CHAPTER XXVINIGHT
That terrible cadence preluded pandemonium, the hush of horror that followed it being broken by one deep and awful roar of voices as the insurgents, red, white, and black, joined forces and swept down upon the devoted house.
"They will try the front first," quoth the master from his loophole. "Steady, men, until I give the word! Now, let them have it with a wannion!"
The muskets cracked and a louder yell arose from without.
"Two," said the master composedly, receiving a fresh musket from his daughter's hand.
"They will try to dash in the door, your Honor!" cried the overseer from his post of observation. "They have the trunk of a pine with them."
"Let them come," said his master grimly. "They will find a warm welcome."
A double line of savages raised the great trunk from the ground and advanced with it at a run, yelling as they came. They had reached the steps leading up into the porch when from the loopholed door and window within there poured a deadly fire. Three fell, but the battering-ram came on and struck against the door with tremendous force. The door held, and but twelve of the twenty who had entered the porch returned to their fellows.
"They won't try that again," said the master with a short laugh.
"They are dividing," cried the overseer. "They will surround the house. Every man to his post!"
Around the corner of the house to the moonlit sward beneath the great room windows swept a tide of Indians and negroes with Luiz Sebastian and the two Ricahecrian brothers at their head. A few of the Indians had guns; the slaves were armed with axes, scythes, knives—the plunder of the tool house—or with jagged pieces of old iron, or with oars taken from the boats and broken into dreadful clubs. They came on with a din that was terrific, the savages from the eastern hemisphere howling like the beasts within their native forests, those from the western uttering at intervals their sterner, more appalling cry.
Within the great room Sir Charles, languidly graceful as ever, stood beside the small square opening in the door that led down into the garden, and fired again and again into the mob without. He fought with an air as became the fine gentleman of the period, but underneath the elaborate carelessness of demeanor was a cool precision of action. The hand that so nonchalantly brushed away the grains of powder from his white ruffles, was steady enough at the trigger; the eye that turned from the red death without to cast languishing glances at his mistress where she stood directing the women, was quick to note the minutest change in savage tactics. He jested as he fought—once he drew a tremulous wail of laughter from Mistress Lettice's lips.
A bullet sung through the aperture and grazed his arm. "The first blood," he said, with a laugh.
"There's a man killed in the master's room andtwo in the hall!" cried young Whittington, from his post at the far window.
"And Margery," said Patricia, coming forward with the kerchief from her neck in her hand. "Let me bind up your wound, cousin."
He held out his arm with a smile and a few low, caressing words, and she wound the lawn that was not whiter than her face about it; then moved back to where the women worked, loading and passing the muskets to the men who kept up an incessant fire upon the assailants.
The whole house filled with smoke through which the figures of the besieged loomed large and indistinct, and the noise—the crack of the muskets, the loud commands and oaths, the scream of a frightened woman or child, the groans of the wounded, of whom there were now many—became deafening. The attack was now general, and the men on each face had their hands full. Without was horrible clamor, oaths, shots, yells, crashing blows against door and window; within was noise and confusion, and fear, stern and controlled, but blanching the lip of the men and showing in the agony of the women's eyes.
Sir Charles, turning for a fresh musket, after a highly successful shot as the yell outside had testified, found Patricia at his elbow. "There are very few bullets left, cousin, and this is all the powder."
The baronet drew in his breath. "Peste! we are unfortunate! One of you men go beg, borrow, or steal from the others."
Landless left his loophole in charge of the Muggletonian and went swiftly into the hall, where he found the master, his wig off, his shirt torn, his face and hands blackened with powder, now firing with his ownhand, now shouting encouragement to the panting men.
"Powder and shot!" he cried. "God help us! are you out? Not a grain or a bullet can we spare, for if we keep them not from the great door we are dead men!"
Landless went to the overseer. "Two more rounds andweare out," said Woodson coolly, firing as he spoke.
"There is no sign that they have had enough," said Landless, as the clamor outside redoubled, and a man fell heavily back from his loophole with a bullet through his brain.
"Enough! Damn them, no!" said the overseer. "When they've had our lives they will have had enough—not before! They're paying dearly for their fun though."
Landless went back to the great room with empty hands.
"They are all in like case," he said, in answer to Sir Charles's lifted eyebrows.
The other shrugged his shoulders. "What will be, will be. If we could have saved our fire—but we had to keep them from the door! Get to your post, and we will hold them back as long as may be. Then a short passage to eternal nothingness!"
"A short passage!" muttered the Muggletonian at Landless's ear. "Well for those who find that at the hands of the uncircumcised heathen. Eternal nothingness! The fool hath said in his heart There is no God—and he is being dashed headlong upon the judgment bar of the God who saith, I will repay. Cursed be the Atheist! May he find the passage, fiery though it be, as nothing to the flames of the avenging God;may he go to his appointed place where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched; may—"
The trunk of a tree was dashed against the door with a force that shook the room. "Dey're comin'!" shouted Regulus, who stood behind Sir Charles, and raised the axe with which he was armed above his head. Another crash and the wood splintered. Through the ragged opening was thrust a red hand—the axe, wielded by Regulus's powerful arms, flashed downwards, and the hand, severed at the wrist, fell with a dull thud upon the floor. A yell from without, and another blow, widening the opening. Landless fired his last bullet into the crowd, and clubbing his musket sprang to the door, in front of which were now massed all the defenders of that side of the house. Sir Charles threw down his useless musket and drew his sword. "Cousin," he said over his shoulder to Patricia, standing white and erect in the midst of the cowering women, "you had best betake yourselves to the hall, and that quickly. This will be no ladies' bower presently."
"Come," said Patricia to the women, and led the way towards the door leading into the hall. As she passed Sir Charles she put out her hand, and he caught it, sunk to his knee, and pressed his lips upon it.
"I am going to my father," she said steadily, "and I shall pray him as he loves me to pass his sword through my heart when they break into the hall. So it is farewell, cousin."
