I know not if my Lord Culpeper had any inkling of what was about to
happen. Some were there who always considered him to be one who
feathered his own nest with as little risk as might be, regardless
of those over and under him, and one who saw when it behooved him to
do so, and was blind when it served his own ends, even with the
glare of a happening in his eyes. And many considered that he was in
England when it seemed for his own best good without regard to the
king or the colony, but that matters not, at this date. In truth his
was a ticklish position, between two fires. If he remained in
Virginia it was at great danger to himself, if he sided not with the
insurgents; and on the other hand there was the certainty of his
losing his governorship and his lands, and perhaps his head, if he
went to tobacco-cutting with the rest of us. He was without doubt
better off on the high sea, which is a sort of neutral place of
nature, beyond the reach for the time, of mobs or sceptres, unless
one falls in with a black flag. At all events, off sailed my Lord
Culpeper, leaving Sir Henry Chichely as Lieutenant-Governor, and
verily he might as well have left a weather-cock as that
well-intentioned but pliable gentleman. Give him but a head wind
over him and he would wax fierce to order, and well he served the
government in the Bacon uprising, but leave him to his own will and
back and forth he swung with great bluster but no stability. None of
the colony, least of all the militia, stood in awe of Sir Henry
Chichely, nor regarded him as more than a figure-head of authority
when my Lord Culpeper had set sail.
The morning of the day after the sailing, the people of Jamestown
whom one happened to meet on the road had a strange expression of
countenance, and I doubt not that a man skilled in such matters
could have read as truly the signs of an eruption of those forces of
human passion in the hearts of men, as of an earthquake by the
belching forth of smoke and fire from the mouth of a volcano.
Everybody looked at his neighbour with either a glare of doubt and
wariness, or with covert understanding, and some there were who had
a pale seriousness of demeanour from having a full comprehension of
the situation and of what might come of it, though not in the least
drawing back on that account, and some were all flushed and glowing
with eagerness and laughing from sheer delight in danger and daring,
and some were like stolid beasts of the field watching the eye of a
master, ready at its wink to leap forth to the strain of labour or
fury. Many of these last were of our English labourers, whom I held
in some sort of pity, and doubt as to whether it were just and
merciful to draw them into such a stew kettle, for in truth many of
them had not a pound of tobacco to lose by the Navigation Act, and
no more interest in the uprising than had the muskets stacked in
Major Robert Beverly's first wife's tomb. Yet, I pray, what can men
do without tools, and have not tools some glory of their own which
we take small account of, and yet which may be a recompense to them?
Nevertheless, I saw with some misgivings these honest fellows
plodding their ways, ready to leap to their deaths maybe at the word
of command, when it did not concern their own interests in the
least, and especially when they had not that order of mind which
enables a man to have a delight in glory and in serving those broad
ends of humanity which include a man to his own loss.
Early that morning the news spread that Colonel Kemp of the
Gloucester militia and a troop of horse and foot had been sent
secretly against some plant-cutters in Gloucester County who had
arisen before us, and had taken prisoners some twenty-two caught in
the act. The news of the sending came first, I think, from Major
Robert Beverly, the Clerk of the Assembly, who had withheld the
knowledge for some time, inasmuch as he disliked the savour of
treachery, but being in his cups that night before at Barry Upper
Branch, out it came. 'Twas Dick Barry who told me. I fell in with
him and Captain Jaynes on the Jamestown road that morning. "Colonel
Kemp hath ridden against the rioters in Gloucester with foot and
horse, by order of the general court, and Beverly hath been knowing
to it all this time," he said gloomily. Then added that a man who
served on two sides had no strength for either, and one who had
raised his hand against Bacon had best been out of the present
cause. But Captain Jaynes swore with one of his broadsides of mighty
oaths that 'twas best as 'twas, since Beverly had some influence
over the militia, and that he was safe enough not to turn traitor
with his great store of tobacco at stake, and that should the court
proceed to extremes with the Gloucester plant-cutters, such a flame
would leap to life in Virginia as would choke England with the smoke
of its burning.
We knew no more than the fact of the sending, but that afternoon
came riding into Jamestown colonel Kemp with a small body of horse,
having left the rest and the foot in Gloucester, there to suppress
further disorder, and with him, bound to their saddles, some
twenty-two prisoners, glaring about them with defiant faces and
covered with dust and mire, and some with blood.
