 CHAPTER 33 IN WHICH MY FRIEND BECOMES MY FOE In the center of the wigwam, the customary fire burned clear and bright, showing the white mats, the dressed skins, the implements of war hanging upon the barked walls, all the usual furniture of an Indian dwelling, and showing also Nantakwas standing against the striped trunk of a pine that pierced the wigwam from floor to roof. The fire was between us. He stood so rigid at his full height, with folded arms and head held high, and his features were so blank and still, so forced and frozen as it were, into composure that with the red light beating upon him and the thin smoke curling above his head, he had the look of a warrior tied to the stake. Nantakwas, I exclaimed, and striding past the fire would have touched him, but that with a slight and authoritative motion of the hand he kept me back. Otherwise, there was no change in his position or in the dead calm of his face. The Indian maid had dropped the mat at the entrance, and if she waited, waited without in the darkness. Dikon, now staring at the young chief, now eyeing the weapons upon the wall with all the lover's passion, kept near the doorway. Through the thickness of the bark and woven twigs, the wild cries and singing came to us somewhat faintly. Beneath that distant noise could be heard the wind in the trees and the soft fall of the burning pine. Well, I asked at last, what is the matter, my friend? For a full minute he made no answer, and when he did speak his voice matched his face. My friend, he said, I am going to show myself a friend indeed to the English, to the strangers who were not content with their own hundigrounds beyond the great salt water. When I have done this, I do not know that Captain Percy will call me friend again. You were wont to speak plainly, Nantoc was, I answered him. I am not fond of riddles. Again he waited as though he found speech difficult. I stared at him in amazement. He was so changed in so short a time. He spoke at last. When the dance is over and the fires are low and the sunrise is at hand, then will Opecacano come to you to bid you farewell. He will give you the pearls that he wears about his neck for a present to the governor, and a bracelet for yourself. Also he will give you three men for a guard through the forest. He has messages of love to send the white men, and he would send them by you who were his enemy and his captive. So all the white men shall believe in his love. Well, I said dryly as he paused. I will take his messages. What next? Those are the words of Opecacano. Now listen to the words of Nantoc was, the son of Wahansanacac, a war chief of the Bahatans. There are two sharp knives there hanging beneath the bow and the quiver and the shield. Take them and hide them. The words were scarcely out of his mouth before Dikon had the two keen English blades. I took the one he offered me and hid it in my doublet. So we go armed Nantoc was, I said. Love and peace and goodwill consort Nutt with such toys. You may want them, he went on, with no change in his low-measured tones. If you see Aught in the forest that you should not see, if they think you know more than you are meant to know, then those three who have knives and tomahawks are to kill you whom they believe unarmed. So Aught that we should not see, no more than we are meant to know, I said, to the point, friend. They will go slowly, too, through the forest to Jamestown, stopping to eat and to sleep. For them there is no need to run like the stag with the hunter behind him. Then we should make for Jamestown as for life, I said, not sleeping or eating or making pause. Ye, he replied, if you would not die, you and all your people. In the silence of the hut, the fire crackled, and the branches of the trees outside, bent by the wind, made a grating sound against the bark-roof. How die, I asked at last. Speak out! Die by the arrow and the tomahawk, he answered, ye, and by the guns you have given the red men, to-morrow's son and the next and the next, three sons, and the tribes will fall upon the English. At the same hour when the men are in the fields and the women and children are in the houses, they will strike. Cacotons, hospahedges, Chickahomenes, Pamunkis, Arawataks, Chesapeaks, Nansimuns, Aquamax, as one man will they strike, and from where the Pahatan falls over the rocks to the saltwater beyond Aquamax there will not be one white man left alive. He ceased to speak, and for a minute the fire made the only sound in the hut. Then, all die, I asked Dully. There are three thousand Englishmen in Virginia. They are scattered and unworn. The fighting men of the villages of the Pahatan and the Pamunky and the Great Bay are many, and they have sharpened their hatchets and filled their quivers with arrows. Scattered, I said, strewn broadcast up and down the river. Here a lonely house, there a cluster of two or three. They at Jamestown and Henricus off-guard. The men in the fields or at the wharves, the women and the children busy within doors, all unworn. Oh, my God! Dickon strode over from the doorway to the fire. We'd best be going, I reckon, sir, he cried. Or you wait until morning. Then there'll be two chances. Now that I've a knife I'm thinking I can give a count of one of them damned sentries at least. Once clear of them, I shook my head, and the Indian too made a gesture of dissent. You would only be the first to die. I leaned against the side of the hut, for my heart beat like a frightened woman's, three days, I exclaimed, if we go with all our speed we shall be in time. When did you learn this thing? While you watched the dance, he answered, O peccano and I sat within his lodge in the darkness. His heart was moved and he talked to me of his own youth in a strange country south of the sunset, where he and his people dwelt in stone houses and worshiped a great and fierce God, giving him blood to drink and flesh to eat. To that country, too, white men had come in ships. Then he spoke to me of Pohattin, my father, of how wise he was and how great a chief before the English came, and how the English made him kneel in sign that he held his lands from their king, and how he hated them. And then he told me that the tribes had called me woman, lover no longer of the warpath, and the scalp dance, but that he who had no son loved me as his son, knowing my heart to be Indian still. And then I heard what I have told you. How long had this been planned? For many moons I have been a child, fooled and turned aside from the trail, not wise enough to see it beneath the flowers through the smoke of the peace-pipes. Why does Opeco Cano send us back to the settlements, I demanded. Their faith in him needs no strengthening. It is his fancy. Every hunter and trader and learner of our tongues, living in the villages or staying in the woods, has been sent back to Jamestown or to his hundredth with presence, and with words that are sweeter than honey. He has told the three who go with you the hour in which you are to reach Jamestown. He would have you as singing birds, telling line-tails to the governor, with scarce the smoking of a pipe between those words of peace and the war-woop. But if those who go with you see reason to misdoubt you, they will kill you in the forest. His voice fell, and he stood in silence, straight as an arrow against the post, the firelight playing over his dark limbs and sternly quiet face. Outside the night wind rising began to howl through the naked branches, and a louder burst of yells came to us from the roisters in the distance. The mat before the doorway shook, and a slim brown hand slipped between the wood and the woven grass beckoned to us. Why did you come, demanded the Indian, long ago when there were none but dark men from the Chesapeake to the hunting grounds beneath the sunset. We were happy. Why did you leave your own land in the strange black ships with sails like the piled-up clouds of summer? Was it not a good land? Were not your forests broad and green, your fields fruitful, your rivers deep and filled with fish, and the towns I have heard of, were they not fair? You are brave men. Had you no enemies there, and no war-pass? It was your home. A man should love the good earth over which he hunts, upon which stands his village. This is the red man's land. He wishes his hunting grounds, his maze-fields, and his rivers for himself, his women and children. He has no ships in which to go to another country. When you first came, we thought you were gods. But you have not done like the great white god who, you say, loves you so. You are wiser and stronger than we, but your strength and wisdom help us not. They press us down from men to children. They are weights upon the head and shoulders of a babe to keep him under stature. Ill gifts have you brought us, evil have you wrought us. Not to you, Nantakwas, I cried, stung in the speech. He turned his eyes upon me. Nantakwas is the warchief of his tribe. Opecacano is his king, and he lies upon his bed in his lodge and says within himself. My warchief, the panther, the son of Wahansanakak, who is chief of all the pahatans, sits now within his wigwam, sharpening flints for his arrows, making his tomahawk bright and keen, thinking of a day three sons hence, when the tribes will shake off forever the hand upon their shoulder, the hand so heavy and white that strives always to bend them to the earth, and keep them there. Tell me, you Englishmen who have led in war, another name for Nantakwas and ask no more what evil you have done him. I will not call you traitor, Nantakwas, I said after a pause. There is a difference. You are not the first child of Pohatan who has loved and shielded the white men. She was a woman, a child, he answered. Out of pity she saved your lives, not knowing that it was to the hurt of her people. Then you were few and weak, and could not take your revenge. Now if you die not, you will drink deep of vengeance, so deep that your lips may never leave the cup. More ships will come and more, you will grow ever stronger. There may come a moon when the deep forests and the shining rivers know us, to whom Kewasa gave them no more. He paused with unmoved face and eyes that seemed to pierce the wall and look out into unfathomable distances. Go, he said at last. If you die not in the woods, if you see again the man whom I called my brother and teacher, tell him, tell him nothing, go. Come with us, urged Dickon, roughly. We English will make a place for you among us, and got no further, for I turned upon him with a stern command for silence. I ask if you know such thing, Nantakwas, I said. Come against us, if you will. Nobly warned, fair upon our guard. We will meet you as nightly foe should be met. He stood for a moment, the quick change that had come into his face at Dickon's blundering words gone, and his features sternly impassive again. Then very slowly he raised his arm from his side and held out his hand. His eyes met mine in somber inquiry, half eager, half proudly doubtful. I went to him at once and took his hand in mine. No word was spoken. Suddenly he withdrew his hand from my clasp and, putting his finger to his lips, whistled low to the Indian girl. She drew aside the hanging mats and we passed out, Dickon and I, leaving him standing as we had found him, upright against the post in the red firelight. Should we ever go through the woods, pass through that gathering storm, reach Jamestown, warn them there of the death that was rushing upon them? Should we ever leave that hated village? Would the morning ever come? When we reached our hut unseen and sat down just within the doorway to watch for the dawn, it seemed as though the stars would never pale. Again and again the leaping Indians between us and the fire fed the tall flame. If one figure fell in the wild