THE COUNCIL.

The chiefs were assembled in a long low room of great antiquity. It had been the council-room of the town ever since it had been first raised upon the waters by a few fugitives who, in earlier days, had fled from the persecutions of those warriors who possessed weapons of bronze.

At the time that Realmah entered, the chief of the East was addressing the assembly. He was an old man, of great authority amongst the people, and of considerable natural sagacity; but his ideas were wont to travel rather in a groove, and to take the form of melancholy forebodings.

Realmah bent himself to the ground. The assembled chiefs looked at him with a cold haughty stare which said more plainly even than words could say: “What, young man, is the need of your presence here?”

Meanwhile the chief of the East, utterly ignoring the interruption, although he was Realmah’s uncle, thus continued his speech. “I foresee the time--I say, I distinctly foresee the time, when from the constant irruption of these barbarians, life will become so difficult and so precarious for us, we shall be so hunted down by these new comers, that instead of building on the waters, our people will have to place their miserable habitations on dry land. They will thus become the prey of every passer-by. No one will sleep in peace. No one will feel secure that in the morning he and his family will rise to pay their devotions to the sun. With this insecurity, will come an indifference to all the arts of life; and the whole race will degenerate into inferior animals.

“My voice is for war; my voice is for allying ourselves at once with the Phelatahs. If the nations that surround this great lake can but remain united, they may force back those enemies, who, superior in weapons, but far inferior in true courage, now, according to the warning words of that noble ambassador, who has just retired from the assembly, threaten the entire destruction of our heaven-descended race.”

A murmur passed through the assembly--a murmur which could not be construed otherwise than into an approval of the sentiments which the aged chief of the East had brought forward with unwonted eloquence.

It was at this inopportune moment that poor Realmah had to explain his unasked-for presence amongst them. After another profound obeisance, he thus began:--“Great lords and dividers of bread, I am but a child, and how shall I dare to address this reverend assemblage? But, while you have been debating upon this grave matter, I have been examining with anxious care the manner of that ambassador. In one word, my gracious fathers, it is not that of a true man. His gifts are everywhere. With whom, when out of your gracious presence, has he been most in company? With the most easily beguiled and the weakest persons of our town. From them, I know, he has ascertained the number of our warriors, the strength of our fortresses, and the extent of our hunting-fields. He has made the most curious inquiries into our arms of attack and defence, into the state of our hoarded provisions, into the fidelity of our subject tribes. What then, I ask, is his object? I do not deny that his nation, like ours, dreads the approach of a people far superior to either in the weapons of war, all of whom carry arms which are possessed only by a few of our wealthiest chiefs, and which are looked upon rather as curiosities than as the daily implements of warfare. The policy of the Phelatahs, if I read this man rightly, is to render our nation subject and tributary to theirs, and so to oppose a bold front to the common enemy. But what matters it to whom we are subject, if we are subjected at all? What I would, with the due humility of youth, propose is, that if we send our forces to join with theirs, we should not send at once the whole flower of our army, but should divide it into two bands, one of which should openly unite with them, while the other, concealed, should be ready to counteract the effect of any attempt on their part to take captive our men, and employ them hereafter as vassals against the common foe.”

Realmah ceased speaking; and there was again the same look of polite indifference which had greeted him upon his entrance. He bowed, and withdrew.

It may be noticed, by the way, that he quite forgot, or was too nervous, to deliver the fine peroration to his speech with which he had favoured his wives.

The debate was resumed; but the words of the chief of the East were not so powerful as they had been. The chief of the North, whether really convinced by Realmah’s speech, or being anxious to break the power of the East by encouraging family differences, leant entirely to Realmah’s view of the question.

“To adopt the young man’s suggestion would,” he said, “make no real difference except in detail. Two troops might as well be sent out as one. The Phelatahs had always been false; and he had found that the nettle did not sting yesterday, or to-day, for the first time; but, as far as his poor experience went back, it had always been a stinging plant; and, as far as his poor discernment foresaw, it always would be. He reminded them of the proverb, ‘That if judgment belongs to the old, quickness of perception belongs to the young;’ or, to speak in the language of the people, that the young foal of the ass might have better sight than the father of lions. That, for his part, he had noticed that even the prejudices of the vulgar were often based upon something substantial, which chiefs of high lineage might not have condescended to observe. Even the infirmities of Realmah might have rendered his observation very keen--keen as that of a woman; and the great chiefs then present knew full well that their wives sometimes made observations which were worth attending to and which they themselves, conscious of their own power and dignity, had not cared to make. The weasel in its own small circuit saw more clearly than the bison, which relied upon its force, and not upon its sharpness of vision.

“In a word, he was not for discarding a prudent suggestion from whatever source it might come, and his vote should be heartily given in favour of the proposal of that young man who had just withdrawn from them, and to whom he should be more inclined to listen from the fact that the young man must have imbibed some of the wisdom of his uncle, the great chief of the East.”

This artful and judicious speech had great weight with the assemblage; and after long debate, it was finally agreed that the plan proposed by Realmah should be adopted by the Council.

* * * * *

After the reading was ended, there was no conversation of any importance to record, and the party separated; Ellesmere merely saying that he should, hereafter, have a few remarks to make upon the singular advantages of being a savage like Realmah, and having three wives, even though two of them should be obviously plain and prosaic; for he would always be able to set two of them against the third.