Something there was about that awful glow of red on face, on hand,
or soaking through homespun sleeve or waistcoat, that was like the
waving of a battle-flag or the call of a trumpet. Such a fury awoke
in us who looked on, as never was, and the prisoners had been then
and there torn from their horses and set free, had it not been for
the consideration that undue precipitation might ruin the main
cause. But the sight of human blood shed in a righteous cause is the
spur of the brave, and goads him to action beyond all else. Quite
silent we kept when that troop rode past us on their way to prison,
though we were a gathering crowd not only of some of the best of
Virginia, but some of her worst and most uncontrolled of indenture
white slaves, and convicts, but something there must have been in
our looks which gave heart to those who rode bound to their horses,
for one and then another turned and looked back at us, and I trow
got some hope.
However, before the night fairly fell, twenty of the prisoners, upon
giving assurance of penitence, were discharged, and but two, the
ringleaders, were committed and were in the prison. The twenty-two,
being somewhat craven-hearted, and some of them indisposed by
wounds, were on their ways homeward when we were afield.
We waited for the moon to be up, which was an hour later that night.
I was all equipped in good season, and was stealing forth secretly,
lest any see me, for I wished not to alarm the household, nor if
possible to have any one aware of what I was about to do, that they
might be acquit of blame through ignorance, when I was met in the
threshold of an unused door by Mary Cavendish. And here will I say,
while marvelling at it greatly, that the excitement of a great
cause, which calls for all the enthusiasm and bravery of a man,
doth, while it not for one moment alters the truth and constancy of
his love, yet allay for the time his selfish thirst for it. While I
was ready as ever to die for Mary Cavendish, and while the thought
of her was as ever in my inmost soul, yet that effervescence of
warlike spirit within me had rendered me not forgetful, but somewhat
unwatchful of a word and a look of hers. And for the time being that
sad question of our estates, which forbade more than our loves, had
seemed to pale in importance before this matter of maybe the rising
or falling of a new empire. Heart and soul was I in this cause, and
gave myself the rein as I had longed to do for the cause of
Nathaniel Bacon.
But Mary met me at the northern door, which opened directly on a
locust thicket and was little used, and stood before me with her
beautiful face as white as a lily but a brave light in her eyes.
"Where go you, Harry?" she whispered.
Then I, not knowing her fully, and fearing lest I disquiet her,
answered evasively somewhat about hunting and Sir Humphrey. Some
reply of that tenor was necessary, as I was, beside my knife for the
tobacco cutting, armed to the teeth and booted to my middle. But
there was no deceiving Mary Cavendish. She seized both my hands, and
I trow for the minute, in that brave maiden soul of hers, the
selfishness of our love passed as well as with me.
"I pray thee, Harry, cut down the tobacco on Laurel Creek first,"
she whispered, "as I would, were I a man. Oh! I would I were a man!
Harry, promise me that thou wilt cut down first the tobacco on my
plantation of Laurel Creek."
But I had made up my mind to touch neither that nor the tobacco on
Drake Hill, lest in some way the women of the Cavendish family be
implicated.
"There be enough, and more than enough, for to-night," I answered,
and would have passed, but she would not let me.
"Harry," she cried, so loud that I feared for listening ears, "if
you cut not down my tobacco, then will I myself! Harry, promise me!"
No love nor fear for me was in her eyes as she looked at me, only
that enthusiasm for the cause of liberty, and I loved her better for
it, if that could be. A man or woman who is but a bond slave to love
and incapable of aught but the longing for it, is but a poor lover.
"I tell thee, Harry, cut down the plants on Laurel Creek!" she cried
again, and I answered to appease her, not daring violent
contradiction lest I rouse her to some desperate act, this wild,
young maid with Nathaniel Bacon's hair in the locket against her
heart, and as fiery blood as his in her veins, that it should come
in good time, but that I was under the leadership of others and not
my own.
"Then as soon as may be, Harry," she persisted, "for sure I should
die of shame were my plants standing and the others cut, and Harry,
sure it could not be at all, were it not for my fine gowns which the
'Golden Horn' brought over from England!"
With that she laughed, and stood aside to let me pass, but suddenly,
as I touched her in the narrow way, her mood changed, and the woman
in her came uppermost, though not to her shaking. But she caught
hold of my right arm with her two little hands and pressed her fair
cheek against my shoulder with that modest boldness of a maid when
she is assured of love, and whispered: "Harry, if the militia is
ordered out they say they will not fire, but--if thou be wounded,
Harry, 'tis I will nurse thee, and no other, and--Harry, cut all the
plants that thou art able, before they come."
