"Yes; some four years ago, just after I came to man's estate." (He was
about nineteen.) "Stowed myself away on board the Mary Hart at
Plymouth. Made the Virginny voyage for my health, and on landing was
sold by the captain for my passage money. Time 's out in three years,
but I may begin to make my fortune before then, for--" He stopped
speaking to give Landless a sidelong glance from out his blue eyes, and
then went on.
"A voice speaks through the land, from the Potomac to the James, and
from the falls of the Far West to the great bay. What says the voice?"
Landless answered, "The voice saith, 'Comfort ye, my people, for the
hour of deliverance is at hand.'"
"It 's all right!" cried the boy gleefully. "I thought you was one of
us. We are all in the fun together!"
"We are in for a desperate enterprise that may hang every man of us,"
said Landless sternly. "I do not see the 'fun,' and I think you talk
something loudly for a conspirator."
The boy was nothing abashed. "There's none to hear us," he said. "I
can be as mum as t' other Dick's cat when there are ears around. As for
fun, Losh! what better fun than fighting!"
"You seem to have a pretty good time as it is."
"Lord, yes! Life 's jolly enough, but you see there 's mighty little
variety in it."
"I have found variety enough," said Landless.
"Oh, you 've been here only a few weeks. Wait until you've spent years,
and have gone through your experience of to-day half a dozen times, and
you will find it tame enough."
"I shall not wait to see."
"Then a man gets tired of working for another man, and hankers for the
time when he can set up for himself, especially if there 's a pretty
girl waiting for him." A tremendous sigh. "And then there 's the fun
of the rising. Losh! a man must break loose now and then!"
"For all of which good reasons you have become a conspirator?"
"Ay, it does n't pay to run away. You are hunted to death in the first
place, and well nigh whipped to death if you are caught, as you always
are. And then they double your time. This promises better."
"If it succeeds."
"Oh, it will succeed! Why should n't it with old Godwyn, who is more
cunning than a red fox or a Nansemond medicine-man, at its head?
Besides, if it fails, hanging is the worst that can happen, and we will
have had the fun of the rising."
"You are a philosopher."
"What's that?"
"A wise man. Tell me: If this plot remains undiscovered, and the rising
actually takes place, there will be upon each plantation before we can
get away an interval of confusion and perhaps violence. 'T is then that
the greatest danger will threaten the planters and their families. You
yourself have no ill feeling towards your master or his family? You
would do them no unprovoked mischief?"
The boy opened his big blue eyes, and shook his head in a vehement
negative.
"Lord bless your soul, no!" he cried. "I would n't hurt a hair of
Mistress Patricia's pretty head, nor of Mistress Lettice's wig, neither.
As for the master, if he lets us go peaceably, we 'll go with three
cheers for him! Bless you! they 're safe enough!"
The sanguine youth next announced that he smelt bacon frying, and that
his stomach cried "Trencher!" and started off in a lope for the
quarters, now only a few yards distant. Landless followed more
sedately, and reached his cabin without being observed by the overseer.
*CHAPTER XII*
*A DARK DEED*
Three weeks passed, weeks in which Landless saw the mender of nets some
eight times in all, making each visit at night, stealthily and under
constant danger of detection. Thrice he had assisted at conferences of
the Oliverians from the neighboring plantations, who now, by virtue of
his descent, his intimacy with Godwyn, and his very apparent powers,
accepted him as a leader. Upon the first of these occasions he had set
his case before them in a few plain, straightforward words, and they
believed him as Godwyn had done, and he became in their eyes, not a
convict, but, as he in truth was, an Oliverian like themselves, and a
sufferer for the same cause. The remaining interviews had been between
him and Godwyn alone. In the lonely hut on the marsh, beneath starlight
or moonlight, the two had held much converse, and had grown to love each
other. The mender of nets, though possessed of a calm and high serenity
of nature that defied trials beneath which a weaker soul had sunk, was a
man of many sorrows; he had the wisdom, too, of years and experience,
and he sympathized with, soothed, and counseled his younger yoke-fellow
with a parental tenderness that was very grateful to the other's more
ardent, undisciplined, and deeply wounded spirit.
Upon the night of their eighth meeting they held a long and serious
consultation. Affairs were in such train that little remained to be
done, but to set the day for the rising, and to send notice by many
devious and underground ways to the Oliverian captains scattered
throughout the Colony. Landless counseled immediate action, the firing
of the fuse at once by starting the secret intelligence which would
spread like wildfire from plantation to plantation. Then would the mine
be sprung within the week. There was nothing so dangerous as delay, when
any hour, any moment might bring discovery and ruin.
