"Mother of God! what do you mean?" exclaimed the mulatto. "Your voice
cannot reach him, deaf and dumb from the fever, lying in his cabin at
the far end of the lane."
"Dick Whittington!" again loudly called Landless.
A cry arose from the crowd behind the mulatto and between him and his
cabin. The next instant there broke through them the figure, bound and
gagged, of young Dick Whittington. As he rushed past the mulatto, the
latter, with a snarl of fury, grappled with him, but animated with, the
strength of despair, the boy, bound as he was, broke from him and rushed
to Landless, at whose feet he dropped in a dead faint. Upon the crowd
fell a silence so intense that nature herself seemed to have ceased to
breathe. Luiz Sebastian, darting glances here, there, and everywhere,
from eyes in which doubt was fast growing into certainty, came upon
something which told its own tale. The women's cabins were at some
distance from the square, and nearer to the great house, and from the
one to the other was passing a hurried line of women and children with
the under overseer at their head.
With the sight vanished the last remnant of doubt from the mind of the
mulatto.... Landless saw that he saw; saw the intention with which he
slipped out of range of the pistols; saw the wicked light in his face;
saw him beckon to the Indian and point to the forest; saw the glistening
and rolling eyeballs and the working lips of the throng of slaves who
had by imperceptible degrees separated from the whites, and were now
massing together at one side of the square; saw the Turk with a knife in
his hand; saw Trail edging away from the group before the overseer's
cabin--and sprang forward, his powerful figure instinct with
determination, the set calm of the face with which he had met Havisham's
quiet disdain and the imprecations of the other conspirators, broken up
into fire and passion, high and resolved. Blood was upon it still, and
upon his arms and half naked breast; his eyes burned; and as he threw up
his arm in a gesture of command, he looked the very genius of war, and
he seized and held every eye and ear.
"Men!" he cried, addressing himself to the line he had called into
being. "Havisham, Arnold, Allen, Braxton! we fought in the same cause
once, fought for God and the Commonwealth! To-night we will fight
again, and together; fight for our lives and for the honor of women!
Comrades, I am no traitor! I have not sold you! You have cursed me
without cause. Listen! Colonel Verney, will you repeat the oath you
swore to me an hour ago?"
The master stepped to his side. "I swear," he cried, in his loud, manly
voice, "by the faith of a Christian, by the honor of a gentleman, that
not one of you whose names have been given by this man, shall in any way
suffer by having been privy to this plot. I will so work with the
Governor and Council that your bodies shall not be touched, nor your
time of service increased. Bygones shall be bygones between us. This
applies to all save this man, the head and front of the conspiracy. Him
I cannot save. He must pay the penalty, but he shall be the scapegoat
for the rest of you. You have my promise, the promise of a man who
never breaks his word for good or evil."
"In the woods yonder are Indians," cried Landless. "They wait but for
moonrise, for the appointed hour, to fall upon the plantation. You
called me traitor! It is Luiz Sebastian and Trail who are the traitors,
the betrayers! They are leagued with the Indians and with the slaves.
Look at them, and see that I speak truth!"
The look was sufficient. The dusky mass of slaves had swayed forward
with one low, deep, bestial growl. Crouched for the spring, they were
yet held in leash by the menace of the pistols, leveled upon them and
gleaming in the torchlight, and by the restraining gesture and voice of
Luiz Sebastian. In the crowd of servants, now quite separated from the
slaves, was noise and confusion, and behind the Turk, standing midway
between the parties, was forming a phalanx of villainous white
faces--the dissolute, the convict, the refuse of the plantation,--and at
his side, suddenly as though sprung from the earth, appeared the evil
face and red hair of the murderer of Robert Godwyn.
The silence of the Oliverians, stricken dumb by this new turn of
affairs, was broken by Havisham's crying to Landless,--
"What are we to do, friend?"
"Make for the house and defend it and our lives," answered Landless,
"but first I call upon all true men among you yonder to leave those
murderers and join yourselves to us."
"In the name of the King!" cried the Colonel.
"In the name of God!" said Landless.
Some seven or eight broke from the opposite throng and with lowered
heads ran to them across the open space. Landless stooped, and lifting
the senseless figure at his feet swung it over his shoulder.
"We are ready, Colonel Verney. Steady, men! Follow me!" He turned to
the great house, rising vast and dark, two hundred yards away.
A gigantic, coal black Ashantee chief broke from the throng opposite
and, uttering his war cry, bounded across the space between them.
Another instant and he would have been upon them, and close after him a
yelling pack of hell hounds--the overseer's pistol cracked, and the
black giant fell dead. A yell arose from the crowd, but they stood
irresolute. For firearms, so strictly kept from servants and slaves, so
pre-eminently pertaining to the dominant class, they had a superstitious
dread. Four pistols meant four lives picked from the foremost to
advance.