Then she let me go, and I went forth thinking that here was a
helpmeet for a soldier in such times as these, and how I gloried in
her because she held her love as one with glory. Round to the stable
for my horse I stole, and it was very dark, with a soft smother of
darkness because of a heavy mist, and the moon not up, and I had
backed my horse out of his stall and was about to mount him, before
I was aware of a dark figure lurking in shadow, and made out by the
long sweep of the garments that it was a woman. I paused, and looked
intently into the shadow, where she stood so silently that she might
have deceived me had it not been for a flutter of her cloak in a
stray wind.
"Who goes there?" I called out softly, but I knew well enough. 'Tis
sometimes a stain on a man's manhood, the hatred he can bear to a
woman who is continually between him and his will, and his keen
apprehension of her as a sort of a cat under cover beside his path.
So I knew well enough it was Catherine Cavendish, and indeed I
marvelled that I had gotten thus far without meeting her. She
stepped forward with no more ado when I accosted her, and spoke, but
with great caution.
"What do you, Master Wingfield?" she whispered. "I go on my own
business, an it please you, Madam," I answered something curtly, and
I have since shamed myself with the memory of it, for she was a
woman.
"It pleases me not, nor my grandmother, that one of her household
should go forth on any errand of mystery at such a time as this,
when whispers have reached us of another insurrection," she replied.
"Master Wingfield, I demand to know, in the name of my Grandmother
Cavendish, the purpose of your riding forth in such fashion?"
"And that, Madam, I refuse to tell you," I replied, bowing low. "You
presume too greatly on your privileges," she burst out. "You think
because my grandmother holds you in such strange favour that she
seems to forget, to forget--"
"That I am a convict, Madam," I finished for her, with another low
bow.
"Finish it as you will, Master Wingfield," she said haughtily, "but
you think wrongly that she will countenance treason to the king in
her own household, and 'tis treason that is brewing to-night."
"Madam," I whispered, "if you love your grandmother and value her
safety, you will remain in ignorance of this."
Then she caught me by the arm, with such a nervous ardour that never
would I have known her for the Catherine Cavendish of late years.
"My God, Harry, you shall not go," she whispered. "I say you shall
not! I--I--will go to my grandmother. I will have the militia out.
Harry, I say you shall not go!"
But then my blood was up. "Madam," I said, "go I shall, and if you
acquaint your grandmother, 'twill be to her possible undoing, and
yours and your sister's, since the having one of the rioters in your
own household will lay you open to suspicion. Then besides, your
sister's bringing over of the arms may be traced to her if the
matter be agitated."
Then truly the feminine soul of this woman leapt to the surface with
no more ado.
"Oh, my God, Harry!" she cried out. "I care not for my grandmother,
nor my sister, nor the king, nor Nathaniel Bacon, nor aught, nor
aught--I fear, I fear--Oh, I fear lest thou be killed, Harry!"
"Lest my dead body be brought home to thy door, and the accusation
of having furnished a traitor to the king be laid to thee, Madam?" I
said, for not one whit believed I in her love for me. But she only
sobbed in a distracted fashion.
"Fear not, Madam," I said, "if the militia be out, and I fall, it
will go hard that I die before I have time to forswear myself yet
again for the sake of thy family. But, I pray thee, keep to thyself
for the sake of all."
With that I was in my saddle and rode away, for I had lingered, I
feared, too long, and as God is my witness I had no faith that
Catherine Cavendish did more than assume such interest in me for her
own ends, for love, as I conceived it, was not thus.
I hastened on my way to Barry Upper Branch, where was the
rendezvous, and on my way had to pass the house where dwelt that
woman of strange repute, Margery Key, and it was naught but a
solidity of shadow beside the road except for a glimmer of white
from the breast of her cat in the doorway. But as I live, as I rode
past, a voice came from that house, though how she knew me in that
gloom I know not.
"Good speed to thee, Master Wingfield, and the fagots that thou
didst gather for the despised and poor shall turn into blessings,
like bars of silver. That which thou hast given, hast thou forever.