Godwyn was of a different opinion. It was then August, the busiest and
most unhealthy season of the year, when the servants and slaves,
weakened by unremitting toil, were succumbing by scores to the fever. It
was the time when the masters looked for disaffection, when the
overseers were most alert, when a general watchfulness pervaded the
Colony. The planters stayed at home and attended to their business, the
trainbands were vigilant, the servant and slave laws were construed with
a harshness unknown at other seasons of the year. There were few ships
in harbor compared with the number which would assemble for their fall
lading a month later, and Godwyn counted largely upon the seizure of the
ships. In a month's time the tobacco would be largely in,--a weighty
consideration, for tobacco was money, and the infant republic must have
funds. The ships would be in harbor, and their sailors ready for
anything that would rid them of their captains; the heat and sickness of
the summer would be abated; the work slackened, and discipline relaxed.
The danger of discovery was no greater now than it had been all along,
and the good to be won by biding their time might be inestimable. The
danger was there, but they would face it, and wait,--say until the
second week in September.
Landless acquiesced, scarcely convinced, but willing to believe that the
other knew whereof he spoke, and conscious, too, that his own impatience
of the yoke which galled his spirit almost past endurance might incline
him to a reckless and disastrous haste.
It was past midnight when he rose to leave the hut on the marsh. Godwyn
took up his stick. "I will walk with you to the banks of the creek," he
said. "'T is a feverish night, and I have an aching head. The air will
do me good, and I will then sleep."
The young man gave him his arm with a quiet, protecting tenderness that
was very dear to the mender of nets, and leaning upon it, he limped
through the fifty feet of long grass to the border of the creek.
"Shall I not wait to help you back?" asked Landless.
"No," said the other, with his peculiarly sweet and touching smile. "I
will sit here awhile beneath the stars and say my hymn of praise to the
Creator of Night. You need not fear for me; my trusty stick will carry
me safely back. Go, lad, thou lookest weary enough thyself, and should
be sleeping after thy long day of toil."
"I am loth to leave you to-night," said Landless.
Godwyn smiled. "And I am always loth to see you go, but it were selfish
to keep you listening to a garrulous, wakeful old man, when your young
frame is in sore need of rest. Good-night, dear lad."
Landless gave him his hands. "Good-night," he said.
He stood below the other at the foot of the low bank to which was moored
his stolen boat. Godwyn stooped and kissed him upon the forehead. "My
heart is tender to-night, lad," he said. "I see in thee my Robert.
Last night I dreamed of him and of his mother, my dearly loved and
long-lost Eunice, and ah! I sorrowed to awake!"
Landless pressed his hand in silence, and in a moment the water widened
between them as Landless bent to his oars and the crazy little bark shot
out into the middle of the stream. At the entrance of the first
labyrinthine winding he turned and looked back to see Godwyn standing
upon the bank, the moonlight silvering his thin hair and high serene
brow. In the mystic white light, against the expanse of solemn heaven,
he looked a vision, a seer or prophet risen from beneath the sighing
grass. He waved his hand to Landless, saying in his quiet voice, "Until
to-morrow!" The boat made the turn, and the lonely figure and the hut
beyond it vanished, leaving only the moonlight, the wash and lap of
water, and the desolate sighing of the marsh grass.
There were many little channels and threadlike streams debouching from
the main creek, and separated from it by clumps and lines of partially
submerged grass, growing in places to the height of reeds. While
passing one of these clumps it occurred to Landless that the grass
quivered and rustled in an unusual fashion. He rested upon his oars and
gazed at it curiously, then stood up, and parting the reeds, looked
through into the tiny channel upon the other side. There was nothing to
be seen, and the rustling had ceased. "A heron has its nest there, or a
turtle plunged, shaking the reeds," said Landless to himself, and went
his way.
Some three hours later he was roused from the heavy sleep of utter
fatigue by the voice of the overseer. Bewildered, he raised himself
upon his elbow to stare at Woodson's grim face, framed in the doorway
and lit by the torch held by Win-Grace Porringer, who stood behind him.
"You there, you Landless!" cried the overseer, impatiently. "You sleep
like the dead. Tumble out! You and Porringer are to go to Godwyn's
after that new sail for the Nancy. Sir Charles Carew has taken it into
his head to run over to Accomac, and he 's got to have a spick and span
white rag to sail under. Hurry up, now! He wants to start by sun up,
and I clean forgot to send for it last night. You 're to be back within
the hour, d'ye hear? Take the four-oared shallop. There's the key,"
and the overseer strode away, muttering something about patched sails
being good enough for Accomac folk.
