CHAPTER XVI
MONAPIKOT’S MESSAGE
Far into the night the war-dance continued. As men tired and dropped from the circle that revolved about the leaping fire, others took their places. Squaws, seated together near at hand, cried their warriors on to fresh exertions. Old men nodded and watched and grunted approval, their rheumy eyes brightening again with memories. Medicine men, wearing their choicest ornaments, hideously besmeared from forehead to ankle, capered and chanted like evil things seen in a dream. And beneath the songs and wild cries, the steady, unvarying tum-tum-tum of the drums sounded as sounds the beat of the waves under the tumult of the tempest.
David watched from afar. He had no taste for such ceremonies, nor any sympathy. He had grown to appreciate many attributes of the Indians; their bravery and hardihood, their honesty in their dealings with each other, their faithfulness in friendship; but this childish orgy by which they lashed themselves to a frenzy of bloodthirstiness, this