Go on and fear not, and strike for liberty, and no harm shall come
nigh thee." As she spoke I saw the bent back of the poor old crone
in the doorway beside her cat, and partly because of her blessing,
and partly because, as I said before, whether witch or not, she was
aged and feeble, and ill fitted for such work, I leapt from my
saddle and gathered her another armful of fagots, and laid them on
her hearth. I left the old soul shedding such tears of gratitude
over that slight service and calling down such childish blessings
upon my head that I began to have little doubt that she was no
witch, but only a poor and solitary old woman, which to my mind is
the forlornest state of humanity. How a man fares without those of
his own flesh and blood I can understand, since a man must needs
have some comfort in his own endurance of hardships, but what a
woman can do without chick or child, and no solace in her own
dependency, I know not. Verily I know not that such be to blame if
they turn to Satan himself for a protector, as they suspected
Margery Key of doing.
I rode away from Margery Key's, having been delayed but a moment,
and the quaver of her blessings was yet in my ears, when verily I
did see that which I have never understood. As I live, there passed
from the house of that ne'er-do-well next door, which was closed
tightly as if to assure folk that all therein were sound asleep, a
bright light like a torch, but no man carried it, and it crossed the
road and was away over the meadows, and no man whom I saw carried
it, and it waved in the wind like a torch streaming back, and I knew
it for a corpse candle. And that same night the man who dwelt in
that house was slain while pulling up the tobacco plants.
I rode fast, marvelling a little upon this strange sight, yet,
though marvelling, not afraid, for things that I understand not, and
that seem to savour of something outside the flesh, have always
rather aroused me to rage as of one who was approached by other than
the given rules of warfare rather than fear. I have always argued
that an apparition should attack only his own kind, and hath no
right to leave his own battlefield for ours, when we be at a
disadvantage by our lack of understanding as to weapons. So if I had
time I would have ridden after that corpse candle and gotten, if I
could, a sight of the bearer had he been fiend or spook, but I knew
that I had none to lose. So I rode on hard to Barry Upper Branch.
There was an air of mystery about the whole place that night, though
it were hard to see the use of it. Whereas, generally speaking,
there was a broad blazon of light from all the windows often to the
revealing of strange sights within, the shutters were closed, and
only by the lines of gold at top and bottom would one have known the
house was lit at all. And whereas there were always to be seen
horses standing openly before the porch, this night one knew there
were any about only by the sound of their distant stamping. And yet
this was the night when all mystery of plotting was to be resolved
into the wind of action.
I entered and found a great company assembled in the hall, and all
equipped with knives for the cutting of the tobacco plants, and
arms, for the militia, as was afterwards proved, was an uncertain
quantity. One minute the soldiers were for the government, when the
promises as to their pay were specious, and the next, when the pay
was not forthcoming, for the rioters, and there was no stability
either for the one cause or the other in them.
There was a hushed greeting from one or two who stood
nearest--Sir Humphrey Hyde among them--as I entered, then
the work went on. Major Robert Beverly it was who was taking the
lead of matters, though it was not fully known then or afterward,
but sure it can do no harm at this late date to divulge the truth,
for it was a glorious cause, and to the credit of a man's honour, if
not to his purse, and his standing with the government.
Major Beverly stood at the head of the hall with a roll of parchment
in his hand, wherefrom he read the names of those present, whom he
was dividing into parties for the purpose of the plant-cutting,
esteeming that the best plan to pursue rather than to march out
openly in a great mob. Thus the whole company there assembled was
divided into small parties, and each put under a leader, who was to
give directions as to the commencement of the work of destruction.
My party was headed by Capt. Noel Jaynes, something to my
discontent, for the hardest luck of choosing in the world to my mind
is that of choosing a leader, for the leader is in himself a very
gall-stone. Never had it pleased me to follow any man's bidding, and
in one way only could I comfort myself and retain my respect of
self, and that was by the consideration that I followed by my own
will, and so in one sense led myself.
When at last we set forth, some of us riding, and some on foot, with
that old pirate captain to the front hunched to his saddle, for he
never could sit a horse like a landsman, but clung to him as if he
were a swaying mast, and worked his bridle like a wheel with the
result of heavy lunges to right or left, I felt for the first time
since I had come to Virginia like my old self.
We hurried along the moonlit road, then struck into a bridle-path,
being bound for Major Robert Beverly's plantation, he being supposed
to know naught of it, and indeed after his issuing of orders he had
ridden to Jamestown, to see Sir Henry Chichely, and keep him quiet
with a game at piquet, which he much affected.