She drew her hand away and moved towards the door, passing Landless so closely that her rich skirts brushed him, but without a change in the white calm of her face. The terrified women had pressed before her into the hall, only Betty Carrington keeping byher side. Her foot was upon the threshold, when with loud screams they surged back into the great room. A thundering crash in the hall was followed by a babel of oaths, screams, triumphant yells. The voice of the master made itself heard above all the hubbub, "Charles, Woodson, Haines, they are upon us! Defend the women to the last, as you are men, all of you!"
The splintered plank between them in the great room and the murderers without was dashed inwards. An Indian, naked, horribly painted, brandishing a tomahawk, sprang through the opening, and Sir Charles ran him through with his sword. A second followed, and Landless dashed his brains out with the butt of his musket. A third, and the Muggletonian struck at him through the wildly flaring light and the drifting smoke wreaths, and missed his aim. The knife of the savage gleamed high in air, then, descending, stuck quivering in the breast of the fanatic. He sunk to his knees, flung up his skeleton arms, and raised his scarred face, into which a light that was not of earth had come, then cried in a loud voice, "Turn ye, turn ye to the Stronghold, ye prisoners of Hope!" His eyes closed and he fell forward upon his face, his blood making the ground slippery about the feet of the others.
Landless closed with the Indian, finally slew him, and turned to behold a stream, impetuous, not to be withstood, of Indians and negroes pouring through the doorway. From the hall came the clash of weapons and a most terrific din, and presently there burst into the great room the Colonel, Laramore, Woodson, and Haines, followed by some fifteen men—making, with the five in the great room, all that were left of the defenders of Verney Manor.
CHAPTER XXVIIMORNING
The women crouched in a far corner of the room behind a barricade of chairs and tables; the men stood between them and the thirsters for blood, and fought coolly, desperately, with such effect that, fearful as were the odds, a glimmering of hope came to them. The ammunition on both sides was exhausted, and it had become a hand to hand struggle in which the advantage of position and weapons was with the assailed.
"Damme, but we will beat them yet!" cried Laramore, panting, and leaning heavily upon his rapier. "They're drawing off; we've tired them out!"
"They'll never tire while that hellhound of an Indian whoops them on and that yellow devil, Luiz Sebastian, backs him up," said the overseer.
"They are gathering for a rush," said Landless.
The assailants had fallen back to the opposite wall, leaving a space, cumbered with the dead and slippery with blood, between them and the defenders of the house. In this space now appeared the lithe figure, and the watchful, large-eyed, amber countenance of Luiz Sebastian.
"Ohè!" he cried, "slaves, all of you! Ashantees, Popoes, Angolans, Fidas, Malimbe, Ambrice! you who are all black! think of the jungle and the village; think of the wives and the children! thinkof the slaver and the slave ship! You from the Indies, you who are like me, Luiz Sebastian, think of the blood which is the white man's blood and yet the blood of a slave—and hate the white man as I, Luiz Sebastian, hate him! Kill them and take the women!"
The swollen figure and dreadful face of Roach appeared at his side. "Ay!" cried the murderer, with a tremendous oath. "Kill them! Smash them, batter them, hear them scream! In the old man's pocket is the key of his money chest. It is filled with bright yellow gold. Kill him and get the money, and away to turn pirate and get more!"
"It grows late!" cried Trail. "We must up sail, and away before the dawn!"
The gigantic, horribly painted form of the Ricahecrian chief stalked into the open space and commenced a harangue in his own tongue. It was short, but effective.
"God!" said the Colonel, under his breath, and grasped his bloodstained sword more closely.
With one shrill and horrible cry Indians, negroes, mulattoes, and villainous whites were upon them, breaking their line, forcing them apart into knots of two and three away from the frail barrier, behind which cowered the screaming women, striking with knife and tomahawk, axe and club. Two of the Colonel's men fell, one under the knife of the seven-year-captive Ricahecrian, the other beaten down by the jagged and knotted club with which Roach, foaming at the mouth, and swearing horribly, struck madly to left and right. The Ricahecrian, drawing the knife from the heart of his victim, rushed on to where Landless and Sir Charles still maintained, by dint of desperatefighting, their position before the women, but Luiz Sebastian with Roach and half a dozen negroes swept between him and his prey. He swerved aside, and, bounding into the midst of the women, seized the one who chanced to be in his path,—a young and beautiful girl, newly come over from Plymouth, and a favorite with the ladies of Verney Manor. The despairing scream which the poor child uttered rang out above all the tumult. Landless turned, saw, and darted to her aid—but too late. With one hand the savage gathered up the loosened hair, with the other he passed the scalping knife around the young head—when Landless reached them, she who so short time before had been so fair to see, lay a shocking spectacle, writhing in her death agony. With white lips and burning eyes Landless swung his gun above his head, and brought it down upon the shaven crown of Grey Wolf. It cracked like an egg shell, and the Indian dropped across the body of his victim.
Landless, springing back to the post he had quitted, found Sir Charles in desperate case, but as coolly composed as ever, and with the air of the Court still about him despite his bared head and torn and bloodstained clothing, treating those who came against him to an exhibition of swordsmanship such as the New World had probably rarely witnessed. Landless, striking down a cutpurse from Tyburn, saw him run the Turk through, and saw behind him the nightmare visage and the raised club of Roach. He uttered a warning cry, but the club descended, and the handsome, careless face fell backwards, and the slender debonair figure swayed and fell. Landless caught him, saw that he was but stunned, and letting him drop to the floor at his feet, wrenched the sword fromhis hand, and stood over him, facing Roach with a stern smile.
The murderer raised his club again.
"We've met at last!" he cried with a taunting laugh. "Do you remember the tobacco house, and what I said? I says: 'Every dog has its day, and I'll have mine.' It's my day now!"
"And I said," rejoined Landless, "'I let you go now, but one day I will kill you.' Andthatday has come."
With an oath Roach brought down the club. Landless swerved, and the blow fell harmlessly; before the arm could be again raised, he caught it, held it with a grasp of steel, and shortened his sword. The miscreant saw his death, and screamed for mercy. "Remember Robert Godwyn!" said Landless, and drove the blade home.