Landless and the Muggletonian stumbled through the darkness to the wharf
behind the quarters, where they loosed the shallop, and in it shot
across the inlet towards the mouth of the creek.
"I will row," said the Muggletonian with grim kindness; "you look worn
out. I suppose you were out last night?"
Landless nodded, and the other bent to the oars with a will that sent
them rapidly across the sheet of water. A cold and uncertain light
began to stream from the ashen east, and the air was dank and heavy with
the thick mist that wrapped earth and water like a shroud. It swallowed
up the land behind them, and through it the nearer marshes gloomed
indistinctly, dark patches upon the gray surface of the water. The
narrow creek was hard to find amidst the universal dimness. The
Muggletonian rowed slowly, peering about him with small, keen eyes. At
length with a grunt of satisfaction he pointed to a pale streak dividing
two masses of gray, and had turned the boat's head towards it, when
through the stillness they caught the sound of oars. The next moment a
boat glided from the creek and began to skirt the shores of the inlet,
hugging the banks and moving slowly and stealthily. It was still so
dark that they could tell nothing more than that it held one man.
"Now, who is that?" said the Muggletonian. "And what has he been doing
up that creek?"
"Hail him," Landless replied.
Porringer sent a low halloo across the water, but if the man heard he
made no sign. The boat, one of the crazy dugouts of which every
plantation had store, held on its stealthy way, but being over close to
the bank presently ran upon a sand bar. Its occupant was forced to rise
to his feet in order to shove it off. He stood upright but a moment, but
in that moment, and despite the partial darkness, Landless recognized
the misshapen figure.
"It is the convict, Roach!" he exclaimed.
"Ay," said the Muggletonian, "and an ill-omened night bird he is! May
he be cursed from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head! May
there be no soundness in him! May-- What are you about, friend?" he
cried, interrupting himself. "There 's no need of two pair of oars. We
have plenty of time."
Landless bent to the second pair of oars. "He came down the creek," he
said in a voice that sounded strained and unnatural.
The other stared at him. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
"Nothing: but let us hasten."
Porringer stared, but fell in with the humor of his companion, and the
shallop, impelled by strong arms, shot into the creek and along its mazy
windings with the swiftness of a bird.
Landless rowed with compressed lips and stony face, a great fear tugging
at his heart. Porringer too was silent. The vapor hung so heavily upon
the plains of marsh level with their heads that they seemed to be
piercing a dense, low cloud. The light was growing stronger, but the
earth still lay like a corpse, livid, dumb, cold and still. There was a
chill stagnant smell in the air.
Arriving at the stake in the bank below the hut, they fastened the boat
to it, and stepping out, moved through the dense mist to where the hut
loomed indistinctly before them, looking in the blank and awful
stillness like a forlorn wreck drifting upon an infinite sea of
soundless foam.
"The door is open," said Landless.
"Ay, I see," answered Porringer. "Does he wish to die before his time
of the fever, that he lets this graveyard mist and stench creep in upon
him in his sleep?"
They spoke in low tones as though they feared to waken the sleeper whom
they had come to waken. When they reached the hut, they knocked upon the
lintel of the door and called Godwyn by name, once, twice, thrice.
There was no answer.
"Come on!" said Landless hoarsely, and entered the hut, followed by the
other. The cold twilight, filtering through the low and narrow doorway,
was powerless to dispel the darkness within. Landless groped his way to
the pallet and stooped down.
"He is not here," he said.
The Muggletonian stumbled over a sheaf of oars, sending them to the
floor with a noise that in the utter stillness, and to their strained
ears, sounded appalling.
"It's the darkness of Tophet," muttered Porringer. "If I could find his
flint and steel; there are pine knots, I know, in the corner--God in
Heaven!"
"What is it? What is the matter?" cried Landless, as he staggered
against him.
"It's his face!" gasped the other. "There upon the table! I put my
hand upon it. It's cold!"
Landless rushed to the fireplace where he knew the tinder-box to be
kept, and then groped for and found the heap of pine knots. A moment
more and the fat wood was burning brightly, casting its red light
throughout the hut, and choking back the pale daylight.
The familiar room with its familiar furnishing of chest and settle and
pallet, of hanging nets and piles of dingy sail, sprung into sight, but
with it sprung into sight something unfamiliar, strange, and dreadful.