As we rode along in silence, if any man spoke, Captain Jaynes
quieted him with a great oath smothered in his chest, as if by a bed
of feathers, and presently I became aware that there were more of us
than when we started. We swarmed through the woods, our company
being swelled invisibly from every side, and not only men but women
were there. Both Mistress Allgood and Mistress Longman were pressing
on with their petticoats tucked up, and to my great surprise both of
the black women who lived at Barry Upper Branch. They slunk along
far to the rear, with knives gleaming like white fire at their
girdles, keeping well out of sight of the Barry brothers, who were
both of our party, and looking for all the world like two female
tigers of some savage jungle in search of prey, since both moved
with a curious powerful crouch of secrecy as to her back and hips,
and wary roll of fierce eyes.
When we were fairly in the open of Major Beverly's plantation some
few torches were lit, and then I saw that we were indeed a good
hundred strong, and of the party were that old graybeard who had
played Maid Marion on Mayday, and many of the Morris dancers, and
those lusty lads and lasses, and they had been at the cider this
time as at the other, but all had their wits at their service.
Not a light was in Major Beverly's great house, not a stir in the
slave quarters. One would have sworn they were all asleep or dead.
But Captain Jaynes called a halt, and divided us into rank and file
like a company of reapers, and to work we went on the great tobacco
fields.
I trow it seemed a shame, as it ever does, to invoke that terrible
force of the world which man controls, whether to his liberty or his
slavery 'tis the question, and bring destruction upon all that fair
inflorescence of life. But sometimes death and destruction are the
means to life and immortality. Those great fields of Major Robert
Beverly's lay before us in the full moonlight, overlapping with the
lusty breadth of the new leaves gleaming with silver dew, and upon
them we fell. We hacked and cut, we tore up by the roots. In a trice
we were bedlam loosened--that is, the ruder part of us. Some of
us worked with no less fury, but still with some sense of our own
dignity as destroyers over destruction. But the rabble who had
swelled our ranks were all on fire with rage, and wasted themselves
as well as the tobacco. They filled the air with shouts and wild
screams and peals of laughter. That fiercest joy of the world, the
joy of destruction, was upon them, and sure it must have been one of
the chiefest of the joys of primitive man, for all in a second it
was as if the centuries of civilisation and Christianity had gone
for naught, and the great gulf which lies back of us to the past had
been leapt. One had doubted it not, had he seen those old men
tearing up the tobacco plants, their mouths dribbling with a slow
mutter of curses, for they had drunk much cider, and being aged, and
none too well fed, it had more hold on them than on some of the
others; and to see the women lost to all sense of decency, with
their petticoats girded high on account of the dew, striding among
the plants with high flings of stalwart legs, then slashing right
and left with an uncertainty of fury which threatened not only
themselves but their neighbours as well as the tobacco, and
shrieking now and then, regardless of who might hear, "Down with the
king!"
Often one cut a finger, but went on with blood flowing, and their
hair begun to fly loose, and they smeared their faces with their cut
hands, and as for the two black women, they pounced upon those green
plants with fierce swashes of their gleaming knives, and though they
could have sensed little about the true reason for it all, worked
with a fury of savagery which needed no motive only its first
impetus of motion.
Captain Jaynes rode hither and thither striving to keep the mob in
order, and enjoining silence upon them, and now and then lashing out
with his long riding whip, but he had set forces in motion which he
could not stop. Fire and flood and wind and the passions of men,
whether for love or rage, are beyond the leading of them who invoke
them, being the instruments of the gods.
Sir Humphrey Hyde, who was beside me, slashing away at the plants,
whispered: "My God, Harry, how far will this fire which we have
kindled spread?" but not in fear so much as amazement.
And I, bringing down a great ring of the green leaves, replied, and
felt as I spoke as if some other than I had my tongue and my voice:
"Maybe in the end, before it hath quite died out, to the destroying
of tyranny and monarchy, and the clearing of the fields for a new
government of equality and freedom."
But Sir Humphrey stared at me.
"Sure," he said, "it can do no more than to force the king to see
that his colony hath grown from infancy to manhood, and hath an arm
to be respected, and compel him to repeal the Navigation Act. What
else, Harry?"
Then I, speaking again as if some other moved my tongue, replied
that none could say what matter a little fire kindleth, but those
that came after us might know the result of that which we that night
begun.
But Sir Humphrey shook his head.
"If but Nat Bacon were alive!" he sighed. "No leader have we, Harry.
Oh, Harry, if thou wert not a convict! Captain Jaynes is sure out of
his element in defending the rights of the oppressed, and should be
on his own quarter-deck with his cutlass in hand and his
rapscallions around him, slaying and robbing, to be in full feather.