The sword was a more effective weapon than the gun, and with it he kept the enemy at bay, while he glanced despairingly around. There were as many dead as living within the room by this. The floor was piled with the slain; they made traps for the living who in the wild surging to and fro stumbled over them, and fell, and were slain before they could rise. Three fourths of the dead belonged to the insurgents, but the attacked had suffered severely. Of the thirty men with whom the defense had commenced there now remained but twelve, and of that number several were wounded. The Colonel was bleeding from a cut on the head, the under overseer had a ball through his arm, Sir Charles still lay without movement at Landless's feet.
Forced, together with almost all of his party, by the mad rush of the assailants to the further end ofthe room, the master had seen with agony the women left well-nigh defenseless. Followed by Woodson, Havisham, Regulus, and young Whittington, he had all but cut his way back to them, when a fresh influx from the hall of slaves and whites who had been engaged in plundering the house, drove them apart again.
The newcomers came fresh to the work, maddened, moreover, by the master's wines. They advanced upon the Colonel and his party with drunken shouts, some brandishing rude weapons, others silver salvers and tankards, the spoil of the plate chest. The voice of Luiz Sebastian rang through the room. "Quick work of them, friends; I smell the morning!" With a laugh and a scrap of Spanish song upon his lips he came at Landless with a knife, but a turn of the white man's wrist sent the weapon hurling through the air.
"Curse you!" cried the mulatto, springing out of reach of the deadly point, and holding his arm from which the blood was flowing. "Mother of God! but I will have you yet!" and bounded towards his weapon. Landless, steadily watchful, and pointing that fatal sword this way or that against all comers, cleared for himself and the still senseless man at his feet a circle into which few cared to intrude, for the fame of that blade had gone through the room. "Leave him until we have dealt with the others," said the mulatto between his teeth. "Then will we give him reason to wish that he had never been born."
A touch upon his arm, and Landless turned to find Patricia standing beside him. "Go back," he cried. "Go back!"
"They are murdering them all over there," she said steadily. "My father is dead. I saw him fall."
"Not so, madam. He did but stumble over the dead. See, Woodson fights them back from him. For God's sake, get back behind the barricade!"
She shook her head. "He is dead. They will all be dead directly, my cousin and all. My father cannot help me, and he who lies here cannot help me. I will not be taken alive by these devils, and I have no knife. Will you kill me?"
"My God!"
"Quick!" she said in the same low, steady tones. "They are coming; they will beat us down in a moment. Kill me!"
For answer Landless raised his voice until it rang high above the uproar, and arrested the attention of the combatants on both sides. "Fight with a will, men," he cried, "for help is at hand! Do you not hear the hoofs of the horses?"
"By God! you are right!" cried the Colonel, suddenly struggling to his feet. "Hold out, men! Anthony Nash reached Rosemead, and has brought us aid!"
"The dog priest!" the mulatto cried fiercely to Trail. "Was he here? Then they have sent for help, and Mother of God! it is here!"
"And coming at the planter's pace," answered Trail. "They will be upon us before we reach the boats."
The mulatto glanced at the friend with whom he had fled the Indies with a sinister smile. "Ay," he muttered to himself. "They will be upon us indeed, before we reach the boats, wherefore Luiz Sebastian goes not to turn pirate this time. He throws in his lot with the Ricahecrians whose canoes are close at hand in the inlet that winds into the Pamunkey.They are very swift, and in the Blue Mountains there is safety. But one thing first."
He gave a shrill and peculiar whistle which brought to him half a dozen Indians. He pointed to the body of Grey Wolf and then to Landless. A yell burst from the lips of the savages, and they rushed upon the latter. He met them, ran his sword through the heart of the first, of the second: Sir Charles moaned, stirred, and struggled to his knees. A third raised his knife; it would have descended, but Landless darted between the savage and the half-dazed, utterly helpless man at whom the blow was aimed, struck up the arm, and plunged his sword into the dark breast. A broken oar, snatched from the floor by the mulatto, descended upon his head, and with a woman's scream sounding in his ear, he fell heavily to the floor, and lay as one dead.
When he came to himself, it was to find the great room still crowded with men, and filled with noise and confusion, but the thronging figures and the excited voices were those of friends—of servants from the neighboring plantations, of small planters and tenants of Colonels Ludwell and Fitzhugh, the Surveyor-General, and Dr. Anthony Nash. He saw the master, panting, bleeding, but exultant, seize Dr. Nash's hands in his own. He saw Sir Charles smile and extend his box of richly scented snuff to Colonel Ludwell, and the women leaving their corner of refuge with hysterical laughter and tears; saw Betty Carrington in her father's arms, and Mistress Lettice being helped across a heap of dead by Captain Laramore. Indians, negroes, mulatto, scoundrel whites, were gone.
"They got off clear—the d—d villains," said Dick Whittington, appearing beside him, "just before thehorses came up. But Woodson has gone after the slaves and the convicts with a party of Carrington's men. He'll catch them, I'm thinking, and they'll come to a pirate's end—that's all the pirating they'll get. The Indians will get clean away; they're most to the Pamunkey by now, I reckon."
Landless staggered to his feet, and put his hand to his head, which was bleeding. "The women are all safe?" he demanded.
"All but poor Annis," said the boy. "When I saw the poor maid fall, I thanked the Lord that Joyce Whitbread was safe in her mother's cottage at Banbury. But none of the others were hurt. There is Mistress Lettice and Mistress Betty Carrington—I do not see Mistress Patricia."
The master of Verney Manor, pouring forth a rapid account of the late affair to the gentlemen who crowded around him, was brought to a dead stop by the appearance of a man who had burst through the throng, and now stood before him, half naked, bleeding, with white, drawn face and wild eyes.
"What is it? Speak!" cried the master, terror of he knew not what growing in his eyes.
"Your daughter, Colonel Verney!" cried Landless. "She is not here. The Ricahecrians have carried her off."
With a sound between a groan and a scream the Colonel staggered, and would have fallen had not Carrington caught him. "Gone! Impossible!" cried Sir Charles vehemently, all his studied insouciance thrown to the winds. "She was with the women behind the barrier that we made. She is here."
He began to call her by name, loudly, appealingly, but there came no answering voice.
