Anon my senses grow stronger, but wild fancies still mock me: I am yet uncertain if it be life! What are those dark objects passing before my eyes? They are birds upon the wing--large birds of sable plumage. I know them. They are vultures. They are of the earth. Such could not exist in a region of spirits? Ah! those sounds! they are weird enough to be deemed unearthly--wild enough to be mistaken for the voices of demons. From far beneath, they appear to rise--as if from the bowels of the earth, sinking and swelling in prolonged chorus. I know and recognise the voices: they are human. I know the chaunted measure: it is the death-song of the Indian! The sounds are suggestive. I am not dreaming--I am not dead. I am awake, and on the earth. Memory comes to my aid. By little and little, I begin to realise my situation. I remember the siege--the smoke--the confused conflict--all that preceded it, but nothing after. I thought I had been killed. But no--I live--I am a captive. My comrades--are _they_ alive? Not likely. Better for them, if they be not. The consciousness of life need be no comfort to me. In that wild chaunt there is breathing a keen spirit of vengeance. Oh! that I had not survived to hear it! Too surely do I know what will follow that dirge of death. It might as well be my own! I am in pain. My position pains me--and the hot sun glaring upon my cheek. My arms and limbs smart under thongs that bind too tightly. One crosses my throat that almost chokes me, and the stick between my teeth renders breathing difficult. There is a pain upon the crown of my head, and my skull feels as if scalded. Oh Heavens! _have they scalped me_? With the thought, I endeavour to raise my hand. In vain: I cannot budge either hand or arm. Not a finger can I move; and I am forced to remain in horrid doubt as to whether the _hair_ be still upon my head--with more than a probability that it is gone! But how am I confined? and where? I am fast bound to something: every joint in my body is fixed and immobile, as if turned to stone! I can feel thongs cutting sharply into my skin; and my back and shoulders press against some supporting substance, that seems as hard as rock. I cannot tell what it is. I cannot even see my own person--neither breast nor body--neither arms nor legs--not an inch of myself. The fastening over my face holds it upturned to the sky; and my head feels firmly set--as if the vertebral column of my neck had become ossified into a solid mass!