II

After leaving the Indian village, Captain Percy and Diccon found

that their guides purposely delayed the march, so that they would

not reach Jamestown until just before the beginning of the attack,

when it would be too late for them to warn the English, if they

suspected anything. Percy and Diccon, in this dilemma, surprised

the Indian guides and killed them, then hurried on with all

possible speed toward Jamestown. As they hastened through the

forest, Diccon was shot by an Indian and mortally wounded; Captain

Percy remained with him until his death, and again took up the

journey, now alone and greatly fearing that he would arrive too

late.

The dusk had quite fallen when I reached the neck of land. Arriving at

the palisade that protected Jamestown, I beat upon the gate and called

to the warden to open. He did so with starting eyes. Giving him a few

words and 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, Sir Francis Wyatt.

The governor's door was open, and in the hall servingmen 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 fall to the floor with a

clatter. They shook with fright 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 on the threshold. They were all

there--the principal men of the colony, the governor, the [v]treasurer,

[v]West, [v]John Rolfe.

At sight of me 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 table, and leaned my weight upon it; for 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 Rolfe through white lips. "Are you Ralph

Percy?"

"Yes," I said, "I am Percy."

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

with shaking limbs and gasping breath; for it was the fall and wiping

out of a people of which I brought warning.

When all was told 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 naught 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.

When I awoke from the sleep into which I must have passed from that

swoon, it was to find myself lying in a room flooded with sunshine. For

a moment I lay still, 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.

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; men went to and fro, the most grimly silent, but a few

talking loudly.

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, for Indian warfare ran more to ambuscade and

surprise than to assault in the open field.

The drum beat again, and a messenger from the palisade came down the

street at a run.

"They're in the woods over against us, thicker than ants!" he cried to

West, who was coming along the way. "A boat has just drifted ashore,

with two men in it, dead and scalped!"

I looked again at the neck of land and the forest beyond, and now, as if

by magic, from the forest and up and down the river as far as the eye

could reach, rose here and there thin columns of smoke. Suddenly, as I

stared, three or four white smoke puffs, like giant flowers, started out

of the shadowy woods across the neck. Following the crack of the

muskets--fired out of pure bravado by the Indians--came the yelling of

the savages. The sound was prolonged and deep, as though issuing from

many throats.

The street, when I went out into it, was very quiet. All windows and

doors were closed and barred. The yelling from the forest had ceased for

the moment, but I knew well that it would soon begin with doubled noise.

I hurried along the street to the palisade, where all the men of

Jamestown were gathered, armed and helmeted and breast-plated, waiting

for the foe in grim silence.

Through a loophole in the gate of the palisade I looked and saw the

sandy neck joining the town to the mainland, and the deep and dark woods

beyond, the fairy mantle giving invisibility to the foe. I drew back

from my loophole and held out my hand to a woman for a 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 they carry as battering rams?"

"As scaling ladders, your honor," I replied. "It is possible 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 pales at the oncoming savages.

"Wait until they pass the blasted pine, men!" he cried. "Then give them

a hail of lead that will beat them back to the Pamunkey."

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 West leaned across Rolfe,

who stood between us, and plucked me by the sleeve.

"You've not looked at him closely," he said. "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. Rolfe's lips tightened and a sudden

pallor overspread his face. "Nantaquas?" 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 so often before at

a hot volley. But this time they were led by one who had been trained in

English steadfastness. Broken for the moment by our fire, 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 skulk behind a palisade. At all hazards, that tide

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 my men to follow, sprang

forward. Perhaps thirty came at my call; together we made for the

opening. A party of the savages in our midst 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 clamor,

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 the muskets that there was now time

to load. The remainder, hemmed about, pressed against the wall, were

fast meeting with a like fate. They stood no chance against us; we cared

not to make prisoners of them; it was a slaughter, but they had taken

the [v]initiative. They fought with the courage of despair, striving to

spring in upon us, and striking when they could with hatchet and knife.

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. We were swordsmen all. When in his desperation he would have

thrown himself upon us, we contented ourselves with keeping him at

sword's length, and at last West sent the knife in the dark hand

whirling over the palisade. Some one 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 idle 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 truly, that the lesson had been

taught, and 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. 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, and a

sunny stillness lay upon the sand and the rough-hewn wooden stakes and a

little patch of tender grass. The church bell began to ring.

The Indian out of whose path to life and freedom we had stepped glanced

from the line of lowered steel to the open gates and the forest beyond,

and understood. For a full minute he waited, not moving a muscle, still

and stately as some noble masterpiece in bronze. Then he stepped from

the shadow of the wall and moved past us, with his eyes fixed on the

forest; there was no change in the superb calm of his face. He went by

the huddled 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. 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 recognition; and then we set to work to search for

ways to reach and aid those who might be yet alive in the plantations

above and below us.

Presently there came a great noise from the watchers on the river-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 wounds to show, and

cowering women and children--all that were left of the people for miles

along the James.

Then began that strange procession that lasted throughout the afternoon

and night and into the next day, when a sloop dropped down from

[v]Henricus with the news that the English were in force there to stand

their ground, although their loss had been heavy. Hour after hour they

came as fast as sail and oar could bring them, the panic-stricken folk,

whose homes were burned, whose kindred were slain, who had themselves

escaped as by a miracle. Each boatload had the same tale to tell of

treachery, surprise, and fiendish butchery.

Before the dawning we had heard from all save the remoter settlements.

The blow had been struck and the hurt was deep. But it was not beyond

remedy, thank God! We took stern measures for our protection, and the

wound to the colony was soon healed; vengeance was meted out to those

who had set upon us in the dark and had failed to reach the heart. The

colony of Virginia had passed through its greatest trial and had

survived--for what greater ends, under Providence, I knew not.