dancing, another took its place, the yelling never ceased nor the beating of the drums. It was an alarm that was sounding, and there were only two to hear. Just away beneath the mute stars Englishmen and women lay asleep, with the hour thundering at their gates, and there was none to cry, awake. When would the dawn come? When should we be gone? I could have cried out in that agony of waiting, with the leagues on leagues to be traveled, and the time so short. If we never reached those sleepers, I saw the dark warriors gathering tribe on tribe, war party on war party, thick, crowding shadows of death, slipping through the silent forest, and the clearings we had made, and the houses we had built, the goodly Englishmen, Kent and Thorpe, and Yardley, Madison, Wynne, Hamoura, the men who had striven to win and hold this land so fatal and so fair, West and Rolf, and Jeremy Sparrow, the children about the doorsteps, the women, one woman. It came to an end as all things earthly will. The flames of the great bonfire sank lower and lower, and as they sank, the gray light faltered into being, grew, and strengthened. At last the dancers were still, the women scattered, the priest with their hideous oaky gone. The wailing of the pipes died away, the drums ceased to beat, and the village lay in the keen wind and the pale light, inert and quiet with the stillness of exhaustion. The pause and hush did not last. When the ruffle pools amid the marshes were rosy beneath the sunrise, the women brought us food, and the warriors and old men gathered about us. They sat upon mats or billets of wood, and I offered them bread and meat, and told them that they must come to Jamestown to taste of the white man's cookery. Scarcely was the meal over when Opecacano issued from his lodge with his picked men behind him, and, coming slowly up to us, took his seat upon the white mat that was spread for him. For a few minutes he sat in a silence that neither we nor his people cared to break. Only the wind sang in the brown branches, and from some farce break came a stag's horse cry. As he sat in the sunshine he glistened all over, like an ethiope is spread with silver. For his dark limbs and mighty chest had been oiled and then powdered with antimony. Through his scalp-lock was stuck an eagle's feather. Across his face, from temple to chin, was a bar of red paint. The eyes above were very bright and watchful, but we upon whom that scrutiny was bent were as little want as he to let our faces tell our minds. One of his young men brought a great pipe carved in painted stem and bowl. An old man filled it with tobacco, and a warrior litted and bore it to the emperor. He put it to his lips and smoked in silence while the sun climbed higher and higher, and the golden minutes that were more precious than heart's blood went by, at once too slow, too swift. At last his heart in the solemn mockery played. He held out the pipe to me. The sky will fall and the rivers run dry, and the birds cease to sing, he said, before the smoke of the calumet fades from the land. I took the symbol of peace and smoked it as silently and soberly, I and as slowly as he had done before me, then laid it leisurely aside and held out my hand. My eyes have been holden, I told him, but now I see plainly the deep grays of the hatchets and the drifting of the peace smoke through the forest. But Opeca Cano come to James down the smoke of the Englishman's upper wock, and to receive rich presents, a red roam like his brother Pohatan's, and a cup from which he shall drink, he and all his people. He laid his dark fingers in mine for an instant, withdrew them, and rising to his feet motioned to three Indians who stood out from the throng of warriors. These are Captain Percy's guides and friends, he announced. The sun is high, it is time that he was gone. Here are presents for him and for my brother, the governor. As he spoke, he took from his neck the rope of pearls and from his arm a copper bracelet, and laid both upon my palm. I thrust the pearls within my doublet and slipped the bracelet upon my wrist. Thanks, Opeca Cano, I said briefly, when we meet again I shall not greet you with empty thanks. By this all the folks of the village had gathered around us, and now the drums beat again, and the maidens raised wild and played its song of farewell. At a sign from the whereowants men and women formed a rude procession and followed us who were to go upon a journey to the edge of the village where the marsh began. Only the dark emperor and the old men stayed behind, sitting and standing in the sunshine with the peace pipe lying on the grass at their feet and the wind moving the branches overhead. I looked back and saw them thus, and wondered idly how many minutes they would wait before putting on the black paint. Of Nantakwas we had seen nothing, either he had gone to the forest or upon some pretense he kept within his lodge. We bade farewell to the noisy throng who had brought us upon our way and went down to the river where we found a canoe and rowers, crossed the stream, and, bidding the rowers good-bye, entered the forest. It was Wednesday morning and the sun was two hours high. Three suns Nantakwas had said. On Friday then the blow would fall, three days. Once at Jamestown it would take three days to warn each lonely scattered settlement to put the colony into any posture of defense. What of the leagues of danger haunted forests to be traversed before even a single soul of the three thousand could be warned. Nantakwas for the three Indians who had their orders to go slowly, who at any suspicious haste or question or anxiety on our part were to kill us whom they deemed unarmed, when they left their village that morning, they left it forever. There were times when Dickon and I had no need of speech, but knew each other's mind without. So now, though no word had been spoken, we were agreed to set upon and slay our guides the first occasion that offered. CHAPTER 34 IN WHICH THE RACE IS NOT TO THE SWIFT The three Indians of whom we must rid ourselves were approved warriors, fierce as wolves, cunning as foxes, keen-eyed as hawks. They had no reason to doubt us to dream that we would turn upon them, but from habit they watched us with tomahawk and knife resting lightly in their belts. As for us, we walked slowly, smiled freely, and spoke frankly. The sunshine streaming down in the spaces where the trees fell away was not brighter than our mood. Did we not smoke the peace-pipe? Were we not on our way home? Dickon, walking behind me, fell into a low-voiced conversation with the savage who strode beside him. It related to the barter for a dozen otter skins of a gun which he had at Jamestown. The savage was to bring the skins to Pospahedge at his earliest convenience, and Dickon would meet him there and give him the gun provided the pelts were to his liking. As they talked, each in his mind's eye saw the other dead before him. The one meant to possess a gun, indeed, but he thought to take it himself from the munition-house at Jamestown. The other knew that the otter which died not until his Indian's arrow quivered in its side would live until doomsday. Yet they discussed the matter gravely, hedging themselves about with provisos, and the bargain clinched walked on side by side in the silence of a perfect and all-comprehending amity. The sun rode higher and higher, gilding the misty green of the budding trees, quickening the red maple bloom into fierce scarlet, throwing lances of light down through the pine branches to splendor against the dark earth far below. For an hour it shone, then clouds gathered and shut it from sight. The forest darkened and the wind arose with a shriek. The young trees cowered before the blast, the strong and vigorous beat their branches together with a groaning sound. The old and worn fell crashing to the earth. Presently the rain rushed down, slant lines of silver tearing through the wood with the sound of the feet of an army. Hail followed a torrent of ice beating and bruising all tender green things to the earth. The wind took the multitudinous sounds, the cries of frightened birds, the creaking trees, the snap of breaking bows, the crash of pawling giants, the rush of the rain, the drumming of the hail, and wound them with itself and made the forest like a great shell held close to the ear. There was no house to flee to, so long as we could face the hail we staggered on, heads down, buffeting the wind. But at last the fury of the storm increasing, we were feigned to throw ourselves upon the earth in a little break where an overhanging bank somewhat broke the wind. A mighty oak swaying and groaning above us might fall and crush us like egg shells, but if we went on the light fate might meet us in the way. Broken and withered limbs, driven by the wind, went past us like crooked shadows. It grew darker and darker and the air was deadly cold. The three Indians pressed their faces against the ground. They dreamed not of harm from us, but Oki was in the merciless hail and the first thunder of the year, now peeling through the wood. Suddenly Dickon raised himself upon his elbow and looked across at me. Our eyes had no sooner met than his hand was at his bosom. The savage nearest him, feeling the movement as it were, lifted his head from the earth of which it was soon to become a part. But if he saw the night he saw it too late. The blade, driven down with all the strength of a desperate man, struck home. When it was drawn from its sheath of flesh, there remained to us but a foe of peace. In the instant of its descent I had thrown myself upon the Indian nearest me. It was not a time for over-niceness. If I could have done so I would have struck him in the back while he fought no harm. As it was some subtle instinct warning him he whirled himself over in time to strike up my hand and to clench with me. He was very strong and his naked body, wet with rain, slipped like a snake from my hole. Over and over we rolled on the rain-soaked moss and rotted leaves and cold black earth, the hail blinding us and the wind shrieking like a thousand watching demons. He strove to reach the knife within his belt, eye to prevent him and to strike deep with a knife I yet held. At last I did so. Blood gushed over my hand and wrist. The clutch upon my arm relaxed. The head fell back. The dying eyes glared into mind, then the lids shut forever upon that unquenchable hatred. I staggered to my feet and turn to find that Dickon had given account of the third Indian. We stood up in the hail and the wind and looked at the dead men at our feet. Then without speaking we went our way through the tossing forest with the hailstones coming thick against us and the wind a strong hand to push us back. When we came to a little trickling spring we knelt and washed our hands. The hail ceased but the rain fell and the wind blew throughout the morning. We made what speed we could over the boggy earth against the storm, but we knew that we were measuring miles where we should have measured leagues. There was no breath to waste in words and thought was a burden quite intolerable. It was enough to stumble on through the partial light with the mind as gray and blank as the rain blurred distance. At noon the clouds broke and an hour later the sunshine was streaming down from a cloudless heaven beneath which the forest lay clear before us, not staring, say, shy, silven creatures to whom it mattered not if red man or white held the land. Side by side Dickon and I hurried on, not speaking, keeping eye and ear open, proposing with all our will to reach the goal we had set and to reach it in time, let what might oppose. It was but another forced march, many had we made in our time, through dangers manifold, and had lived to tell the tale. There was no leisure