A thousand hearts are strong, And a thousand eager warriors wait To avenge their country’s wrong. IX. The day of blood arrives at last, When vengeance shall be hurl’d On every pale-face in the land, And sweep him from the world. Through the silent night, in the upland groves, And down by the murky fen, And deep in the solitary wood, There’s a mustering of men-- Old Chesapeake sends forth the tribes That live along the shore; Potomac’s warriors, arm’d for death, Are on the march once more; Fierce Kecoughtans and Nansamonds Creep noiselessly along; Pamunky’s valiant tribe sends out A band five hundred strong; And a hundred silent winding streams, By the twinkling stars’ dim light, Beheld dark warriors whispering Along their banks that night. Each band knew well its pathless route In darkness or in day: Each had its several task assign’d, And panted for its prey. They came where the outer settlements Were skirted by the wood, And waiting for the appointed hour, In breathless silence stood. The gray tops of the cottages Gleam’d in the misty air; They look’d and listen’d eagerly-- No light, no sound was there. No watchful guards with loaded arms In field or fort appear; There lay the slumbering colony Without defence or fear. X. The morning-star is in the sky-- The signal word is given, And a hundred blazing torches flash In the starry vault of heaven; And from a hundred blazing homes Rings out a piercing cry, As the sleeper wakes, and the flames of death Glare on his waking eye. But a wilder scream, a fiendish yell, Comes back to his ear again, As he rushes out, and a savage blow Has crush’d him to the plain. When morning came, the sun look’d down Where many a cottage stood; But he only saw black smouldering heaps, And fields that smoked with blood.{28} In all the outer settlements The work of death was o’er, And full three hundred colonists Lay weltering in their gore. XI.