"She will not answer," said Landless hoarsely. "She is not here. She was with the women until just before the last. She saw her father fall, and thought him dead, and you dead, too, Sir Charles Carew, and she came to me, and prayed me to kill her. Then we heard the sound of the horses, and six Indians—Ricahecrians—with Luiz Sebastian, came against me. She stood at my side while I killed three. Then I was struck down, and I heard her scream as I fell."
The master freed himself from Carrington's supporting arm, and raised from his hands a face that had suddenly become that of an old man. But the voice was steady with which he said quietly,—
"Let them search the room thoroughly, for the child may be laying in a faint beneath these dead, though my soul doth tell me that it is as this man says, and that she is gone. But we will after them at once, and, please God, we will have her back, safe and sound. They have but an hour's start."
"Ay," muttered young Whittington to Havisham. "Only an hour. But the Chickahominies build the swiftest canoes in this corner of the world, and I have heard that the canoes of the Ricahecrians are to the canoes of the Chickahominies as swallows are to cranes."
CHAPTER XXVIIIBREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS
Great trees, drooping from the banks of the Pamunkey, shadowed into inky blackness the water below them; but between the lines of darkness slept a charmed sheet, glassy, fiery red from the sunken sun. Three boats moved silently and swiftly up the crimson stream, until, rounding a low point, they came upon an Indian village, nestling amidst vines and mulberries, and girt with a green ribbon of late maize, when they swung round from the middle stream and made for the bank. They were rowed by stalwart servants, and in the foremost sat the master of Verney Manor and Sir Charles Carew. In the second boat was the Surveyor-General and Dr. Anthony Nash, and in the third the overseer, and among the rowers of this last was Godfrey Landless.
As they neared the bank their occupants saw that the usual sleepy evening stillness was not upon the village above them. A shrill sound of wailing from women and children rose and fell through the gathering dusk, and in the open space round which the bark wigwams were built, dark figures moved to and fro in a kind of measured dance, slow and solemn, and marked at intervals by dismal cries. As the boats touched the shore and the white men sprang out, a boy, stationed as scarecrow upon the usual scaffold in the midst of the maize fields, raised a shrill whoop ofwarning which brought the lamentation of the women and the dance of the men to a dead stop. The latter rushed down to the river side, brandishing their weapons, and yelling; but there seemed little strength in the arms that flourished the tomahawk; the voices sounded cracked and shrill, and the weak fury and noise died away when a nearer approach showed the newcomers to be white. A very aged man, with a face all wrinkles and a chest all scars, stepped from out the throng which was now augmented by the women and children.
"My white fathers are far from the salt water. Seldom do the Pamunkeys see their faces coming up the narrowing stream or through the forest. They are welcome. Let my fathers tarry and my women shall bring them chinquepin cakes and tuckahoe, pohickory and succotash, and my young men—"
He paused, and a low wailing murmur like the sound of the wind in the forest rose from the women.
"Where are your young men, your braves?" demanded the Surveyor-General. "Here are only the very old and the very young—they who have not seen a Huskanawing."
The Indian pointed to the crimson flood below. "There are my young men; there are my braves. Among them were a werowance and a sagamore. They two have strings of pearl thicker than the stem of the grape vine; they are painted with puccoon, and the feathers of the bluebird and the red-bird are upon them. They have hills of hatchets and of arrow heads, sharp and clean, and very much tobacco, and they sing and dance in the great wigwam of Okee, in the home of Kiwassa, in the land beyond the setting sun. But the rest—they lie deep in theslime of the river; it is red with their blood; their wives wail for them; their village is left desolate.... When the time of the full sun power was past the smoking of three pipes, came up the Pamunkey, swift as the swallow that skims its waters, the Ricahecrian dogs who, passing down towards the salt water twelve suns ago, slew the young men of a village that lieth below us. My young men went out against them, but a cloud came up and Kiwassa hid his face behind it. They came not back, their boats were sunk, the Ricahecrians laughed and went their way, swift as swallows."
"Ask him," said the Colonel huskily.
"Had they a captive with them—a woman, a paleface woman?" demanded Carrington.
"With hair like the sunshine and a white robe. And a man, the color of the falling sycamore leaf, one of those who work in the fields of the white fathers. The arms of the woman were bound, but his were not—he fought with the Ricahecrian dogs."
"Luiz Sebastian!" said the overseer with a muttered oath. "I thought as much when we found that he was not with the drunken scoundrels whom we took before they reached the Point. And we had better have killed him than all the rest put together, for he is the devil incarnate."
"Let us get on!" Sir Charles cried impatiently. "We waste time when every moment is precious."
The Colonel, who had been speaking to the Surveyor-General, came over to him. All the jovial life and fire was gone from his face, his eyes were haggard and bloodshot, he stooped like an old man, but the voice with which he spoke was steady and authoritative as ever.
"Ay," he said. "We must on at once, but not all of us. Richard Verney must not forget the danger of the state, in the danger of his child, nor let his private quarrel take precedence. I had hoped when we left the Manor at dawn to have been up with the villains ere now, but it was not to be. This will be a long chase and a stern one, and how it will end God only knows. We go into a wilderness from which we may never return. Behind us in the settlement is turmoil and danger, a conspiracy to be put down, the Chickahominies to be subdued, the strong hand needed everywhere. Every man should be at his post, and Richard Verney, Lieutenant of his shire, and Colonel of the trainbands, is many leagues from the danger which threatens the colony, and with his face to the west. He must on, but Major Carrington must go back to do his duty to the King, and Anthony Nash must not desert his flock. And you, Woodson, I send back to the Manor to do what you can to repair the havoc there, and to protect Mistress Lettice. My kinsman will go on with me; is it not so, Charles?"
"Assuredly, sir," said the baronet quietly.
"I'd a sight rather go with your Honor," growled the overseer, "but I'll do my best both by the plantation and by Mistress Lettice, and I look for your Honor and Mistress Patricia back in no time at all. We are to take the small boat, I reckon?"
"Yes, with four men to row you. We will press a boat and a crew from the next Pamunkey village. Pick out your men, and let us be gone."
"Humph! There's one that I reckon had best go back with us. Does your Honor know that you've got with you the head of all this d—d Oliverian business,the man that Trail swore was their general—that they all obeyed as though he were Oliver himself?"