in which to play the Indian and cover up our footprints as we made them, but when we came to a brook we stepped into the cold, swift flowing water and kept it company for a while. The brook flowed between willows, thickly set, already green, and overarching a yard or more of water. Presently it bent sharply and we turned with it. Ten yards in front of us the growth of willows ceased abruptly, the low steep banks shelved downwards to a grassy level, and the stream widened into a clear and placid pool, as blue as the sky above, crouched upon the grass or standing in the shallow water for some fifteen or twenty deer. We had come upon them without noise. The wind blew from them to us and the willows hit us from their sight. There was no alarm and we stood a moment watching them before we should throw a stone or branch into their midst and scare them from our path. Suddenly as we looked the leader threw up his head, made a spring, and was off like a dart across the stream and into the depths of the forest beyond. The herd followed, a moment and there were only the trodden grass and the troubled waters, no other sign that ought living had passed that way. Now, what was that poor, muttered Dickon, I'm thinking we had best not take to the open just yet. For answer I parted the willows and forced myself into the covert, pressing as closely as possible against the bank and motioning him to do the same. He obeyed and the thick clustering gold-green twigs swung into place again, shutting us in with the black water and the leafy crumbling bank. From that green dimness we could look out upon the pool and the grass with small fear that we ourselves would be seen. Out of the shadow of the trees into the grassy space stepped an Indian, a second followed, a third, a fourth, one by one they came from the gloom into the sunlight until we had counted a score or more. They made no pause, a glance telling them to what were due the trampled grass and the muddied water. As they crossed the stream one stooped and ranked from his hand, but they said no word and made no noise. All were painted black. A few had faced and chests striked with yellow. Their headdresses were tall and wonderful, their leggings and moccasins fringed with scalp-locks, their hatches glinted in the sun-shide, and their quivers were stuck full of arrows. One by one they glided from the stream into the thick woods beyond. We waited until we knew that they were deep in the forest, then crept from the willows and went our way. They were yautununs, I said, in the low tones we used when we spoke at all, and they went to the southward. We may thank our stars that they missed our trail, Dickon answered. We spoke no more, but leaving the stream struck again toward the south. The day wore on and still we went without pause, sun and shade and keen wind. Long stretches of pine and open glades where we quickened our pace to a run, dense woods, snares of leafless vines, swamp and thicket through which we toiled so slowly that the heart bled at the delay, streams and fallen trees, on and on we hurried until the sun sank and the dust came creeping in upon us. We've dined with Duke Humphrey today, said Dickon at last, but if we can keep this pace and don't meet any more war parties or fall foul of an Indian village or have to fight the wolves tonight, we'll dine with the governor tomorrow. What's that? That was the report of a musket, and a spent ball had struck me above the knee, bruising the flesh beneath the leather of my boot. We wheeled and looked in the direction whence led come that unwelcome visitor. There was not to be seen. It was dusk in the distance and there were thickets too and fallen logs. Where that ambuscade was planted, if one or twenty Indians lurked in the dusk behind the trees or lay on the further side of old slogs or crouched within a thicket no mortal man could tell. It was a spent ball, I said. Our best hope is in our heels. There are pines beyond and smooth going, he answered, but if ever I thought to run from an Indian. Without more ado we started. If we could outstrip that marksman, if we could even hold our distance until night had fallen, all might yet be well. A little longer and even an Indian must fire at random. Moreover we might reach some stream and manage to break our trail. The ground was smooth before us, too smooth and slippery with pine needles. The pines themselves stood in grim brown rows and we ran between them lightly and easily, husbanding our strength. Now and again one or the other looked behind, but we saw only the pines and the gathering dusk. Hope was strengthening in us when a second bullet dug into the earth just beyond us. Dickon swore beneath his breath. It struck deep, he muttered, the dark is slow in coming. A minute later as I ran with my head over my shoulder I saw our pursuer dimly like a deeper shadow in the shadows far down the arcade behind us. There was but one man, a tall warrior, straight aside from his van, perhaps or bound upon a warpath of his own, the musket that he carried some English fool had sold him for a mess of potage. Putting forth all our strength we ran for our lives and for the lives of many others. Before us the pine wood sloped down to a deep and wide thicket, and beyond the thicket a line of sycamores promised water. If we could reach the thicket its close embrace would hide us. Then the darkness and the stream. A third shot and Dickon staggered slightly. For God's sake, not struck man, I cried. It grazed my arm, he panned it. No harm done. Here's the thicket. Into the dense growth we broke, reckless of the blood which the sharp twigs drew from face and hands. The twigs met in a thick roof over our heads. That was all we cared for, and through the network we saw one of the larger stars brightened into being. The thicket was many yards across. When we had gone thirty feet down we crouched and waited for the dark. If our enemy followed us he must do so at his peril with only his knife for dependence. One by one the stars swam into sight until the square of sky above us was thickly studded. There was no sound and no living thing could have entered that thicket without noise. For what seemed an eternity we waited. Then we rose and broke our way through the bushes to the sycamores to find that they indeed shadowed a little sluggy stream. Down this we waited for some distance before taking to dry earth again. Since entering the thicket we had seen and heard nothing suspicious, and were now feigned to conclude that the dark warrior had wearied of the chase and was gone on his way toward his mates and that larger insurer quarry which two sons would bring. Certain it is that we saw no more of him. The stream flowing to the south we went with it, hurrying along its bank beneath the shadow of great trees with the stars gleaming down through the branches. It was cold and still, and far in the distance we heard wolves hunting. As for me I felt no weariness. Every sense was sharpened. My feet were light, the keen air was like wine in the drinking. There was a star low in the south that shone in beckon. The leagues between my wife and me were few. I saw her standing beneath the star with a little purple flower in her hand. Suddenly abandoned the stream hiding the star, I became aware that Dickon was no longer keeping step with me but had fallen somewhat to the rear. I turned and he was leaning heavily with drooping head against the trunk of a tree. Art so worn as that I exclaimed, Put more heart into thy heels, man. He straightened himself and strode on beside me. I don't know what came over me for a minute, he asked. The wolves are loud to-night. I hope they'll keep to their side of the water. As stones throw farther on the stream curving to the west we left it and found ourselves in a sparsely wooded glade with a bare and sandy soil beneath our feet and above in the western sky a crescent moon. Again Dickon lagged behind and presently I heard him groan in the darkness. I wheeled. Dickon, I cried. What is the matter? Before I could reach him he had sunk to his knees. When I put my hand upon his arm and again demanded what ailed him, he tried to laugh, then tried to swear and end it with another groan. The ball did graze my arm, he said, but it went on into my sight. I'll just lie here and die and wish you well at Jamestown. When the red imps come against you there and you open fire on them, name a bullet for me. CHAPTER 35 IN WHICH I COME TO THE GOVERNOR'S HOUSE I laid him down upon the earth and cutting away his doublet and the shirt beneath saw the wound and knew that there was a journey indeed that he would shortly make. The world is turning round, he muttered, and the stars are falling thicker than the hailstones yesterday. Go on, and I will stay behind, I and the wolves. I took him in my arms and carried him back to the bank of the stream, for I knew that he would want water until he died. My head was bare, but he had worn his cap from the jail at Jamestown that night. I filled it with water and gave him to drink. Then washed the wound and did what I could to stench the bleeding. He turned from side to side, and presently his mind began to wonder, and he talked of the tobacco in the fields at Wayano. Soon he was raving of old things, old campfires, and nighttime marches and wild skirmishes, perils by land and by sea, then of dice and wine and women. Once he cried out the dale had bound him upon the wheel, and that his arms and legs were broken, and the woods rang to his screams. Why in that wakeful forest they were unheard, or why if heard they went unheeded, God only knows. The moon went down, and it was very cold. How black were the shadows around us, what foes might steal from that darkness upon us, it was not worthwhile to consider. I do not know what I thought of on that night, or even that I thought at all. Between my journeys for the water that he called for, I sat beside the dying man with my hand upon his breast, for he was quieter so. Now and then I spoke to him, but he answered not. Hours before we had heard the howling of wolves, and knew that some ravenous pack was abroad. With the setting of the moon the noise had ceased, and I thought that the brutes had pulled down the deer they hunted, or else had gone with their hunger and their dismal voices out of ear shut. Suddenly the howling recommenced, at first faint and far away, then nearer and nearer yet. Earlier in the evening the stream had been between us, but now the wolves had crossed and were coming down our side of the water and were coming fast. All the ground was strewn with dead wood, and nearby was a growth of low and brittle bushes. I gathered the wither branches and broke faggots from the bushes. Then into the press of dark and stealthy forms I threw a great crooked stick shouting as I did so, and threatening with my arms. They turned and fled, but presently they were back again. Again I frightened them away, and again they returned. I had flint and steel in tinderbox. When I had scared them from us a third time, and they had gone only a little way, I lit a splinter of pine and with it fired my heap of wood. Then dragged Dickon into the light and sat down beside him with no longer any fear of the wolves, but with absolute confidence in the quick appearance of less cowardly foes. There was wood enough and despair. When the fire sank low and the hungry eyes gleamed nearer, I fed it again, and the flame leaped up and mocked the eyes. No human enemy came upon us. The fire blazed and roared, and the man who lay in its rosy glare raved on, crying out now and then at the top of his voice. But on that night of all nights, of all years, light and voice drew no savage ban to put out the one and silence the other, forever. Hours passed and as it drew toward midnight Dickon