It was the body of the mender of nets, flung face upwards across the
rude table, the head hanging over the edge, and the face, which but a
few short hours before had looked upon Landless with such a bright and
patient serenity, blackened and distorted. Upon the throat were dark
marks, the print of ten murderous fingers.
With a bitter cry Landless fell upon his knees beside the table, and
pressed his face against the cold hand flung backwards over the head of
the murdered man. Porringer began to curse. With white lips and
burning eyes he hurled anathemas at the murderer. He cursed him by the
powers of light and darkness, by the earth, the sea, and the air: by all
the plagues of the two Testaments. Landless broke the torrent of his
maledictions.
"Silence!" he said sternly. "_He_ would have forgiven." Presently he
rose from the ground, and taking the body in his arms, placed it upon
the pallet, and reverently composed the limbs. Then he turned to the
fireplace. It was easy to see that the hiding-place had been visited.
The spring was broken, and the lid had been struck and jammed into place
by a powerful and hasty hand. Landless wrenched it off. Before him lay
the pistols; but the gold and papers were gone. He turned to the
Muggletonian, standing beside him with staring eyes.
"Listen!" he said. "There was gold here. The wretch whom we passed but
now knew of it--never mind how--and for it he has murdered the only
friend I had on earth. There will come a day when I will avenge him.
There were papers here, lists with the signatures of Oliverians,
Redemptioners, sailors,--of all classes concerned in this undertaking,
save only the slaves and the convicts. There were letters from Maryland
and New England, and a correspondence which would provide whipping-post
and pillory for other Nonconformists than the Quakers. All these, the
actual proofs of this conspiracy, are in his--that
murderer's--hands,--where they must not stay."
"What wilt thou do, friend?" said the Muggletonian eagerly. "Wilt thou
take the murderer aside in the gate to speak with him quietly, and smite
him under the fifth rib, as did Joab to Abner the son of Ner, who slew
his brother Asahel?"
"God forbid," said Landless. "But I will take them from him before he
knows their contents. One moment, and we will go."
He crossed to the pallet and stood beside it, looking down on the shell
that lay upon it with a stern and quiet grief. One of the cold white
hands was clenched upon something. He stooped, and with difficulty
unclasped the rigid fingers. The something was a ragged lock of coarse
red hair.
"You see," he said.
"Ay," said the Muggletonian grimly. "It's evidence enough. There 's
but one man in this county with hair like that. Leave that lock where
it is, and that dead man holds the rope that will hang his murderer."
"It shall be left where it is," said Landless, and reclosed the fingers
upon it.
He took a piece of sail-cloth from the floor, and with it covered the
dead man from sight. Next he turned to the hollow above the fireplace,
and took from it the pistols, concealing them in his bosom. "I may need
them," he said. "Come."
They left the hut and its dead guardian, and rowed back through the
summer dawn. The sky was barred with crimson and gold, the fiery rim of
the sun just lifting above the eastern waters, the mist, a bridal veil
of silver and pearl drawn across the face of a virgin earth.
They rowed in silence until they neared the wharf, when Porringer said,
"You are leader now."
The other raised his haggard eyes. "It is a trust. I will go through
with it, God helping me. But I would I were lying dead beside him in
yonder hut."
They left the boat at the wharf, and went towards the quarters. Meeting
one of the blowzed and slatternly female servants, Landless asked where
they might find the overseer. He had gone to the three-mile field half
an hour ago, after bestowing upon the two dilatory servants a hearty
cursing, and promising to reckon with them at dinner-time. "Where was
the master?" He had gone to the mouth of the inlet with Sir Charles
Carew, who had grown impatient, and had sailed away under the Nancy's
patched sail. The under overseer was in the far corn-field, two miles
off.
"Are all the men in the fields, Barb?" asked Landless.
Barb informed him that they were, "as he might very well know, seeing
that the sun was half an hour high."
"Have you seen the man called Roach?"
No: Barb had not seen him; but she had heard the overseer tell Luiz
Sebastian to take two men and go to the strip of Orenoko between the
inlet and the third tobacco house, and Luiz Sebastian, had been calling
for Roach and Trail.
Landless thanked her, and moved away without offering to bestow upon her
that which Barb probably thought her information merited.
"Do you find Woodson," he said to the Muggletonian, "and report this
murder, saying nothing, however, of what we know. I myself will go to
the tobacco house."
"Had I not best come with thee to hold up thy hands?" said Porringer.