"No! How came he here?" cried the master, staring at Landless, who stood at some distance from them with folded arms and compressed lips, gazing steadily up the glowing reaches of the river.
"Found him in the boat when I stepped into it myself. I didn't say anything then, for we were in a mortal hurry and he's a good rower. But I reckon your Honor will send him back with me? He'll give you the slip the first chance he gets."
"Of course he must go back," the master said peremptorily. "He should never have been brought thus far. A dozen or so of these Oliverians must swing as an example to the rest, and he, their leader, and a felon to boot, at their head. The service he did us last night can not help him—he fought for his own life. The Governor has sworn to hang him, and I am accountable for his safe delivery at Jamestown. Bind him and take him back with you, and send him at once to Jamestown under a strong escort." He turned from the overseer to the two gentlemen who were to go down the river. "Carrington, Anthony Nash, old friends, farewell—it may be forever. Anthony, pray that I may find my child safe and spotless."
They embraced, and he wrung their hands, and, stepping hastily into the boat, sank down and covered his face with his cloak. The Surveyor-General stood with a pale and troubled face, and Dr. Anthony Nash prayed aloud. The rowers took their places and the boat shot out into the middle stream.
Landless, seeing the second boat filling, and supposingthat the third would receive its load in a moment, stepped towards it. As he passed the overseer, standing a little to one side with two servants belonging to Colonel Fitzhugh, a tenant of Colonel Verney, and an Indian from Rosemead, Woodson put forth an arm and stopped him.
"No, no, my man," he said with a grim smile but with a watchful eye, and nodding to the men to close in around them. "Your way's down, not up."
"What do you mean?" cried Landless, recoiling.
"I mean that the Doctor and the Major and I and these men go back to the settlements to look after things there, and that you are going to renew your acquaintance with Jamestown gaol."
For a moment Landless stood, turned to stone, within the other's grasp, then with a cry he broke from him and rushed to the water's edge. The boat containing the master had turned her head up stream and was beyond call; in the second boat the men held the oars poised while Sir Charles, with one foot upon the gunwale, gave a gravely courteous farewell to the Surveyor-General and the divine.
"Sir Charles Carew!" cried Landless. "I pray you to take me with you!"
Without moving, Sir Charles looked at him coldly, a peculiar smile just curling his lip.
"I remember a day," he said, "when you said that I might wait until doomsday and not hear favor asked of me by you."
"You are not generous," Landless said slowly, "but I ask the favor. I ask it on my knees. Let me go with you."
Sir Charles stepped into the boat and took the seat reserved for him. "I regret," he said politely, "thatit comports not with my duty as a gentleman and an officer of the King to assist you in your very natural endeavors to escape the gibbet. Push off, men."
The boat shot from the shore and up the darkening stream, hastening to overtake its consort. Sir Charles raised his Spanish hat and fluttered a lace handkerchief. "To a happier meeting, gentlemen!" The Surveyor-General and the divine returned the salute, and stood in silence watching the canoe with its brawny rowers and the slender, elegant figure in the stern. It caught up with the Colonel's boat and the two grew smaller and smaller, until they became mere black dots and the dusk swallowed them up.
Landless watched them too with a face set like a stone. The overseer, backed by two of the servants, approached him with caution, but there was no need,—he submitted to be bound without a word, or struggle, or change in the expression of his face. He turned mechanically towards the boat, but the overseer plucked him back. "Not yet," he said. "We are all dead beat, and we have not the need to hurry that have those who are gone on. The Major's commander now, and he says sleep here a few hours. I'll fasten you so that you can't get away, I promise ye! Fegs! it's a pity that a man who can fight as you fought last night should have to die a dog's death after all! But you've only yourself to thank for it."
The red glow died from the river like the scarlet from cooling iron, and it lay dark and silent, dimly reflecting a myriad of stars. The sloping bank, the maize fields, tobacco patch and mulberry grove, the plateau upon which were ranged the wigwams of the Indians, the dark and endless forest—all the wide, sombre earth—had their stars also—myriads onmyriads of fireflies, restlessly sparkling lanterns swung by legions of fairies. There was no wind; the cataracts of wild grape descending from the tops of the tallest trees stirred not a leaf; the pines were soundless. But the whip-poor-wills wailed on, and once a catamount screamed, and the deer, coming to a lick close by, made a trampling over the fern.
Landless, tightly bound to a great bay tree with thongs of deerskin, watched the night grow old with hard, despairing eyes. The stars paled and the moon rose softly above the tree-tops, silvering the world beneath. By her light he saw the little glade of which the tree to which he was bound marked the centre, and the recumbent forms of those who were to return to the settlements stretched on Indian mats laid upon the short grass. Worn out with the toil of the day and the storm and stress of the night before, they slumbered heavily. The watcher in their midst thought, "If I could sleep!" and resolutely closed his eyes, but the vision of a flying canoe and a brightness of golden hair, which had vexed him, passing up the reaches of the river over and over and over again, was with him still, and he opened them and raised them to the stars, thinking, "She may be above them now."
How still it was! no air, no breath, no sound—the thongs, that, wound many times around his body, bound him to the tree, fell at his feet, a figure slipped from behind the trunk, laid a hand, in which was a knife that gleamed in the moonlight, upon his arm, and whispering, "Follow," glided over the grass, past the sleepers and into the forest.