sank into a stupor. I knew that the end was not far away. The wolves were gone at last, and my fire was dying down. He needed my touch upon his breast no longer, and I went to the stream and bathed my hands in forehead, and then threw myself face down upon the bank. In a little while the desolate murmur of the water became intolerable, and I rose and went back to the fire and to the man whom, as God lives, I loved as a brother. He was conscious, pale and cold and nigh gone as he was. There came a light to his eyes and a smile to his lips when I knelt beside him. You did not go, he breathed. No I answered, I did not go. For a few minutes he lay with closed eyes. When he again opened them upon my face, there were in their depths a question and an appeal. I bent over him and asked him what he would have. You know, he whispered, if you can, I would not go without it. Is that it, I asked, I forgave you long ago. I meant to kill you. I was mad because you struck me before the lady and because I had betrayed my trust, and you had not caught my hand, I should be your murderer. He spoke with long intervals between the words and the death dew was on his forehead. Remember it not, Dickon, I entreat it. I too was to blame, and I see not that night for other nights, for other nights and days, Dickon. He smiled, but there was still in his face a shadowy eagerness. You said you would never strike me again, he went on, and that I was man of yours no more forever, and you gave me my freedom in the paper which I tore. He spoke in gas with his eyes upon mine. I'll be gone in a few minutes now. If I might go as your man still, and could tell the Lord Jesus Christ that my master on earth forgave and took back, it would be a hand in the dark. I have spent my life in gathering darkness for myself at the last. I bent lower over him and took his hand in mine, Dickon, my man, I said. A brightness came into his face, and he faintly pressed my hand. I slipped my arm beneath him and raised him a little higher to meet his death. He was smiling now, and his mind was not quite clear. Do you mind, sir? He asked how green and strong and sweet smelled the pines that May day when we found Virginia so many years ago. I, Dickon, I answered. Before we saw the land, the fragrance told us we were near it. I smell it now, he went on, and the bloom of the grape and the Maytime flowers. And can you not hear, sir, the whistling and the laughter and the sound of the falling trees? Was that merry time when Smith made axmen of all our fine gentlemen? I, Dickon, I said, and the sound of the water that was dashed down the sleeve of any that were caught in an oath. He laughed like a little child. It is well that I was not a gentleman and had not those trees to fell, for I should have been as wet as any merman. The little maid, and how blue the sky was, and how glad we were what time the patience and deliverance came in. His voice failed, and for a minute I thought he was gone. But he had been a strong man, and life slipped not easily from him. When his eyes opened again he knew me not, but thought he was in some tavern, and struck with his hand upon the ground as upon a table, and called for the drawer. Around him were only the stillness and the shadows of the night. But to his vision men sat and drank with him, diced and swore and told wild tales of this and that. For a time he talked loudly and at random of the vile quality of the drink, and his vile or luck at the dice. Then he began to tell a story. As he told it, his senses seemed to steady, and he spoke with coherence and like a shadow of himself. And you call that a great thing, William House? He demanded. I can tell a true tale worth two such lies, my masters. Robin Tapster, more ill, and more or less like a slug where my tankard and your ear will cry, well met. It was between Ypres and Kutra friends, and its nigh fifteen years ago. There were fields in which nothing was sowed, because they were plowed with the hooves of war horses, and ditches in which dead men were thrown, and dismal marshes, and roads that were no roads at all but only sloughs. And there was a great stone house, old and ruinous, with tall poplars shivering in the rain and mist. Into this house there threw themselves a band of Dutch and English, and hard on their heels came two hundred Spaniards. All day they besieged that house, smoke and flame and thunder and shouting and the crash of masonry, and when even tide was come, the Dutch and the English thought that death was not an hour behind. He paused and made a gesture of raising a tankard to his lips. His eyes were bright, his voice was firm. The memory of that old day and its mortal strife had wrought upon him like wine. There was one amongst us, he said. He was our captain, and it's of him I am going to tell the story. Robin Tapster bring me no more ale, but good, mauled wine. It's cold and getting dark, and I have to drink to a brave man besides. With the old bold laugh in his eyes he raised himself. For the moment he was as strong as I that held him. Look to the Englishman, all of ye, he cried, and not in filthy ale, but in good, gentlemanly sack I'll pay the score. Here's to him, brave hearts, here's to my master. With his hand at his mouth and his story untold he fell back. I held him in my arms until the brief struggle was over, and then laid his body down upon the earth. It might have been one of the clock. For a little while I sat beside him with my head bowed in my hands. Then I straightened his limbs and crossed his hands upon his breast, and kissed him upon the brow, and left him blind dead in the forest. It was hard going through the blackness of the night-time woods, once I was nigh sucked under in a great swamp, and once I stumbled into some hole or pit in the earth, and for a time thought that I had broken my leg. The night was very dark, and sometimes when I could not see the stars I lost my way and went to the right or the left, or even back upon my track. Then I heard the wolves, they did not come nigh me. Just before daybreak I crouched behind a log and watched the party of savages file past, like shadows of the night. At last the dawn came, and I could press on more rapidly. For two days and two nights I had not slept, for a day and a night I had not tasted food. As the sun climbed the heavens a thousand black spots like summer gnats danced between his face and my weary eyes. The forest laid stumbling blocks before me, and drove me back, and made me wind in and out when I would have had my path straighter than an arrow. When the ground allowed I ran. When I must break my way, panting through undergrowth so dense and stubborn that it seemed some entatched thicket were each twig snap but to be on the instant stiff in place again, I broke it with what patience I might. When I must turn aside for this or that obstacle I made the detour, though my heart cried out at the necessity. Once I saw reason to believe that two or more Indians were upon my trail, and lost time in outwitting them, and once I must go a mile out of my way to avoid an Indian village. As the day wore on I began to go as in a dream. It had come to seem the gigantic wood of some fantastic tale through which I was traveling. The fallen trees ranged themselves into an abadus hard to surmount. The thickets withstood one like iron. The streamlets were like rivers, the marshes leagues wide, the treetops miles away. Little things, twisted roots, trailing vines, dead and rotten wood made me stumble. A wind was blowing that had blown just so since time began, and the forest was filled with the sound of the sea. After noon came and the shadows began to lengthen. They were lines of black paint spilt in a thousand places, and stealing swiftly and surely across the brightness of the land. Torn and bleeding and breathless I hastened on. For it was drawing toward night, and I should have been at Jamestown hours before. My head pained me, and as I ran I saw men and women stealing in and out among the trees before me, Pocahontas with their wistful eyes and braided hair, and finger on her lips. Men talked was, Dale the Night-Marshall and Argaul with his fierce unscrupulous face. My cousin George Percy and my mother with her stately figure, her embroidery in her hands. I knew that they were but phantoms of my brain, but their presence confused and troubled me. The shadows ran together and the sunshine died out of the forest. Stumbling on I saw through the thinning trees a long gleam of red and thought it was blood, but presently knew that it was the river crimson from the sunset. A minute more and I stood upon the shore of the mighty stream between the two brightnesses of flood and heavens. There was a silver crescent in the sky with one white star above it, and fair in sight down the James with lights springing up through the twilight was the town. The English town that we had built and named for our king and had held in the teeth of Spain in the teeth of the wilderness and its terrors. It was not a mile away, a little longer, a little longer and I could rest with my tidings told. The dusk had quite fallen when I reached the neck of land. The hut to which I had been enticed that night stood dark and ghastly with its door swinging in the wind. I ran past it and across the neck and arriving at the palisade, feet upon the gate with my hands and called to the water to open. When I told him my name and tidings he did so with shaking knees and starting eyes. Cautioning him to raise no alarm in the town, I hurried by him into the street and down it toward the house that was set aside for the governor of Virginia. I should find there now, not yearly, but Sir Francis Wyatt. The torches were lighted and the folk were indoors for the night was cold. One or two figures that I met or passed would have accosted me, not knowing who I was, but I brushed by them and hastened on. Only when I passed the guesthouse I looked up and saw that my host's chief rooms were yet in use. The governor's door was open and in the hall serving men were moving to and fro. When I came in upon them they cried out as if it had been a ghost and one fellow let a silver dish that he carried fall clattering to the floor. They shook and stood back as I passed them without a word and went on to the governor's great room. The door was ajar and I pushed it open and stood for a minute upon the threshold unobserved by the occupants of the room. After the darkness outside the lights dazzled me. The room too seemed crowded with men, though when I counted them there were not so many after all. Supper had been put upon the table, but they were not eating. Before the fire his head thoughtfully bent and his fingers tapping upon the arm of his chair sat the governor. Over against him and as serious of aspect was the treasurer. West stood by the mantle tugging at his long moustaches and softly swearing. Claybourne was in the room, pierced the cape merchant and one or two besides. And Rolf was there, walking up and down with hasty steps and a flushed and haggard face. His suit of buck was torn and stained and his great boots were spattered with mud. The governor let his fingers rest upon the arm of his chair and raised his head. He is dead, master Rolf, he said. There can be no other conclusion. A brave man lost to you and to the colony. We mourn with you, sir. We too have searched Jack, put in west. We have not been idle, though we'll nigh all men believe that the Indians, who we know had a grudge against him, murdered him and his man that night, then threw their bodies into the river and themselves made off out of our reach. But we hoped against hope that when our party returned, he would be in your midst. As for this latest loss, continued the governor, within an hour of its discovery this