Naught can he do here. Lord, hear those women shriek! Why did they
let women come hither, Harry? Sure Nick Barry is in his cups. Not
thus would matters have been were Bacon alive. The women would have
been at home in their beds, and no man in liquor at work, for I
trust not the militia. Would Captain Bacon were alive, as he would
have been, had he not been foully done to death."
This he said believing, as did many, that Bacon's death was due to
treachery and not fever, nor, as many of his enemies affirmed, from
over-indulgence in strong spirits, and I must say that I,
remembering Bacon's greatness of enthusiasm and fixedness of
purpose, was of the same belief.
As he spoke I seemed to see that dead hero as he would have looked
in our midst with the moonlight shining on the stern whiteness of
his face, and that look of high command in his eyes which none dared
gainsay. And I answered again and again, as with an impulse not my
own, "And maybe Bacon in truth leads us still, if not by his own
chosen ways, to his own ends."
"Truly, Harry," Sir Humphrey agreed, "had it not been for Bacon, I
doubt if we had been at this night's work."
All the time we talked, we advanced in our slashing swath up the
field, and all the time that chorus of wild laughter and shrieks of
disloyalty kept time with the swash of the knives, and all the time
rose Captain Jaynes' storm of fruitless curses and commands, and now
and then the stinging lash of his riding whip, and also Dick
Barry's. As for Nick Barry, he lay overcome with sleep on a heap of
the cut tobacco.
And all the time not a light shone in any of Major Robert Beverly's
windows, and the slave quarters were as still as the tomb.
The store of ammunition in the tomb had been secretly removed and
portioned out to the plant-cutters at nightfall.
It was no slight task for even a hundred to cut such a wealth of
tobacco as Major Robert Beverly had planted, work as fast as they
might, and proceed over the fields in a fierce crawl of destruction,
like an army of locusts, and finally they begun to wax impatient.
And finally up rose that termagant, Mistress Longman, straightening
her back with a spring as if it were whalebone, showing us her face
shameless with rage, and stained green with tobacco juice, and here
and there red with blood, for she had slashed ruthlessly. She flung
back her coarse tangle of hair, threw up her arms with a wild
hurrahing motion, and screamed out in such a volume of shrillness
that she overcapped all the rest of the tumult:
"To the stables, to the stables! Let out Major Beverly's horses, and
let them trample down the tobacco."
Then such a cry echoed her that I trow it might have proceeded from
a thousand throats instead of one hundred odd, and in spite of all
that Captain Jaynes could do, seconded by some few of us gentlemen
who rallied about him, but were helpless since we could not fire
upon our coadjutors, that mob swept into Beverly's stables, and
presently out leapt, plunging with terror, all his fine
thoroughbreds, the mob riding them about the fields in wild career.
And one of the maddest of the riders, sitting astride and flogging
her steed with a locust branch, was Mistress Longman, while her
husband vainly fled after her, beseeching her to stop, and those
around were roaring with laughter.
Then some must let out the major's hogs, and they came rooting and
tumbling with unwieldy gambols. And with this wild troop of animals,
and the mob shrieking in a frenzy of delight, and now and then a
woman in terror before the onslaught of a galloping horse, and now
and then a whole group of cutters overset by a charging hog, and up
and after him, and slaying him, and his squeals of agony, verily I
had preferred a battlefield of a different sort. And all this time
Major Robert Beverly's house stood still in the moonlight, and not a
noise from the slave quarters, and the fields were all in a pumice
of wasted plant life, and we were about to go farther when I heard
again the cry of the little child coming from a chamber window. I
trow they had given her some quieting potion or she had broken
silence before.
With all our efforts the mob could not be persuaded to return Major
Beverly's horses to his stables, which circumstance was afterward to
the saving of his neck, since it was argued that he would not have
abetted the using of his fine stud in such wise, some of the horses
being recovered and some being lamed and cut.
So out of the Beverly plantation we swept; those on horseback at a
gallop and those on foot tramping after, and above the tumult came
that farthest-reaching cry of the world--the cry of a little
child frantic with terror.
Then they were for going to another large plantation belonging to
one Richard Forster, who had gone in Ralph Drake's party, when all
of a sudden the horses of us who were leading swerved aside, and
there was Mistress Mary Cavendish on her Merry Roger, and by her
side, pulling vainly at her bridle, her sister Catherine.