"I would take up my text from the thirty-fifth of Numbers, and from
Revelation, twenty-second, thirteen, and deal mightily with the
murderer."
"No," answered Landless. "Woodson must be seen at once, or we ourselves
will fall under suspicion. And, friend, ask that thou and I may be the
ones to bury _him_."
*CHAPTER XIII*
*IN THE TOBACCO HOUSE*
The third tobacco house was built upon a point of land jutting into the
larger inlet, and screened off from the wide expanse of fields by a belt
of cedars. It was a lonely, retired spot, and the high, dark, windowless
structure with its heavy, low-browed door had a menacing aspect.
Landless expected to find the men within the building, instead of
outside attending to their work, and he was not disappointed. As he
walked through the doorway into the pungent gloom the three started up
from the debris of casks, sticks, and pegs, amidst which they had been
squatting, with their heads ominously close together.
Landless strode up to Roach. "You murderer!" he said.
The convict recoiled; then with a bestial sound, half snarl, half bellow
of rage, he gathered himself for a rush. Landless awaited him with bent
body and sinewy, outstretched arms; but the mulatto interposed. Laying
his long, beautifully shaped, yellow hands upon Roach, he forced him
back against a cask, and, pinning him there, whispered in his ear. The
face of the wretch gradually resumed its usual expression of low
brutality, though an ugly sweat broke out upon it, and the mouth opened
and shut as though he had been running. He turned upon Landless with a
half threatening, half cringing air.
"So you 've found out what I was about last night, eh, pardner? But you
'll keep a still tongue. You 're not one to peach on your comrade as
was in hell or Newgate with you, and as crossed the ocean with you to
this d--d Virginia, and as has always liked you, and has the same spite
as you have against the man what bought us. You say naught, comrade,
and you 'll not stand to lose by it."
"I go from here to give you up to Colonel Verney," said Landless.
The wretch gave a snarl of rage and fear. Luiz Sebastian laid a
soothing hand upon his shoulder.
"If I thought that," snarled the convict, "you 'd never live to reach
that door."
"I shall live to see you hanged," said the other coolly.
Here the mulatto slipped something into Roach's hand. "So you 'll give
me up?" said the latter in a peculiar voice.
"I have said so."
"Then, by the Lord! I 'll be even with you!" Roach cried with savage
triumph. "Do you see this, and this, and this?" fluttering a mass of
folded papers before the other's eyes. "Ah! I was wise, I was, when I
could n't hide everything about me, to take the papers, and leave the
weapons. I 've got you now. Here 's the lists that the old fool who is
dead and gone to hell had hidden behind the gold! Here 's enough to
hang you and your d--d Cromwellians higher than Haman. There will be
more than one giving up, I 'm thinking! I 've got you under my thumb,
and I 'll squeeze you!"
"You cannot read; you do not know what those papers contain," said
Landless steadily.
"But I can," put in Trail smoothly. "I was but just running them over
to our friend whose education has been so sadly neglected, when you came
in."
Landless drew a pistol from his bosom, cocked it, and leveled it at the
murderer. "You see," he said with an ominously quiet eye and voice,
"you were not altogether wise to leave the weapons. Now, give me those
lists."
"Damnation!" cried the convict, and Luiz Sebastian glided towards the
door.
Landless, quick of eye and active of body, saw the movement, and sprang
backwards to the opening before the other could reach it. He covered
the three with his pistol.
"I will shoot the first of you that stirs," he said sternly. "You,
Roach, lay those papers upon that bit of board, and push them towards me
with your foot."
"I 'll go to hell first," was the sullen reply.
"As you please. I will give you until I count twenty. If those papers
are not in my hands, then I will shoot you like the dog you are."
The murderer uttered a dreadful curse. Landless began to count. Roach
made an irresolute motion or the hand that held the lists. Landless
counted on, "fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen--" With another oath
and a grin of rage Roach dropped the papers upon the board at his feet.
"Now push it towards me," said Landless.
With a brow like midnight the other did as he was bid. Still covering
his men, Landless stooped quickly, and took up the precious papers,
assured himself that they were all there, and placed them in his bosom.
"Now," he said, leaning his back against the door-post, and regarding
the three baffled rogues with a grim eye, "I have a few words to say to
you. I speak first to you, Trail, and to you, Luiz Sebastian. These
papers have told you little that you did not know before. It was not
the information that you gained from them that made them so valuable; it
was the possession of them, the possession of actual proofs of this
conspiracy which you might hold over our heads, or, if the notion took
you, might sell to Colonel Verney?"