"Let them go," cried the mulatto, with a taunting laugh. "Let them go!
Let them go cage themselves in wooden walls where we will take them all
together--rats in a trap. We will wait for the Chickahominies who have
guns, senors, and for the Ricahecrians whose scalping knives are very
bright. Until moonrise, senors from the great house, and you others who
go with them! Mother of God! look well upon it, for it is the last you
will ever see!"
Fifteen minutes later saw the house of Verney Manor garrisoned by some
thirty desperate men. They had entered to find a scene of confusion--the
hall and lower rooms filled with frightened women and crying children.
Patricia with white cheeks and brilliant eyes had come forward to meet
her father, carrying a three days' child in her arms. Beyond her was
Betty, bending her sweet, pale face over the mother, caught up from her
pallet and carried to the house in the arms of the under overseer.
Mistress Lettice was alternately wailing that they were all undone and
murdered, and wringing her hands over the obstinacy of Captain Laramore
who, rapier in left hand, would stand guard at the door, instead of
keeping quiet as the Doctor had said he must. The master's stern
command for silence reduced the clamor of women and children to an
undertone of lamentation. "We must to work at once," he said, "and
apportion our forces. There are about thirty men, are there not,
Woodson? I shall take the front with ten: Charles, thou shalt have one
side, Woodson the other, and Haines the back. Laramore, thou must let
us fight for thee, man, though I know thou findest it a bitter pill. Do
you marshal the men, Woodson, and divide them into four parties, one for
each face, and tell the women to leave off their whimpering and prepare
to load the muskets. Haines, have the arms taken down from the racks
and distribute them. Men and women, one and all, you are to remember
that you are fighting for your lives and for more than your lives. You
know what you have to expect if you are taken."
Sir Charles, followed by Landless, the Muggletonian and some three or
four others, entered the great room, which, with the master's room,
occupied that side of the house allotted to the baronet. The wax
candles still burned upon the spinet, and upon the high mantel, and in
the middle of the floor lay the overturned chess table. Three of the
four windows were closely shuttered, but the fourth was open, and before
it stood a graceful figure, looking out into the darkness.
Sir Charles strode hurriedly over to it. "Cousin! this is madness! You
know not to what danger you may be exposing yourself. Come away!"
"I am watching for the moonrise," she said dreamily. "It is very near
now. Look at the white glow above the water, and how pale the stars
are! How beautiful it is, and how cool the wind upon your forehead!
Listen! that was the cry of a jay, surely! and yet why should we hear it
at night?"
"It is the cry of a jay, sure enough," said the overseer, pausing in his
hurried passage through the room, "but it was made by Indian lips."
"Come away, for God's sake!" cried the baronet.
"Look! there is the moon!" she answered.
Above the level of marsh and water appeared a thin line of silver. It
thickened, rounded, became a glorious orb. The marshes blanched from
black to gray, and across the water, from the dim land to the great
silver globe, stretched a long, bright, shimmering path.
A knot of women appeared in the doorway, laden with powder-flasks and
platters filled with bullets. One, with only a stick wound with faded
flowers in her hand, left them and glided to the open window.
"Margery!" said Patricia softly.
The mad woman, pressing in front of her mistress, looked out into the
night and saw the white shining road cutting through the darkness and
stretching endlessly away. She threw up her arms with a cry of rapture.
"The road to Paradise! the road to Paradise!"
An arrow whistled through the window and struck into her bosom--into her
heart--the staff dropped from her hand, and she swayed forward and fell
at her mistress's feet.
The night, so placid, still and beautiful, was rent and in an instant
made hideous by a sound so long, loud, and dreadful, that it might have
been the shriek of a legion of exultant fiends. It rose to the stars,
sunk to the earth and rose again, unearthly, menacing, curdling the
blood and turning the heart to stone.
"The war-whoop," said Woodson. "Close the window, quick."
*CHAPTER XXVI*
*NIGHT*
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 and two 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 own
hand, 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 and _we_ are 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 by her 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 XXVII*
*MORNING*
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.
"Ohe!" 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! think of 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 blood-stained
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 desperate fighting, 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
blood-stained 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 from his 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.' And _that_ day 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 farther end of the 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
bear 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 the horses 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 XXVIII*
*BREAD 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 of warning 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
redbird 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 the slime 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 Lattice. 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 did n'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--be 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 supposing that 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, "that it 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 grow smaller and smaller, until they become 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 on
myriads of fire-flies, 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 mooonlight, 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 penetrate the 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.