morning, search parties were out. Yea, if I had allowed it, the whole town would have be taken itself to the woods. The searchers have not returned, and we are gravely anxious. Yet we are not utterly cast down. This trail had hardly be missed, and the Indians are friendly. There were a number in town overnight, and they went with the searchers volunteering to act as their guides. We cannot but think that of this load our hearts will soon be eased. God grant it grown growth. I will drink but a cup of wine, sir, and then we'll be gone upon this new quest. There was a movement in the room. You are worn and spent with your fruitless travel, sir, said the governor kindly. I give you my word that all that can be done is doing. Wait at least for the morning, and the good news it may bring. The other shook his head. I will go now. I could not look my friend in the face else. God in heaven, the governor sprang to his feet. Through the treasurer's lips came a long sighing breath. West's dark face was ashen. I came forward to the heaven and leaned my weight upon it. After all the waves of the sea were roaring in my ears and the lights were going up and down. Are you man or spirit, cried Rolf, with white lips? Are you Ralph Percy? Yes, I am Percy, I said. I have not well understood what quest you would go upon, Rolf. But you cannot go to-night. And those parties that your honor talked of that have gone with Indians to guide them to look for some lost person, I think that you will never see them again. With an effort I drew myself erect, and standing so told my tidings quietly and with circumstance, so as to leave no room for doubt as to their verity or as to the sanity of him who brought them. They listened as the water had listened, with shaking limbs and gasping breath, for this was the fall and wiping out of a people of which I brought warning. When all was told and they stood there before me, white and shaken, seeking in their minds the thing to say or do first, I thought to ask a question myself. But before my tongue could frame it, the roaring of the sea became so loud that I could hear not else, and the lights all ran together into a wheel of fire. Then in a moment all sounds ceased, and to the lights succeeded the blackness of outer darkness. CHAPTER 36 IN WHICH I HEAR ILL NEWS When I awoke from the sleep or stupor into which I must have passed from that swoon, it was defying myself lying upon a bed in a room flooded with sunshine. I was alone. For a moment I lay still, staring at the blue sky without the window, and wondering where I was and how I came there. A drum beat, a dog barked, and a man's quick voice gave a command. The sounds stung me into remembrance and I was at the window while the voice was yet speaking. It was west in the street below, pointing with his sword now to the fort, now to the palisade, and giving directions to the armed men about him. There were many people in the street. Women hurried by to the fort with white, scared faces, their arms filled with household gear. Children ran beside them, sturdily bearing their share of the goods, but pressing close to their elders' skirts. Men went to and fro, the most grimly silent, but a few talking loudly. Not all of the faces in the crowd belonged to the town. There were King's smell and his wife from the main, and John Ellison from Archer's Hope, and the Italians Vincenzo and Bernardo from the glass house. The nearer plantations then had been warned, and their people had come for refuge to the city. A negro passed, but on that morning, alone of many days, no Indian aired his paint and feathers in the white man's village. I could not see the palisade across the neck, but I knew that it was there that the fight, if fight there were, would be made. Should the Indians take the palisade, there would yet be the houses of the town, and last of all the fort in which to make a stand. I believed not that they would take it, long since we had found out their method of warfare. They used ambuscade, surprise, and massacre. When withstood in force and with determination, they withdrew to their stronghold, the forest, there to bide their time until, in the blackness of some night, they could again swoop down upon a sleeping foe. The drum beat again, and a messenger from the palisade came down the street at a run. There in the woods over against us, thicker than ants, he cried to West as he passed. A boat has just drifted ashore yonder, with two men in it, dead and scalped. I turned to leave the room and ran against Master Corey coming in on tiptoe with a red and solemn face. He started when he saw me. The roll of the drum brought you to your feet, then, he cried. You've lain like the dead all night. I came but to see if you were breathing. When I have eaten, I shall be myself again, I said. There's no attack as yet? No, he answered. They must know that we are prepared, but they have kindled fires along the riverbank, and we can hear them yelling. Whether they'll be mad enough to come against us remains to be seen. The nearest settlements have been worn. I, the governor, offered a thousand pounds of tobacco and the perpetual esteem of the company to the man or men who would carry the news. Six volunteered and went off in boats, three up river, three down. How many they reached, or if they still have their scalps? We know not. And a while ago, just before daybreak, comes with frantic haste Richard Pace, who had rode up from Pace's pains to tell the news which you had already brought. Chanko, the Christian, had betrayed the plot to him, and he managed to give warning at Powell's and one or two other places as he came up the river. He broke off, but when I would have spoken, interrupted me with, and so you were on the Pamumki all this while. Then the Pospahedges fooled us with the simple truth, for they swore so stoutly that their absent chief men were but gone on a hunt toward the Pamumki that we had no choice but to believe them gone in quite another direction. And one and all of every tribe we questioned swore that Opec Ocano was at Oropax. So Master Rolf puts off up river to find, if not you, then the emperor, and make him give up your murderers, and the governor sends a party along the bay and west another up the Chickahamani, and there you were all the time, mewed up in the village above the marshes, and then talk was, after saving our lives like one of us, is turned Indian again, and your man is killed, a lackaday there's not but trouble in the world, as the sparks fly upwards you know, but a brave man draws his breath and sets his teeth. In his manner, his rapid talk, his uneasy glances toward the door, I found something forced and strange. I thought Rolf was behind me, he said, but he must have been delayed. There are meat and drink set out in the great room where the governor and those of the council who are safe here with us are advising together. Let's descend, you've not eaten, and the good sack will give you strength. Will come?" I, I answered, but tell me the news as we go. I have been gone ten days, faith it seems ten years. There have no ships sailed, master Pory? The George is still here? I looked him full in the eye, for a sudden guess at a possible reason for his confusion had stabbed me like a knife. I, he said, with a readiness that could scarce be feigned. She was to have sailed this week, it is true, the governor fearing to keep her longer. But the Esperance, coming in yesterday, brought news which removed his honor's scruples. Now she'll wait to see out this hand at the cards, and to take home the names of those who were left alive in Virginia. If the red barlets do swarm in upon us, there are her twelve-pounders, they and the fort-guns. I let him talk on, the George had not sailed. I saw again a fire-lit hut, and a man and a panther who went down together. Those claws had dug deep, the man across whose face they had torn their way would keep his room in the guest-house at Jamestown until his wounds were somewhat healed. The George would wait for him, would scarcely dare to sail without him, and I should find a lady whom she was to carry away to England in Virginia still. It was this that I had built upon the grain of comfort, the passionate hope, the sustaining cordial of those year-long days in the village above the Pamunky. My heart was sore because of Dickon, but I could speak of that grief to her, and she would grieve with me. There were awe and dread and stern sorrow in the knowledge that even now in the bright spring morning blood from a hundred homes might be flowing to meet the shining, careless river. But it was the springtime, and she was waiting for me. I strode on toward the stairway so fast that when I asked a question, Master Pory, at my side, was too out of breath to answer it. Halfway down the stairs I asked it again, and again received no answer save it. Zoops! You go too fast for my years and having in flesh. Go more slowly, Ralph Percy. There's time enough, there's time enough. There was a tone in his voice that I liked not, for it savored a pity. I looked at him with knitted brows, but we were now in the hall, and through the open door of the great room I caught a glimpse of a woman's skirt. There were men in the hall, servants and messengers, who made way for us, staring at me as they did so, and whispering. I knew that my clothing was torn and muddied and stained with blood. As we paused at the door, there came to me in a flash that day in the courting meadow when I had tried with my dagger to scrape the dried mud from my boots. I laughed at myself for caring now, and for thinking that she would care that I was not dressed for a lady's bower. The next moment we were in the great room. She was not there. The silken skirt that I had seen, and their being but one woman in all the world for me, had taken for hers, belonged to Lady Wyatt, who, pale and terrified, was sitting with clasped hands, mutely following with her eyes her husband as he walked to and fro. West had come in from the street and was making some report. Around the table were gathered two or three of the council. Master Sandy's stood at a window, wrought beside Lady Wyatt's chair. The room was filled with sunshine, and a caged bird was singing, singing. It made the only sound there when I saw that I stood amongst them. When I had made my bow to Lady Wyatt and to the Governor, and had clasped hands with Rolf, I began to find in the silence as I had found in Master Pory's loquaciousness something strange. They looked at me uneasily, and I caught a swift glance from the treasurer to Master Pory and an answering shake of the latter's head. Rolf was very white and his lips were set. West was pulling at his moustaches and staring at the floor. With all our hearts we welcome you back to life and to the service of Virginia, Captain Percy, said the Governor, when the silence had become awkward. A murmur of assent went round the room. I bowed. I thank you, sir, and these gentlemen very heartily. You have but to command me now. I find that I have today the best will in the world toward fighting. I trust that your honor does not deem it necessary to send me back to jail. Virginia has no jail for Captain Percy, he answered gravely. She has only grateful thanks and fullest sympathy. I glanced at him keenly, then I hold myself at your command, sir, when I shall have seen and spoken with my wife. He looked at the floor, and they, one and all, held their peace. Madam, I said to Lady Wyatt, I have been watching your ladyship's face. Will you tell me why it is so very full of pity, and why there are tears in your eyes? She shrank back in her chair with a little cry, and Rolf stepped toward me, then turned sharply aside. I cannot, he cried, I that know. I drew myself up to meet the blow, whatever it might be. I