Swiftly but cautiously Landless went after it. The overseer lay within ten feet of him; he passed him,passed the unconscious servants, crossed a strip of moonlight, entered the shadow of a locust, and all but stumbled over a man lying asleep beneath it. He recoiled, and a twig snapped beneath his foot. The sleeper stirred, turned upon his side, and opened his eyes. The moon, now high in the heavens, shone so brightly that there was soft light even beneath the heavy branches of the trees, and by this light his Majesty's Surveyor-General and his Majesty's rebellious, convicted, and condemned servant recognized each other. For one long minute they stared each at the other, then, without a word or sign to denote that he was aware that aught stood between him and the moonlight, Carrington lay down again, pillowed his head upon his arm and closed his eyes. Landless was passing on with a light and steady step and the ghost of a smile upon his lips when the apparently slumbering figure put forth an arm and laid something long and dark across his pathway. He glanced quickly around, but the Surveyor-General lay motionless, with closed eyes. Stooping, he took up the object, which proved to be a richly inlaid musket with flask and pouch. He paused again, but no sign coming from the quietly breathing form on the grass he lightly and silently left it and the tiny encampment and entered the forest, where he found a dark figure leaning against a tree, waiting for him. Without a word it moved forward into the dense shadow of the forest, and in the same silence he followed it. They were now in thick woods, moving beneath interlocking branches and a vast canopy of wild grape that, stretching from the summit of one lofty tree to that of another, formed a green and undulating roof upon which beat the moonbeams that could not penetratethe close darkness of the world below. They came to a small and sluggish stream, flowing without noise between the towering trees, and stepping into the water, walked up it for a long while with giant blacknesses on either hand and above them the moon.
All this time the figure had stalked along before Landless without speaking or turning its head, but now, the trees thinning, and they coming upon a field of wild flax that lay fair and white beneath the moon, it quitted the lazy stream, and turning upon Landless as he too stepped upon the bank, showed him the bronze countenance and the gigantic form of the Susquehannock to whom he had once done a kindness, and with whom he had fought on such a night as this, in such a moonlight space.
"Monakatocka, I thought it had been you," said Landless quietly.
With the never failing "Ugh!" the Indian took Landless's hand and with it touched his own dark shoulder.
"I too am grateful, and with far more reason," said Landless smiling. "I will be yet more so if you will bring me out upon the bank of the river at some distance above yonder encampment."
"What will my brother do then?"
"I will go up the river."
"After the canoes in which sit the palefaces from whom my brother flees?"
"After the canoe which those canoes pursue."
"If my brother wishes to take the warpath against the Algonquin dogs," said the Indian quietly, "he must not follow the Pamunkey, but the Powhatan."
"They passed this village yesterday, going up the Pamunkey!" cried Landless.
"A false trail. Let my brother come a little further and I will show him."
He stepped in front of the white man, and moving rapidly across the field of flax, dived into the forest again. Following the stream in its windings they came to where it debouched into a wide and muddy creek, which, in its turn, flowed into an expanse of water that lay like molten silver beyond the fringe of trees.
"The Pamunkey!" exclaimed Landless.
The Indian nodded and led the way to a thicket of dwarf willow and alder that grew upon the very brink of the creek.
"While the palefaces slept, Monakatocka was busy. Look!" he said, parting the bushes and pointing.
Within the thicket, drawn up upon the sloping mud, were two large canoes, quite empty save for a debris of broken oars.
Landless gasped. "How do you know them to be the same?"
The Indian stooped and pointed to dark stains. "Blood. They had wounded among them. And this." He put something into the other's hand. Landless looked at it, then thrust it into his bosom. "You are right. It is a ribbon which the lady wore. But why have they left their boats, and where are they?"
The Indian pointed to the side of the larger canoe. "The hatchets of the Pamunkeys were sharp. They fought like real men. This canoe could go no further. See, it is wet within—they had to ply the gourd very fast to keep afloat so far. One canoe would not hold them all, so they hid both here. Theyknew the palefaces would follow up the river, so they cared not to stay upon its banks; the Pamunkeys, too, are their enemies. They have gone through the forest towards the Powhatan. My brother cannot see their trail, for the eyes of the palefaces are clouded, but Monakatocka sees it."
Landless turned upon him. "Will Monakatocka go with me against the Ricahecrians?"
"Monakatocka has dreamt of the village on the pleasant river where he was born. The arm of the white men cannot reach him here, in these woods, far from their wigwams and warriors and guns; it cannot pluck him back to be beaten. He toils no more in their fields. He is a real man again, a warrior of the long house, a chief of the Conestogas. Let my white brother go with him, across the great rivers, through the forest, until they come to the Susquehanna and the village of the Conestogas. There will the maidens and the young men welcome Monakatocka with song and dance, and my brother shall be welcome also and shall become a great chief and shall take the warpath against the Algonquin and against the paleface at the side of Monakatocka. In the Blue Mountains is Death. Let us go to the pleasant river, to the hunting grounds of the Conestogas."
Landless shook his head. "My thanks and good wishes go with you, friend, but my path lies towards the Blue Mountains. Farewell."
He put out his hand, but the Indian did not touch it. Instead, he stooped and examined the ground about him with attention, then, beckoning the other to follow, he moved rapidly and silently along the border of the creek. Landless overtook him andlaid his hand upon his arm. "This is my path, but yours lies across the river, to the north."
"If my brother will not go with me, I will go with my brother," said the Conestoga.
CHAPTER XXIXTHE BRIDGE OF ROCK
For twenty days they had followed the Ricahecrians. At times the trail lay before them so plain that even Landless's unaccustomed eyes could read it; at times he saw nothing but untrodden ways—no sign to show that man had been in that wilderness since the beginning of the world—but the Susquehannock saw and went steadily onward; at times they lost it altogether, to find it hours, days afterwards.... It had led them westward, then south to the banks of the Powhatan, then westward again. At first they had to avoid an occasional clearing with the cabin of a pioneer rising from it, or some frontier post, or the village of one of the Powhatan tribes, but that time had long past. The world of the white man was far behind them, so far that it might have been another planet for all it threatened them; the Indian villages were few and far between and inhabited by tribes whose tongue the Susquehannock did not know. For the most part they gave these villages a wide berth, but sometimes in the quiet of the evening they entered one, and were met by the eldest man and conducted to the stranger's lodging, where slim brown maidens came to them with platters of maize cakes and nuts and broiled fish, and the warriors and old men gathered around, marveling at the color of the one and conversing with theother in stately gesture. Sometimes, crouched in a tangle of vines or behind the giant bole of some fallen tree they watched a war party file past, noiseless, like shadows, disappearing in the blue haze that filled the distant aisles of the forest. Once a band of five attacked them, coming upon them in their sleep. Three they killed and the others fled. They dipped into the next stream that crossed their path and swam up it a long distance, then emerged and went their way, tolerably confident that they had covered their trail. Sometimes they struggled for hours through coverts of wild grape, thick with fruit; sometimes they walked for miles down endless colonnades of pine trees, where the needle-strewn ground was like ice for slipperiness, and the blue sky gleamed faintly through the far away tree tops. The wind in the pines rose and fell in long, measured cadences. It made the only sound there, for the birds forgot to sing and the insect world kept silence in those vast and sombre cathedrals.
