In a word,
it was the habit of his mind to regard all Indians as being only a
slight degree removed from the wild beasts that roamed the woods,
and to feel disposed to treat them accordingly, whenever interest
or caprice supplied a motive or an impulse. Still, though daunted
by these reproaches, the handsome barbarian could hardly be said
to be penitent. He was too much rebuked by conscience to suffer
an outbreak of temper to escape him, and perhaps he felt that he
had already committed an act that might justly bring his manhood
in question. Instead of resenting, or answering the simple but
natural appeal of Hist, he walked away, like one who disdained
entering into a controversy with a woman.
In the mean while the Ark swept onward, and by the time the scene
with the torches was enacting beneath the trees, it had reached the
open lake, Floating Tom causing it to sheer further from the land
with a sort of instinctive dread of retaliation. An hour now
passed in gloomy silence, no one appearing disposed to break it.
Hist had retired to her pallet, and Chingachgook lay sleeping in the
forward part of the scow. Hutter and Hurry alone remained awake,
the former at the steering oar, while the latter brooded over his own
conduct, with the stubbornness of one little given to a confession
of his errors, and the secret goadings of the worm that never dies.
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