At the precise moment when Hurry committed this act of unthinking
cruelty, the canoe of Judith was within a hundred feet of the spot
from which the Ark had so lately moved. Her own course has been
described, and it has now become our office to follow that of her
father and his companions. The shriek announced the effects of
the random shot of March, and it also proclaimed that the victim
was a woman. Hurry himself was startled at these unlooked for
consequences, and for a moment he was sorely disturbed by conflicting
sensations. At first he laughed, in reckless and rude-minded
exultation; and then conscience, that monitor planted in our breasts
by God, and which receives its more general growth from the training
bestowed in the tillage of childhood, shot a pang to his heart.
For a minute, the mind of this creature equally of civilization and
of barbarism, was a sort of chaos as to feeling, not knowing what
to think of its own act; and then the obstinacy and pride of one of
his habits, interposed to assert their usual ascendency. He struck
the butt of his rifle on the bottom of the scow, with a species of
defiance, and began to whistle a low air with an affectation of
indifference.
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