On the afternoon of the twentieth day they came to a halt upon the bank of a small stream that fell purling over a long, smooth slide of limestone into the river. Mountains had loomed into existence in the last few days. In the distance they made a vast blue rampart which seemed to prop the western skies. When the sun sank behind them it was as though a mighty warrior had entered his fortress. Nearer at hand they fell into lofty hills, over which the forest undulated in unbroken green. In front the river made a sudden turn and was lost to sight, disappearing through a frowning gateway of gray cliffs as completely as though it had plunged into the bowels of the earth.... Landless sat down on the bank of thestream above the fall and, chin in hand, gazed at the mountain-piled horizon. The Indian, leaning against a great sycamore whose branches trailed in the water, watched him attentively.
"My brother is tired," he said at last.
Landless shook his head. The Susquehannock paused, still with his eyes upon the other's face, and then went on, "We have searched and have found nothing. There have been five suns since the great rains blotted out the trail. My brother has done very much. Let him say so and we will go back to the falls of the far west and thence to the northward, to the pleasant river, to Monakatocka's people, to the graves of his fathers. And my brother will be welcome to the Conestogas, and he shall be made one of them, and become a great warrior, and both he and Monakatocka will forget the evil days when they were slaves—until they meet a paleface from the great water. My brother has but to speak."
"If these hills in front of us," said Landless with gloomy emphasis, "were higher than the Alps, I would climb them. If behind them there were another range, and then another, and another, if we looked upon the nearest wave of an ocean of mountains, I would climb them all. If they are before us, sooner or later I shall find them. But not to know that they are before us! To know that they may be to the north of us, may be to the south of us! that we may even have passed them! it is maddening!"
"We have not passed them," said his companion slowly, "for—" he stopped abruptly, broke off a bough from a sumach bush beside him, and falling on his knees, leaned far out over the stream. There were many tiny cascades in the brook with little eddiesbelow them where sticks and leaves circled gaily around before they were drawn on to the next miniature fall, and into one of these eddies the Indian plunged the bough. The next moment he drew it carefully towards him, something white clinging to one of its twigs. It proved to be a fragment of lace—not more than an inch or two—and it might have been torn from a woman's kerchief. Landless's hand closed over it convulsively.
"It came down the stream!" he cried.
The other nodded. "Monakatocka saw it slip over that fall. It has not been in the water long."
"Then—my God!—they are close at hand! They are up this stream!"
The Indian nodded again with a look of satisfaction upon his bronze features. Landless raised his eyes to the cloudless blue, and his lips moved. Then, without a word he turned his face up the mountain stream, and the Indian followed him.
For an hour they crept warily onward, following the stream in its capricious wanderings. A broken trailer of grapevine, a pine cone that had been crushed under foot, the print of a moccasin on a bit of muddy ground told them that they had indeed recovered the long lost trail. They moved silently, sometimes creeping on hands and knees through the long grass where the bank was barren of bushes, sometimes gliding swiftly through a friendly covert of alder or sumach. The hills closed in upon them, and became more precipitous. The stream made another bend, and they were in a ravine where the water flowed over a rocky bed between banks too steep to afford them secure foothold. The Susquehannock swung himself down into the shallow water, and motioned to his companionto do likewise. "Monakatocka smells fire," he whispered.
A moment later they rounded an overhanging, fern-clad rock, and came full upon that at which Landless stared with a sharp intake of his breath, and which even his impassive guide greeted with a long-drawn "Ugh!" of amazement.
Towards them brawled the impetuous stream through a wonderful gorge. The precipitous hillsides, clothed with a stately growth of oak and chestnut, changed suddenly into a sheer and awful mass of rock. On either side of the stream towered up the mighty walls until, two hundred feet above the water, they swept together, spanning the chasm with a majestic arch. Great trees crowned it; trailers of grape and clematis made the span one emerald; below, through the vast opening, shone the evening sky with little, rosy clouds floating across it. A bird, flashing downwards from the far-off trees, showed black against the carnation of the heavens.
The Indian uttered another "Ugh!" then stole forward a pace or two, stood still, and waited for the other to come up. "My brother sees," he said simply.
From a covert of arbor-vitae they looked directly up the creek and through the archway. Beneath it, and for a few yards on the hither side, the water flowed in a narrower channel, leaving a little strip of boulder-strewn shore. With a leap of his heart Landless saw, rising from this shore, the blue smoke of a newly kindled fire, and squatting about it, or flitting from place to place, a dozen or more dark figures. At a little distance from the fire, close against the wall of rock, had been hastily constructed a rudeshed or arbor. As he gazed at this frail shelter, he saw the flutter of a white gown pass the opening which served as door.
"Night soon," said Monakatocka at his ear. "Then will my brother see one Iroquois cheat all these Algonquin dogs."
They drew further back into the dense shade of the overhanging boughs. A large flat boulder afforded them a secure resting-place, and drawing their feet from the stream, the two curled themselves up side by side upon its friendly surface. The Indian took some slices of venison from his wallet, and they made a slender meal, then set themselves patiently to await the night and the time for action. The tiny encampment was hidden from them by the thick boughs, but through the screen of delicate, aromatic leaves they could see the bridge of rock. Around them was the stir and murmur of the summer afternoon—the wind in the trees, the whir of insects, the song of birds, the babble of the water—but far above, where the great arch cut the sky, the world seemed asleep. The trees dreamed, resting against the crimson and gold of the heavens. The Indian's appreciation of the wonders of nature was limited—with a grunted, "All safe: wake before moonrise," he turned upon his side, and was asleep.
