“Why rage the heathen furiously”

“Why rage the heathen furiously?” is a line from the Psalms that David Gamut proposes to use as a forceful deterrent when the surrendered garrison faces possible intrusion by hostile stragglers. The phrase turns his lifelong devotion to psalmody into a practical, if unusual, instrument of protection, joining religious language to the immediate dangers of war.

Biblical and Musical Context

Gamut defines his calling as instruction in sacred music and insists that he has never profaned his voice with rude verse. He prizes the colonial New England psalter, a Boston edition published in 1744, as the best version of the Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. For him, singing is not merely an art: it is a disciplined expression of devotion and a source of consolation.

That conviction takes communal form in the cavern refuge. Gamut supplies the pitch and methodically guides a hymn sung by Alice and Cora; the slow melody fills the confined space, while the rush of water seems to accompany it. The singing moves the listeners, including Hawkeye, whose memories of hymns in the settlements return with such force that tears run down his cheeks. Sacred music briefly creates a shared refuge amid pursuit and fear, though an alarming cry from outside breaks the gathering’s stillness.

The Line as a Proposed Defense

After the surrender, Duncan Heyward warns Gamut that enemy stragglers may intrude and tells him to invoke the capitulation’s terms and threaten to report misconduct to Montcalm. Gamut answers by displaying his psalm book. He claims that its words, delivered with proper emphasis and measured time, can quiet even the unruliest temper, then begins the invocation, “Why rage the heathen furiously?”

Heyward interrupts the musical appeal, saying that they understand each other and must take up their respective duties. Gamut cheerfully accepts the arrangement and accompanies him to the sisters, becoming their new and somewhat extraordinary protector. The exchange leaves the line’s efficacy untested: it expresses Gamut’s confidence in sacred language, while the practical safeguards remain the capitulation and the responsibilities Heyward assigns.

Significance

The phrase brings together two registers that recur around Gamut: devotional seriousness and comic incongruity. His confidence that a psalm can restrain violence is sincere, but Heyward’s interruption returns attention to military duty and the fragile security of the defeated party. The text thus presents sacred song as consolation, memory, and a proposed means of protection without establishing it as a substitute for action.