demand of you my wife, Sir Francis Wyatt, I said. If there is ill news to be told, be so good as to tell it quickly, if she is sick or hath been sent away to England. The governor made, as if to speak, then turned and flung out his hands to his wife. To his woman's work, Margaret, he cried, tell him. More merciful than the men, she came to me at once, the tears running down her cheeks and laid one trembling hand upon my arm. She was a brave lady, Captain Percy, she said. Bear it as she would have had you bear it. I am bearing it, madam, I answered at length. She was a brave lady. May it please your ladyship to go on? I will tell you all, Captain Percy. I will tell you everything. She never believed you dead, and she begged upon her knees that we would allow her to go in search of you with Master Rolf. That could not be. My husband, in duty to the company, could not let her have her will. Master Rolf went, and she sat in the window yonder, day after day, watching for his return. When other parties went out, she besought the men, as they had wives whom they loved, to search as though those loved ones were in captivity and danger. When they grew weary and faint-hearted, to think of her face waiting in the window, day after day she sat there watching for them to come back. When they were come, then, she watched the river for Master Rolf's votes. Then came word down the river that he had found no trace of you whom he sought, that he was on his way back to Jamestown, that he too believed you were dead. We put a watch upon her after that, for we feared we knew not what. There was such a light and purpose in her eyes. But two nights ago, in the middle of the night, the woman who stayed in her chamber fell asleep. When she awoke before the dawn, it was to find her gone. To find her gone, I said, Dully, to find her dead? She locked her hands together and the tears came faster. Oh, Captain Percy, it had been better so. It had been better so. Then would she have lain to greet you, calm and white, unmarred and beautiful, with the spring flowers upon her. She believed not that you were dead. She was distraught with grief and watching. She thought that love might find what friendship missed. She went to the forest to seek you. They that were sent to find and bring her back have never returned. Into the forest I cried, Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn, come back. Someone pushed me into a chair, and I felt the warmth of wine within my lips. In the moment that the world steadied, I rose and went toward the door to find my way barred by rulf. Not you too, Ralph, he cried. I will not let you go. Look for yourself. He drew me to the window, Master Sandy's gravely making place for us. From the window was visible the neck of land in the forest beyond, and from the forest up and down the river as far as the eye could reach rose here and there thin columns of smoke. Suddenly as we stared, three or four white smoke puffs, like giant flowers, started out of the shadowy woods across the neck, following the crack of muskets fired out of pure bravado by their Indian owners came the yelling of the savages. The sound was prolonged and deep, as though issuing from many throats. I looked and listened, and knew that I could not go. Not now. She was not alone, Ralph, said Rolf, with his arm about me. On the morning that she was missed they found not Jeremy's sparrow either. They tracked them both to the forest by the footprints upon the sand, though once in the wood the trail was lost. The minister must have been watching, must have seen her leave the house, and must have followed her. How she and he after her passed through the gates, none know. So careless and confident had we grown, God forgive us, that they may have been left open all that night. But he was with her, Ralph. She had not to face it alone. His voice broke. For myself I was glad that the minister had been there, though I knew that for him also I should grieve after a while. At the firing and the shouting West had rushed from the room, followed by his fellow counsellors, and now the governor clapped on his headpiece and called to his men to bring his back and breast. His wife hung around his neck, and he bade her goodbye with great tenderness. I looked dully on at that parting. I, too, was going to battle. Once I had tasted such a farewell, the pain, the passion, the sweetness, but never again. Never again. He went, and the treasurer, after a few words of comfort to Lady Wyatt, was gone also. Both were merciful and spoke not to me, but only bowed and turned aside, requiring no answering word or motion of mine. When they were away and there was no sound in the room saved the caged birds singing and Lady Wyatt's low salves, I begged Rolf to leave me, telling him that he was needed as indeed he was, and that I would stay in the window for a while and then would join him at the palisade. He was loath to go, but he, too, had loved and lost, and knew that there is nothing to be said, and that it is best to be alone. He went, and only Lady Wyatt and I kept the quiet room with the singing bird and the sunshine on the floor. I leaned against the window and looked out into the street, which was not crowded now for the men were all at their several posts, and at the budding trees and at the smoke of many fires going up from the forest to the sky, from a whirl of hate and pain and woe to the heaven where she dwelt, and then I turned and went to the table where had been set bread and meat and wine. At the sound of my footstep Lady Wyatt uncovered her face. Is there ought that I can do for you, sir? She asked timidly. I have not broken my fast for many hours, madam, I answered. I would eat and drink, that I may not be found wanting in strength. There is a thing that I have yet to do. Rising from her chair she brushed away her tears, and coming to the table with a little housewifely eagerness would not let me wait upon myself, but carved and poured for me, and then sat down opposite me and covered her eyes with her hand. I think that the governor is quite safe, madam, I said. I do not believe that the Indians will take the palisade. It may even be that, knowing we are prepared, they will not attack at all. Indeed I think that you may be easy about him. She thanked me with a smile. It is all so strange and dreadful to me, sir, she said. At my home in England it was like a Sunday morning all the year round. All stillness and peace, no terror, no alarm. I fear that I am not yet a good Virginia. When I had eaten and had drunk the wine she gave me, I rose and asked her if I might not see her safe within the fort before I joined her husband at the palisade. She shook her head and told me that there were, with her faithful servants, and that if the savages broke in upon the town she would have warning in time to flee the fort being so close at hand. When I thereupon begged her leave to depart, she first curtsy to me, and then again with tears came to me and took my hand in hers. I know that there is not that I can say. Your wife loved you, sir, with all her heart. She drew something from the bosom of her gown. Would you like this? It is a knot of ribbon that she wore. I found it caught in a bush at the edge of the forest. I took the ribbon from her and put it to my lips, then unknotted it and tied it around my arm, and then wearing my wife's colors I went softly out into the street and turd my face toward the guesthouse and the man whom I meant to kill. CHAPTER 37 IN WHICH MY LORD AND I PART COMPANY The door of the guesthouse stood wide, and within the lower room were neither men that drank nor men that gave to drink. Hosts and drawers and chants' guests alike had left pipe and tankard for sword and musket, and were gone to fort or palisade or riverbank. I crossed the empty room and went up the creaking stairway. No one met or withstood me. Only a pigeon perched upon the sill of a sunny window word off into the blue. I glanced out of the window as I passed it and saw the Silver River and the George and the Esperance, with the gunners at the guns watching for Indian canoes, and saw smoke rising from the forest on the southern shore. There had been three houses there, John West's and Minnifes and Cresha's. I wondered if mine were burning too at wayanote, and cared not if it was so. The door of the upper room was shut. When I raised the latch and pushed against it, it gave at the top and middle, but there was some pressure from within at the bottom. I pushed again more strongly, and the door slowly opened, moving away whatever thing had lain before it. Another moment and I was in the room and had closed and barred the door behind me. The weight that had opposed me was the body of the Italian, lying faced downwards upon the floor. I stooped and turned it over and saw that the venomous spirit had flown. The face was purple and distorted. The lips were drawn back from the teeth in a dreadful smile. There was in the room a faint peculiar, not unpleasant odor. It did not seem strange to me to find that serpent which had coiled in my path dead and harmless forevermore. Death had been busy of late. If he had struck down the flower, why should he spare the thing that I pushed out of my way with my foot? Ten feet from the door stood a great screen hiding from view all that might be beyond. It was very quiet in the room, with the sunshine coming through the window and a breeze that smelt of the sea. I had not cared to walk lightly or to close the door softly, and yet no voice had challenged my entrance. For a minute I feared to find the dead physician the room's only occupant. Then I passed the screen and came upon my enemy. He was sitting beside a table with his arms outstretched and his head bowed upon them. My footfall did not rouse him. He sat there in the sunshine as still as the figure that lay before the threshold. I thought with adult fury that maybe he was dead already, and I walked hastily and heavily across the floor to the table. He was a living man, for with the fingers of one hand he was slowly striking against a sheet of paper that lay beneath them. He knew not that I stood above him. He was listening to other footsteps. The paper was a letter unfolded and written over with great black characters. The few lines above those moving fingers stared me in the face. They ran thus. I told you that you had as well cut your throat as go upon that mad Virginia voyage. Now all's gone. Wealth, honors, favor. Kingham is the sun in heaven, and cold are the shadows in which we walk who hailed another luminary. There's a warrant out for the black depth. Look to it that one meets not you too when you come at last. But come in the name of all the fiends and play your last card. There's your cursed beauty still. Come and let the king behold your face once more. The rest was hidden. I put out my hand and touched him upon the shoulder, and he raised his head and stared at me as at one come from the grave. Over one side of his face, from temple to chin, was drawn and fastened a black cloth. The unharmed cheek was bloodless and shrunken, the lip twisted. Only the eyes, dark, sinister and splendid, were as they had been. I dig not my graves deep enough, he said. Is she behind you there in the shadow? One across the room was a cloak of scarlet cloth. I took it and spread it out upon the floor, then on sheathed the dagger which I had taken from the rack of weapons in the governor's hall. Loosen thy ponder thou murderer, I cried, and come stand with me upon the cloak. Art quit or dead, he answered, I will not fight the dead. He had not moved in his seat, and there was a lethargy and a dullness in his voice and eyes. There is time enough, he said. I too will soon be of thy world, thou haggard bloody shape. Wait until I come, and I will