"Senor Landless sees the thing as it is," said Luiz Sebastian.
"Well, you no longer possess these proofs, and are therefore just where
you were yesterday."
"Listen, Senor Landless," said Luiz Sebastian gloomily. "This plot does
not please us. It is too much in the hands of those who call themselves
soldiers and martyrs, whom our master calls fanatic Oliverians, and whom
I, Luiz Sebastian, call accursed heretics. The servants have no say in
the matter; they are to follow like sheep where these others lead. The
slaves are not even to know of it until the last moment. A handful of
us who have white blood in our veins are let into the secret, that we
may incite the blacks when the time is come; but are we consulted? Are
our opinions asked, our wishes deferred to? I, Luiz Sebastian, who have
been through three insurrections in the Indies, and who know how such
things should be managed; has my advice been craved as to this or that?
You make us promises. Mother of God! how do we know that those promises
will be kept? By St. Jago! the insurrection may arrive, and the
planters be put down, and next year may find us slaves still, with but a
change of masters!"
"It is too late now for such questions," said Landless steadily. "You
must accept the conspiracy as it is. In liberating themselves, these
men will of necessity free you even as they will free me, who am not, as
you know, of their class. I shall take my chance, as I think you will
take yours."
The mulatto played with a tobacco peg, striking it against his great,
white teeth. At length he said slowly and with a sinister upward glance
at the figure by the door, "Certainly, Senor Landless, it seems our
best, our only chance, for freedom."
And with this Landless had perforce to be content. He turned to the
murderer, saying sternly, "Now for my word with you. I hold your life
in my hands, for I heard you last night in the marsh, and Porringer and
I saw you stealing from the creek this morning, and I can swear that you
knew of the gold hidden in the hut. You have it on you at this moment.
I could hold you here with this pistol until the overseer should come
and search you. But I let you go, choosing rather your safety than the
endangerment of that which was dearer than life to the man you murdered.
The unsupported assertion of a murderer as to the contents of papers
which he had not got to show, might not go for much, but I prefer that
you should not make it. I have warned you;--you had best make your
escape at once."
"If you hold your tongue, there 's no reason why I should run."
"Oh, yes, there is! There is a reason in the hut on the marsh."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that clasped in the hand of the man you murdered is the missing
half of that torn lock upon your forehead."
With a yell Roach sprang to the door only to be confronted by the muzzle
of Landless' pistol.
"Wait a moment," he said composedly. "Oh, you need not be afraid! I
intend to let you go. But you don't leave this tobacco house until
after I have left it myself."
"Curse you!" cried the other, foaming at the lips.
"You are ungrateful. I not only promise not to witness against you, but
I aid you to escape."
"For reasons of your own," suggested Trail.
"Precisely: for reasons of my own. If you are taken, I will hold my
tongue just so long as you hold yours. If you escape now, I will pray
that my day of reckoning will yet come. And it will be a heavy
reckoning."
"Ay, that it will!" cried the murderer with brutal fury. "You 've got
the upper hand now: but wait! Every dog has his day, and I 'll have
mine! and when it comes, I 'll do for you! I 'll smash your beauty! I
'll draw more blood from you than ever the whip of the overseer did! I
'll use you worse than I used that old man last night, who writhed and
struggled, and tried to pray! I 'll--"
With white lips and blazing eyes Landless sprang forward, and clapped
the mouth of the pistol to the ruffian's temple. Roach recoiled, then
sunk upon his knees with an abject whine for mercy.
Landless let his hand drop, and moved slowly back to the door. "You had
need to cry for mercy," he said in a low, distinct voice, "for you were
never so near to death before. I let you go now, but one day I shall
kill you. Until which day--take care of yourself!" Still with his face
upon them he passed out of the door, then turned and walked away with a
steady step, but with a heart bleeding for the loss of his friend, and
heavy with forebodings for the future.
In the tobacco house the murderer, the forger, and the mulatto sat
stricken into silence until the last crisp footfall had died away. Then
amidst a torrent of curses Roach made for the door. Trail plucked him
back. "Where are you going?" he cried.
"I don't know! To the devil!"
"The bloodhounds will be upon your trail before noon."
The wretch cried out and struck his hand against the wall with a force
that laid the knuckles bare and bleeding.
"There is a way," said Luiz Sebastian slowly, "a way that only I know.
