had 

 been deceived and slighted — who had risen in her 

 wrongs, and condemned to death the mistress and the 

 husband — she, the fierce, proud, vindictive heart, and 

 woman withal, through the moonlight and the fog, 

 roamed and w^restled with her mner self. There was no 

 prouder blood from Natchez to Honda Keys ; and for 

 four and twenty hours it had coursed through her veins 

 Hke rivers of fire. Had she met her husband and the 

 native girl together, she would have slain them both. 

 When she saw his blood flowing from his wounded arm 

 in the council ring, she sorrowed only that she had not 

 made the wound from which it flowed. Had the coimcil 

 acquitted the prisoner she would have tracked him like 

 a hound ; and now her wild delight made her fevered 

 step carry her to and fro, like the panther that sweeps 

 his tail while watching to leajD. Down by the fort she 

 went, and away on the point, wading into the water- 

 grass, until she seemed Hke the Naiad that lives under 

 the sea. Then she walked back again with a long, elas- 

 tic step, eyeing the palisades and the sentinels, her kir- 

 tle draggled by the dew, the long plumes in her hair 

 broken on her shoulders, and her symmetrical limbs cut 

 by the sword grass. Another turn would take her to the 

 lagoon, where she had watched her husband's trysting, 

 and then again she flitted through the plum-trees, where 

 still a dark stain lay on the grass. So back and forth stalks 

 a tiger-cat, when the spring water intrudes on the island 



8 