fight thee shadow to shadow. I am not dead, I said, but there is one that is. Stand up, villain and murderer, or I will kill you sitting there with her blood upon your hands. He rose at that and drew his dagger from the sheath. I laid aside my doublet, and he followed my example, but his hands moved listlessly and his fingers bungled at the fastenings. I waited for him in some wonder, it not being like him to come tardily to such past time. He came at length slowly and with an uncertain step, and we stood together on the scarlet cloak. I raised my left arm, and he raised his, and we locked hands. There was no strength in his clasps, his hand lay within mine cold and languid. Art ready, I demanded? Ye, he answered in a strange voice. But I would that she did not stand there with her head upon your breast. I too loved thee, Jocelyn, Jocelyn lying dead in the forest. I struck at him with the dagger in my right hand and wounded him, but not deeply in the side. He gave blow for blow, but his ponyard scarce drew blood, so nervous was the arm that would have driven it home. I struck again, and he stabbed weakly at the air, then let his arm drop to his side as though the light and jeweled blade had weighed it down. Loosening the clasp of our left hands, I fell back until the narrow scarlet field was between us. Has no more strength than that, I cried, I cannot murder you. He stood looking past me as into a great distance. He was bleeding, but I had as yet been able to strike no mortal blow. It is as you choose, he said. I am as one bound before you. I am sick unto death. Turning he went back, swaying as he walked to his chair, and sinking into it sat there a minute with half-closed eyes. Then raised his head and looked at me with the shadow of the old arrogance pried and disdain upon his scarred face. Not yet, captain, he demanded, to the heart man, so I would strike and you sat there and I stood there. I know you would, I said, and going to the window I flung the dagger down into the empty street. Then stood and watched the smoke across the river and thought it strange that the sun shone and the birds sang. When I turned to the room again, he still sat there in the great chair, a tragic, splendid figure with his ruined face and the sullen woe of his eyes. I had sworn to kill you, I said. It is not just that you should live. He gazed at me with something like a smile upon his bloodless lips. Fret not thyself, Ralph Percy, he said. In a week I shall be gone. Did you see my servant, my Italian doctor, lying dead upon the floor, there beyond the screen? He had poisons had Nicolo, who men called the black death. Poisons swift and strong, or subtle and slow. Day and night the earth and sunshine have become hateful to me. I will go to the fires of hell and see if they can make me forget the face of a woman. He was speaking half to me, half to himself. Her eyes are dark and large, he said, and there are shadows beneath them at the mark of tears. She stands there day and night with her eyes upon me. Her lips are parted, but she never speaks. There was a way that she had with her hands, holding them one within the other, thus. I stopped him with a cry for silence, and I leaned trembling against the table. Thou wretch I cried, thou art her murderer. He raised his head and looked beyond me with that strange, faint smile. I know, he replied, with the dignity which was his at times. You may play the headsman if you choose. I dispute not your right, but it is scarce worth wild. I have taken poison. The sunshine came into the room and the wind from the river, and the trumpet notes the swans flying to the north. The George is ready for sailing, he said at last. Tomorrow or the next day she will be going home with the tidings of this massacre. I shall go with her, and within a week they will bury me at sea. There is a stealthy, slow, and secret poison. I would not die in a land where I have lost every throw of the dice, and I would not die in England for Buckingham to come and look upon my face, and so I took that poison. For the man upon the floor there, prison and death, awaited him at home. He chose to flee at once. He ceased to speak and sat with his head bowed upon his breast. If you are content that it should be as it is, he said at length, perhaps you will leave me? I am not good company today. His hand was busy again with a letter upon the table, and his gaze was fixed beyond me. I have lost, he muttered. How I came to play my cards so badly I do not know. The stake was heavy, I have not wherewithal to play again. His head sank upon his outstretched arm. As for me I stood a minute with set lips and clenched hands, and then I turned and went out of the room and down the stair and out into the street. In the dust beneath the window lay my dagger. I picked it up, sheathed it, and went my way. The street was very quiet. All windows and doors were closed and barred. But a soul was there to trouble me with look or speech. The yelling from the forest had ceased, only the keen wind blew and brought from the Esperance upon the river a sound of singing. The sea was the home of the men upon her decks, and their hearts dwelt not in this port. They could sing while the smoke went up from our homes in the dead lay across the thresholds. I went on through the sunshine and the stillness to the minister's house. The trees in the garden were bare. The flowers dead. The door was not barred. I entered the house and went into the great room and flung the heavy shutters wide, then stood and looked about me. Not was changed. It was as we had left it that wild November night. Even the mirror which one other night had shown me Dickon still hung upon the wall. Master Buck had been seldom at home, perhaps, or was feeble and careless of altering matters. All was as though we had been, but an hour gone saved that no fire burned upon the hearth. I went to the table and the books upon it were Jeremy's farrows. The minister's house, then, had been his home once more. Beside the books lay a packet tied with silk sealed and addressed to me. Perhaps the governor had given it the day before into Master Buck's care. I do not know. At any rate, there it lay. I looked at thee by the Esperance upon the cover and wondered Dully who at home would care to write to me. Then broke the seal and untied the silk. Within the cover there was a letter with the superscription, to a gentleman who has served me well. I read the letter through to the signature which was that of his grace of Buckingham, and then I laughed who had never thought to laugh again, and threw the paper down. It mattered not to me now that George Villiers should be grateful or that James Stewart could deny a favorite nothing. The king graciously sanctions the marriage of his sometime ward, the Lady Jocelyn Lay, with Captain Ralph Percy, invites them home. She was gone now, and I her husband, I who loved her, was left behind. How many years of pilgrimage, how long, how long, O Lord! The minister's great armchair was drawn before the cold and blackened hearth. How often she had sat there within its dark clasp, the fire-light on her dress, her hands, her face! She had been fair to look upon, the pride, the daring, the wilfulness were but the thorns about the rose. Behind those defenses was the flower, pure and lovely, with a heart of gold. I flung myself down beside the chair, and putting my arms across it hid my face upon them, and could weep at last. That passion spent itself, and I lay with my face against the wood and well nigh slept. The battle was done. The field was lost. The storm and stress of life had sunk into this dull calm as still as peace, as hopeless as the charred log and white ash upon the hearth. Cold never to be quickened again. Time passed, and at length I raised my head, roused suddenly to the consciousness that for a while there had been no stillness. The air was full of sound, shouts, savage cries, the beating of a drum, the noise of musket-tree. I sprang to my feet and went to the door to meet Rolf, crossing the threshold. He put his arm within mine and drew me out into the sunshine upon the doorstep. I thought I should find you here, he said, but it is only a room with its memories, Rolf. Out here is more breath, more height. There is country yet, Rolf, and after a while, friends. The Indians are beginning to attack in force. Humphrey Boyce is killed, and Morris Chaliner. There is smoke over the plantations up and down the river as far as we can see, and a while ago the body of a child drifted down to us. I am unarmed, I said. I will but run to the fort for sword and musket. No need, he answered. There are the dead whom you may rob. The noise increasing as he spoke, he made no further tarrying but, leading behind us, house and garden, hurried to the palace aid. CHAPTER 38 Through a loophole in the gate of the palace aid I looked and saw the sandy neck joining the town to the main and the deep and dark woods beyond, the fairy mantle giving invisibility to a host. Between us and that refuge dead men lay here and there, stiff and stark, with the black paint upon them and the colored feathers of their headdresses red or blue against the sand. One warrior shot through the back crawled like a wounded fetal to the forest. We let him go, for we cared not to waste ammunition upon him. I drew back from my loophole and held out my hand to the women for a freshly loaded musket. A quick murmur like the drawing of a breath came from our line. The governor standing near me cast an anxious glance along the stretch of wooden stakes that were neither so high nor so thick as they should have been. I am new to this warfare, Captain Percy, he said. Do they think to use those logs that they carry as battering rams? As scaling ladders your honor, I replied. It is on the cards that we may have some sword play, after all. We'll take your advice the next time we build a palisade, Ralph Percy, muttered west on my other side. Mounting the breastwork that we had thrown up to shelter the women who were to load the muskets, he coolly looked over the pails at the oncoming savages, wait until they passed that blasted pine men, he cried, then give them a hail of lead that will beat them back to Pamumpki. An arrow whistled by his ear, a second struck him on the shoulder but pierced not his coat of mail. He came down from his dangerous post with a laugh. If the leader could be picked off, I said, it's a long shot, but there's no harm in trying. As I spoke I raised my gun to my shoulder, but he leaned across Ralph who stood between us and plucked me by the sleeve. You've not looked at him closely, look again. I did as he told me and lowered my musket. It was not for me to send that Indian leader to his account. Ralph's lips tightened and a sudden pallor overspread his face. Nantak was, he muttered in my ear, and I nodded yes. The volley that we fired full into the ranks of our foe was deadly, and we looked to see them turn and flee as they had fled before. But this time they were led by one who had been trained in English steadfastness. Broken for the moment they rallied and came on yelling, bearing logs, thick branches of trees, oars tied together, anything by whose help they could hope to surmount the palisade. We fired again, but they had planted their ladders. Before we could snatch the loaded muskets from the women, a dozen painted figures appeared above the sharpened stakes. A moment and they and a score behind them had leaped down upon us. It was no time now to stulk behind a palisade. At all hazards that tied from the forest must be stemmed. Those that were among us we might kill, but more were swarming after them, and from the neck came the exultant yelling of madly hurrying reinforcements. We flung open the gates, I drove my sword through