As the warrior gained the little thicket, he saw nothing save some
ripples on the surface of the water, and some bubbles rising from its
unknown depths. He was joined by others from the village, and all
searched the thicket for some trace of him who had uttered the
remarkable cry. Finally they discovered in it the head-dress of
feathers that the young Indian of Seloy had worn as a Seminole warrior,
and were forced to conclude that he had drowned himself rather than to
live as one of them. Sneering at the want of taste he had thus
displayed, and regretting that he had not been kept a prisoner, and as
such been tortured for their amusement, instead of being allowed to
become a Seminole, they returned to the village. The sentinel resumed
his watch on the trail, and the incident of E-chee's disappearance was
thought of no more.
When Rene overheard some Indians talking outside the hut in which he
lay, and laughingly telling each other of the method E-chee had taken
to rejoin his own people, his heart sank within him, and he felt that
he no longer had aught to hope for, now that his only friend amid all
these enemies was dead.
On the following day preparations for the great feast of rejoicing were
actively begun. In the middle of a small mound just outside the
village a stout post of green wood was set deep into the ground, and
near it was gathered a great pile of dry wood and fat pine splinters.
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