You must take to the inlet here, and swim up it until you come to the
mouth of the brook yonder in the forest. You must wade up that brook
until you come to a second, and up that until you come to a third. When
you have gone a mile up that one, leave it, and strike through the
woods, going towards the north. Another mile will bring you to a
village of the Chickahominies upon the Pamunkey.[#] They are at odds
with Governor and Council, and they will hide you. Moreover, I once did
their sachem a service, and they are my friends."
[#] The modern York.
"I 'm off," said Roach, breaking from the detaining grasp.
"Wait," said Luiz Sebastian. "There as time enough. Woodson will not
come for a long while. When he does, he shall find Senor Trail and
myself busily at work there outside, and we will say that you left us,
and went down the inlet a long time before. But now we want to talk to
you."
"Be quick then," growled the other, "I 've no mind to swing for this
job."
Luiz Sebastian brought his handsomely malevolent face close to the
other's hideous countenance.
"Would you not like to ruin that devil who but now robbed you of your
hard-earned property?"
"Would I not?" cried the murderer with a tremendous oath. "I 'd give
everything but life and gold to do it, as that cunning devil well knew.
I 'd give my soul!"
"Would you like to be shown how to get more gold than old Godwyn's
store, twenty times told? To get your freedom? To have some black,
sweet hours in which to work your will on them at the house yonder? To
plunge your arms to the elbow in the master's money chest, to become
drunken with his wine; to strike him down, and that smiling imp his
cousin, and that other devil, Woodson; to hear the women cry for
mercy--and cry in vain? You would like all this?"
"Show me the way!" cried the brute with a ferocious light in his
bloodshot eyes. "Show me the way to do it safely, and I 'll--" He
broke off and threatened the air with malignant fists.
"Go to the village on the Pamunkey," said Luiz Sebastian with his most
feline expression. "I will come to you there the first night I can slip
away, I and our friend, the Senor Trail. There we will have our little
conference. Mother of God! Senor Landless may find that others can
plot as well as he and his accursed heretics."
*CHAPTER XIV*
*A MIDNIGHT EXPEDITION*
Four nights later, the hour before midnight found Landless walking
steadily through the forest, bound upon a mission which he had had in
his mind since the night after the murder of Godwyn. This was the first
night since that event upon which he had deemed it advisable to leave
the quarters, having no mind to be captured as a runaway by one of the
many search parties which were scouring the peninsula between the two
great rivers for the murderer of Robert Godwin. But the search was now
trending northward towards Maryland, to which colony runaways usually
turned their steps, and he felt that he might venture.
There was little undergrowth in the primeval forest, and the rows of
vast and stately trees were as easy to thread as the pillared aisles of
a cathedral. When he came to one of the innumerable streamlets that
caught the land in a net of silver, he removed his coarse shoes and
stockings, and waded it. The great branches overhead shut in a night
that was breathlessly hot and still. He could see the stars only when
he crossed the streams or emerged into one of the many little open
glades. He walked warily, making no sound, and now and then stopping to
listen for the distant halloo, or bark of a dog, which might denote that
he was followed, or that there was a search party abroad, but he heard
nothing save the usual forest sounds,--the dropping of acorns, the
sighing leaves, the cry of some night bird,--sounds that seemed to make
the night more still than silence.
He was nearing his destination when from out a shadowy clump of alders,
standing upon the bank of the stream which he had just crossed, there
shot a long arm, and the next moment he was wrestling with a dark and
powerful figure whose naked body slipped from his hold as though it had
been greased. But Landless, too, was strong and determined, and the two
swayed and strained backwards and forwards through the darkness, wary
and resolute, neither giving his antagonist advantage. The hand of the
unknown writhed itself from the other's clasp and stole downwards
towards his waist. Landless felt the motion and intercepted it. Then
the figure, with an angry guttural sound, began to put forth its full
strength. The arms encircled Landless with a slowly tightening iron
band; the great dark shoulder came forward with the force of a
battering-ram; the limbs twined like boa-constrictors around the limbs
of the other. Locked together, the two reeled into a little fairy glade,
where the short grass, pearled with dew, lay open to the moon. Here,
borne backwards by the overwhelming force of his assailant, Landless
fell heavily to the ground. The figure falling with him, pinned him to
the earth with its knee upon his breast. In the moonlight he saw the
gleam of the lifted knife.
He had had but time for a half-tittered, half-thought prayer when the
pressure upon his breast relaxed; the knife fell, indeed, but harmlessly
upon the grass, and the figure rose to its height with an astonished
"Ugh!"