the heart of an Indian who would have opposed me, and calling for men to follow me sprang forward. Perhaps thirty came at my call, together we made for the opening. A party of the savages on our mists interposed. We set upon them with sword and musket-butt, and though they fought like very devils, drove them before us through the gateway. Behind us were wild clamour, the shrieking of women, the stern shouts of the English, the whooping of the savages, before us a rush that must be met and turned. It was done. A moment's fierce fighting then the Indians wavered, broke, and fled. Like sheep we drove them before us across the neck to the edge of the forest into which they plunged. Into that ambush we cared not to follow, but fell back to the palisade and the town believing and with reason that the lesson had been taught. The strip of sand was strewn with the dead and the dying, but they belonged not to us. Our dead numbered but three, and we bore their bodies with us. Within the palisade we found the English in sufficiently good case. Of the score or more Indians cut off by us from their mates and penned within that death-trap, half at least were already dead, run through with sword and pike, shot down with muskets that there was now time to load. The remainder, hemmed about, pressed against the wall, were fast meeting with a light fate. They stood no chance against us. We cared not to make prisoners of them. It was a slaughter, but they had taken the initiative. They fought with the courage of despair, striving to spring on upon us, striking when they could with hatchet and knife, and through it all talking and laughing, making God knows what savage boast, what taunts against the English, what references to the hunting grounds to which they were going. They were brave men that we slew that day. At last there was left but the leader, unharmed, unwounded, though time and again he had striven to close with some one of us, to strike and to die, striking with his fellows. Behind him was the wall. Of the half-circle which he faced well nigh, all were old soldiers and servants of the colony, gentlemen none of whom had come in later than Dale, Rolf, West, Win and others. We were swordsmen all. When in his desperation he would have thrown himself upon us, we contended ourselves with keeping him at sword's length, and at last West sent the knife in the dark hand whirling over the palisade. Someone had shouted to the musketeers to spare him. When he saw that he stood alone, he stepped back against the wall, drew himself up to his full height, and folded his arms. Perhaps he thought that we would shoot him down, then and there. Perhaps he saw himself a captive amongst us, a show for the idol and for the strangers that the ships brought in. The din had ceased, and we the living, the victors stood and looked at the vanquished dead at our feet, and at the dead beyond the gates, and at the neck upon which was no living foe, and at the blue sky bending over all. Our hearts told us and told us truly that the lesson had been taught that no more forever need we at Jamestown fear an Indian attack. And then we looked at him whose life we had spared. He opposed our gaze with his folded arms and his head held high and his back against the wall. Many of us could remember him, a proud, shy lad, coming for the first time from the forest with his sister, to see the English village and its wonders. For idleness we had sent him in our midst that summer day long ago on the green by the fort, and had called him, Your Royal Highness, laughing at the quickness of our whip, and admiring the spirit and bearing of the lad and the promise he gave of a splendid manhood. And all knew the tale I had brought the night before. Slowly as one man, and with no spoken word, we fell back, the half-circle straightening into a line, and leaving a clear pathway to the open gates. The wind had ceased to blow, I remember, and a sunny stillness lay upon the sand and the rough hewn wooden stakes and a little patch of tender grass across which stretched a dead man's arm. The church bells began to ring. The Indian out of whose path to life and freedom we had stepped glance from the line of lowered steel to the open gates and the forest beyond, and understood. For a full minute he waited, moving not a muscle, still and stately as some noble masterpiece in bronze. Then he stepped from the shadow of the wall, and moved past us through the sunshine that turned the eagle feather in his scalp-lock to gold. His eyes were fixed upon the forest. There was no change in the superb calm of his face. He went by the huddle dead and the long line of the living that spoke no word, and out of the gates and across the neck, walking slowly that we might yet shoot him down if we saw fit to repent ourselves, and proudly, like a king's son. There was no sound saved the church bells ringing for our deliverance. He reached the shadow of the trees a moment and the forest had back her own. We sheathed our swords and listened to the governor's few earnest words of thankfulness and a recognition of this or that man's service, and then we set to work to clear the ground of the dead, to place sentinels, to bring the town into order, to determine what policy we should pursue, to search for ways by which we might reach and aid those who might be yet alive in the plantations above and below us. We could not go through the forest where every tree might hide a foe, but there was the river. For the most part the houses of the English had been built, like mine at Weyanoke, very near to the water. I volunteered to lead a party up river, and win to go with another toward the bay. But as the council at the governor's was breaking up, and as win and I were hurrying off to make our choice of the craft at the landing, there came a great noise from the watchers upon the bank and a cry that boats were coming down the stream. It was so, and there were in them white men, nearly all of whom had their wounds to show, and cowering women and children. One boat had come from the plantation at Pasphahedge, and two from Martin Brandon. They held all that were left of the people. A woman had in her lap the body of a child, and would not let us take it from her. Another with a half severed arm crouched above a man who lay in his blood in the bottom of the boat. Thus began that strange procession that lasted throughout the afternoon and night and into the next day, when a sloop came down from Henricus with the news that the English were enforced there to stand their ground, although their loss had been heavy. For after hour they came as fast as sail and ore could bring them, the panic-stricken folk whose homes were burned, whose kindred were slain, who had themselves escaped as by a miracle. Many were sorely wounded, so that they died when we lifted them from the boats. Others had slighter hurts. Each boatload had the same tale to tell of treachery, surprise, and fiendish butchery. Wherever it had been possible the English had made a desperate defense in the face of which the savages gave way and finally retired to the forest. Contrary to their want the Indians took few prisoners, but for the most part slew outright those whom they seized, wreaking their spite upon the senseless corpses. A man too good for this world, George Thorpe, who would think no evil was killed, and his body mutilated by those whom he had taught and loved, and Nathaniel Powell was dead, and four others of the council, besides many more of name and note. There were many women slain and little children. From the stronger hundreds came tidings of the number lost, and that the survivors would hold the homes that were left for the time at least. The Indians had withdrawn. It remained to be seen if they were satisfied with the havoc they had wrought, with his honor send by boat. There could be no traveling through the woods, news of how others had fared, and also powder and shot. For the dawning we had heard from all saved the remotor settlements. The blow had been struck, and the hurt was deep. But it was not beyond remedy, thank God. It is known what measures we took for our protection, and how soon the wound to the colony was healed, and what vengeance we needed out to those who had set upon us in the dark, and it failed to reach the heart. These things belong to history, and I am not but telling my own story, mine and another's. In the chill and darkness of the hour before dawn, something like quiet fell upon the distracted, breathless town. There was a pause in the coming of the boats. The wounded and the dying had been cared for, and the noise of the women and the children was stilled at last. All was well at the palace, say. The strong party encamped upon the neck reported the forest beyond them, as still as death. In the governor's house was held a short council, subdued in quiet, for we were all of one mind, and our words were few. It was decided that the George should sail at once with the tidings, and with an appeal for arms and powder, and a supply of men. The Esperance would still be with us, besides the hope in God and the tiger. The Margaret and John would shortly come in, being already overdue. My Lord Carnal goes upon the George gentleman, said Master Corey. He sent but now to demand as she sailed tomorrow. He is ill and would be at home. One or two glanced at me, but I sat with a face like stone, and the governor rising broke up the council. I left the house and the street that was lit with torches and noisy with going to and fro, and went down to the river. Rolf had been detained by the governor, West commanded the party at the neck. There were great fires burning along the riverbank, and men watching for the incoming boats. But I knew of a place where no guard was set, and where one or two canoes were moored. There was no firelight there, and no one saw me when I entered a canoe, and cut the rope, and pushed off from the land. Well nigh a day and a night had passed since Lady Wyatt had told me that which made for my heart a night time indeed. I believed my wife to be dead. Yay! I trusted that she was dead. I hoped that it had been quickly over, one blow. Better that, oh, better that a thousand times, than that she should have been carried off to some village, save to day to die a thousand deaths tomorrow. But I thought that there might have been left lying on the dead leaves of the forest, that fair shell from which the soul had flown. I knew not where to go, to the north, to the east, to the west, but go I must. I had no hope of finding that which I went to seek, and no thought but to take up that quest. I was a soldier, and I had stood to my post. But now the need was passed, and I could go. In the hall at the Governor's house I had written a line of farewell to Rolf, and had given the paper into the hand of a trusty fellow, charging him not to deliver it for two hours to come. I rode two miles downstream through the quiet darkness, so quiet after the hubbub of the town. When I turned my boat to the shore the day was close at hand. The stars were gone, and a pale cold light, more desolate than the dark, streamed from the east, across which ran, like a faded bloodstain, a smear of faint red. Upon the forest the mist lay heavy. When I drove the boat in amongst the sedge and reeds below the bank, I could see only the trunks of the nearest trees, here only the sullen cry of some riverbird that I had disturbed. Why I was at some pains to fasten the boat to a sycamore that dipped a pallet arm into the stream, I do not know. I never thought to come back to the sycamore. I never thought to bend to an ore again, to behold again the river that the trees and the mist hid from me before I had gone twenty yards into the forest. CHAPTER 38 Recording by Tom Weiss tomsaudiobooks.com