His Anglo-Saxon neighbor watched the pensive beauty of the evening with a softened heart. The glory behind the tremendous rock faded, giving place to tender tints of pearl and amethyst. Above the distant tree tops swam the evening star. In the half light the shadowy forest on either hand blended with the great bridge carved by some mysterious force from the everlasting hills. Together they made a mountainof darkness pierced by a titanic gateway through which one looked into heavenly spaces. The chant of the wind swelled louder. It was like the moan of distant breakers. The night fell, and the stars came out one by one until the blue vault was thickly studded. Up and down the sides of the ravine flickered millions of fireflies. Their restless glimmer wearied the eyes. Landless raised his to the one star, large, calm and beautiful, and prayed, then thought of all that star shone upon that night—most of the white town of his boyhood, lying fair and still like a dream town, above a measureless, slumberous sea. A great calm was upon him. Toil and danger were past; passionate hope and settled despair were past. That he would do what he had come this journey to do, he now had no doubt,—would not have doubted had there been encamped between him and the frail shed built against the rock all the Indians this side of the South Sea.
The stars that shone through the great archway slowly paled, the stream became dull silver, and down the towering darkness on either hand fell a soft and tremulous light like a veil of white gauze. Landless put out his hand to waken the sleeping Indian, and touched bare rock. A moment later the branches before him parted. He had heard no sound, but there, within three feet of him, were the high features and the bold eyes of the Susquehannock.
"Monakatocka has been to the great rock," he said in a guttural whisper. "The Algonquin dogs sleep sound, for they do not know that a Conestoga is on their trail. They have camped beneath the rock three days, and they will move on the morrow. They have built a shed for the maiden against the rock. About it lie the Ricahecrians, the moccasins of one touchingthe scalp lock of another. They keep no watch, but they have scattered dried twigs over all the ground. Tread on them, and the god of the Algonquins will make them speak very loud. But a Conestoga is cunning. Monakatocka has found a way."
"Then let us go," said Landless, rising.
As they crept from out their leafy covert, the moon appeared over the tree-tops far above them, flooding the glen with light, and making a restless shimmer of diamonds of the rushing brook. The two men moved warily up the stream, setting their feet with care upon the slippery stones. Once Landless stumbled, but caught at a huge boulder, and saved himself from falling, sending, however, a stone splashing down into the water. They drew themselves up within the shadow of the rock, and listened with straining ears, but there came no answering sound save the cry of a whip-poor-will, and they went on their way. When they were within a hundred feet of the encampment, the Indian left the stream, crossed the strip of earth between it and the cliff, and pointed to a broken and uneven line that ran at a height of some five feet from the ground along the face of the cliff. Landless looked and saw a very narrow ledge, a mere projection here and there of jagged and broken rock, a pathway perilous and difficult as might well be imagined. So narrow and insignificant it looked, such a mere seam along the vast wall, that a white man passing through the ravine might never have noticed it.
"It is our path," said the Susquehannock. "It leads above the heads of these dogs and their crackling twigs, straight to where lies the maiden."
Without a word Landless caught at the stem of a cedar projecting from a fissure in the rock, and swunghimself up to the cleft. The Indian followed, and with silence and caution they commenced their dangerous journey. Landless was no novice at such work. When a boy, he had often rounded the face of frowning white cliffs with the sea breaking in thunder a hundred feet below. Then a bird's nest had been the prize of high daring, death the penalty of dizziness or a misstep. Now, although not two yards below him was the solid earth, a misstep would send him crashing down to a more fearful doom—but the prize! A light was in his eyes as he crept nearer and nearer to the shed built against the rock.
They passed the smouldering embers of a large fire, and came full upon the circle of sleeping Indians. They lay in the moonlight like fallen statues, their bronze limbs motionless, their high, stern features impassive as death. From their belts came the glint of tomahawk and scalping knife, and beside each warrior lay his bow and quiver of arrows. Only one man had a gun. It lay in the hollow of his arm, its barrel making a gleaming line against his dark skin. The skin was not so dark as was that of the other recumbent figures, and the face, flung back and pillowed on the arm, was not the face of an Indian. It was Luiz Sebastian. He lay somewhat nearer to the shed than did the Ricahecrians, and directly in front of the doorway; as Landless paused above him, he turned and laughed in his sleep.
Slowly and cautiously Landless swung himself down from the ledge, his moccasined feet touching ground that was clear of pebbles and beyond the line of twigs. He glanced back to see the gigantic figure of the Susquehannock, standing upright against the rock, knife in hand, and watchful eyes roving from one to theother of the sleeping warriors, then stepped lightly across the body of the mulatto, and entered the hut.
Within it the darkness was gross. Pausing a moment to accustom his eyes to the blackness, there came to him from without the hoot of an owl. It was the signal agreed upon between him and his companion, and he wheeled to face the danger it announced.
The lithe, yellow figure that had lain in front of the doorway had waked. As Landless gazed, it rose to its knees, then with a quick, cat-like grace to its feet, stretched itself, cast a listening look around the sleeping circle, and laid its gun softly down, then with a noiseless step and a smile upon its evil face, it too entered the hut.
Landless waited until the mulatto was well across the threshold, and then sprang upon him, dragging him to the ground, where he held him with his knee against his chest. He writhed and struggled, but the white man was the stronger, and held him down; he tried to cry out, but the other's hands were at his throat choking the life from him. Putting all his strength into one hand, Landless felt with the other for his knife. The movement brought his face forward into the shaft of moonlight that trembled through the opening. "You!" said the eyes of the mulatto, and his clutching hands tore at the hand about his throat. The hand pressed closer, and with the other Landless struck the knife into the yellow bosom. When the writhing form was quite still, he rose from his knees, and looked down upon the evil face flung back to meet the moonlight. The struggle had lasted but a minute, and had been without sound—not a sleeping savage had stirred. But he now heard frightened breathing within the hut. By thistimehis eyes wereaccustomed to the darkness, and he made out something white niched into the corner opposite. As he advanced towards it, it started away, and would have brushed past him, but he seized it. "Madam!" he whispered. "Do not scream. It is I, Godfrey Landless."
In the darkness he felt the rigor of terror leave the form which he held. It swayed against him, and the head fell back across his arm. He raised the fainting figure, and stepping across the body of the mulatto issued from the shed, to find Monakatocka standing beside the entrance, knife in hand, and watchfully regardful of the sleeping Ricahecrians.