Landless, rising also, began to think that he recognized the gigantic
form towering through the pale moonlight.
"Ugh!" said the figure again. "The great Spirit threw us into the light
in time. Monakatocka had been forever shamed had his knife drunk the
life of his friend."
"Why did you set upon me?" demanded Landless, still breathless from the
struggle, while the Indian was as calmly composed as upon the day of
their first meeting.
"Monakatocka took you for the man for whom they hunt with dogs through
the forest, scaring the deer from the licks and the partridge from the
fern. Two nights ago Major Carrington said to Monakatocka, 'Find me
that man and kill him, and to the twenty arms' length of roanoke which
the county will pay to Monakatocka, I will add a gun with store of
powder, and with a bullet for every stag between Werowocomico and
Machot.' When he heard you a long way off, moving over the leaves,
trying to make no sound, Monakatocka thought he held the gun of the
pale-face Major in his hand. But now--" he waved his hand with a
gesture eloquent of resignation.
"I am sorry to disappoint you," said Landless, amused at his air of calm
regret.
"I am glad to have proved the strength of my brother," was the
sententious reply. "Where goes my brother through the woods, which are
full of danger to him to-night? Or has he a pass?"
"I have business at Rosemead," answered Landless. "I am close to the
house, I think?"
The Indian pointed through the trees. "It lies twelve bowshots before
you. The overseer with the dogs has gone to the great swamp to look for
the man with the red hair."
"Thanks for the information, friend," said Landless. "I ask you,
moreover, to say nothing of this encounter. I have no pass."
"I have but one friend," answered the Indian. "His secret is my secret."
"Are you, too, then, so lonely?" asked Landless, touched by his tone.
"Listen," said the Indian, leaning his back against a great oak. "I
will tell my brother who I am.... Many years ago the Conestogas, they
whom the palefaces call the Susquehannocks, came down the great bay and
fought with the palefaces. Monakatocka was then but a lad on his first
war-path. Agreskoi was angry: he hid his face behind a cloud. With
their guns the palefaces beat the Conestogas like fleeing women back to
their village on the banks of a great river, and themselves returned in
triumph to their board wigwams, bearing with them many captives.
Monakatocka, son to a great chief, was one. The palefaces made him to
work like a squaw in their fields of tobacco and maize. When he ran
away they put forth a long arm and plucked him back and beat him.
Agreskoi was angry, for Monakatocka had not any offering to make him.
One by one his fellow captives have dropped away like the leaves that
fall in the moon of Taquetock, until, behold! he is left alone. The
palefaces are his enemies. He thinks of the village beside the pleasant
stream, and he hates them. A warrior of the long house takes no friend
from the wigwam of an Algonquin. Monakatocka is alone."
He spoke with a wild pathos, his high, stern features working in the
moonlight, and his bold glance softened into an exquisite melancholy.
"I too am friendless," said Landless, "and bound to a far more degrading
captivity than that you suffer. Our fate is the same."
The Indian took his hand in his, and raising it, pressed the forefinger
against a certain spot upon his shoulder. "You have a friend," he said.
"You make too much of a very slight service," said Landless. "But I
embrace your offer of friendship--there 's my hand upon it. And now I
must be going upon my way. Good-night!"
The Indian gave a guttural "Good-night," and Landless strode on through
the thinning woods. Shortly he emerged from the forest and saw before
him tobacco fields and a house, and beyond the house the vast sheet of
the Chesapeake slumbering beneath the moon. There was a beaten path
leading to the house. Landless struck into it and followed it until it
led him beneath a window which (having been once sent with a message to
the Surveyor-General), he knew to belong to the sleeping-chamber of
Major Carrington. Stopping beneath this window he listened for any
sound that might warn him of aught stirring within or without the
mansion,--all was silent, the house and its inmates locked in slumber.
He took a handful of pebbles from the path and threw them, one by one,
against the wooden shutter, the thud of the last pebble being answered
by a slight noise from within the room. Presently the shutter was
opened and an authoritative voice demanded:--
"Who is it? What do you want?"
Landless came closer beneath the window. "Major Carrington," he said in
a low voice, "It is I, Godfrey Landless. I must have speech with you."
There was a moment's silence, and then the other said coldly, "'Must' is
a word that becomes neither your lips nor my ears. I know no reason why
Miles Carrington _must_ speak with the servant of Colonel Verney."
"As you please: Godfrey Landless craves the honor of a word with Major
Carrington."
"And what if Major Carrington refuses?" said the other sharply.
"I do not think he will do so."