In which we Start upon a Journey
When the dawn broke, it found us travelling through a narrow valley,
beside a stream of some width. Upon its banks grew trees of
extraordinary height and girth; cypress and oak and walnut, they towered
into the air, their topmost branches stark and black against the roseate
heavens. Below that iron tracery glowed the firebrands of the maples,
and here and there a willow leaned a pale green cloud above the stream.
Mist closed the distances; we could hear, but not see, the deer where
they stood to drink in the shallow places, or couched in the gray and
dreamlike recesses of the forest.
Spectral, unreal, and hollow seems the world at dawn. Then, if ever, the
heart sickens and the will flags, and life becomes a pageant that hath
ceased to entertain. As I moved through the mist and the silence, and
felt the tug of the thong that bound me to the wrist of the savage who
stalked before me, I cared not how soon they made an end, seeing how
stale and unprofitable were all things under the sun.
Diccon, walking behind me, stumbled over a root and fell upon his knees,
dragging down with him the Indian to whom he was tied. In a sudden
access of fury, aggravated by the jeers with which his fellows greeted
his mishap, the savage turned upon his prisoner and would have stuck a
knife into him, bound and helpless as he was, had not the werowance
interfered. The momentary altercation over, and the knife restored to
its owner's belt, the Indians relapsed into their usual menacing
silence, and the sullen march was resumed. Presently the stream made a
sharp bend across our path, and we forded it as best we might. It ran
dark and swift, and the water was of icy coldness. Beyond, the woods had
been burnt, the trees rising from the red ground like charred and
blackened stakes, with the ghostlike mist between. We left this dismal
tract behind, and entered a wood of mighty oaks, standing well apart,
and with the earth below carpeted with moss and early wild flowers. The
sun rose, the mist vanished, and there set in the March day of keen wind
and brilliant sunshine.
Farther on, an Indian bent his bow against a bear shambling across a
little sunny glade. The arrow did its errand, and where the creature
fell, there we sat down and feasted beside a fire kindled by rubbing two
sticks together. According to their wont the Indians ate ravenously, and
when the meal was ended began to smoke, each warrior first throwing into
the air, as thank-offering to Kiwassa, a pinch of tobacco. They all
stared at the fire around which we sat, and the silence was unbroken.
One by one, as the pipes were smoked, they laid themselves down upon the
brown leaves and went to sleep, only our two guardians and a third
Indian over against us remaining wide-eyed and watchful.
There was no hope of escape, and we entertained no thought of it. Diccon
sat, biting his nails, staring into the fire, and I stretched myself
out, and burying my head in my arms tried to sleep, but could not.
With the midday we were afoot again, and we went steadily on through the
bright afternoon. We met with no harsh treatment other than our bonds.
Instead, when our captors spoke to us, it was with words of amity and
smiling lips. Who accounteth for Indian fashions? It is a way they have,
to flatter and caress the wretch for whom have been provided the
torments of the damned. If, when at sunset we halted for supper and
gathered around the fire, the werowance began to tell of a foray I had
led against the Paspaheghs years before, and if he and his warriors, for
all the world like generous foes, loudly applauded some daring that had
accompanied that raid, none the less did the red stake wait for us; none
the less would they strive, as for heaven, to wring from us groans and
cries.
The sun sank, and the darkness entered the forest. In the distance we
heard the wolves, so the fire was kept up through the night. Diccon and
I were tied to trees, and all the savages save one lay down and slept. I
worked awhile at my bonds; but an Indian had tied them, and after a time
I desisted from the useless labour. We two could have no speech
together; the fire was between us, and we saw each other but dimly
through the flame and wreathing smoke,--as each might see the other
to-morrow. What Diccon's thoughts were I know not; mine were not of the
morrow.
There had been no rain for a long time, and the multitude of leaves
underfoot were crisp and dry. The wind was loud in them and in the
swaying trees. Off in the forest was a bog, and the will-o'-the-wisps
danced over it,--pale, cold flames, moving aimlessly here and there like
ghosts of those lost in the woods. Toward the middle of the night some
heavy animal crashed through a thicket to the left of us, and tore away
into the darkness over the loud-rustling leaves; and later on wolves'
eyes gleamed from out the ring of darkness beyond the firelight. Far on
in the night the wind fell and the moon rose, changing the forest into
some dim, exquisite, far-off land, seen only in dreams. The Indians
awoke silently and all at once, as at an appointed hour. They spoke for
a while among themselves; then we were loosed from the trees, and the
walk toward death began anew.
On this march the werowance himself stalked beside me, the moonlight
whitening his dark limbs and relentless face. He spoke no word, nor did
I deign to question or reason or entreat. Alike in the darkness of the
deep woods, and in the silver of the glades, and in the long twilight
stretches of sassafras and sighing grass, there was for me but one
vision. Slender and still and white, she moved before me, with her wide
dark eyes upon my face. _Jocelyn! Jocelyn!_
At sunrise the mist lifted from a low hill before us, and showed an
Indian boy, painted white, poised upon the summit, like a spirit about
to take its flight. He prayed to the One over All, and his voice came
down to us pure and earnest. At sight of us he bounded down the hillside
like a ball, and would have rushed away into the forest had not a
Paspahegh starting out of line seized him and set him in our midst,
where he stood, cool and undismayed, a warrior in miniature. He was of
the Pamunkeys, and his tribe and the Paspaheghs were at peace;
therefore, when he saw the totem burnt upon the breast of the werowance,
he became loquacious enough, and offered to go before us to his village,
upon the banks of a stream, some bowshots away. He went, and the
Paspaheghs rested under the trees until the old men of the village came
forth to lead them through the brown fields and past the ring of
leafless mulberries to the strangers' lodge. Here on the green turf mats
were laid for the visitors, and water was brought for their hands. Later
on, the women spread a great breakfast of fish and turkey and venison,
maize bread, tuckahoe and pohickory. When it was eaten, the Paspaheghs
ranged themselves in a semicircle upon the grass, the Pamunkeys faced
them, and each warrior and old man drew out his pipe and tobacco pouch.
They smoked gravely, in a silence broken only by an occasional slow and
stately question or compliment. The blue incense from the pipes mingled
with the sunshine falling freely through the bare branches; the stream
which ran by the lodge rippled and shone, and the wind rose and fell in
the pines upon its farther bank.
Diccon and I had been freed for the time from our bonds, and placed in
the centre of this ring, and when the Indians raised their eyes from the
ground it was to gaze steadfastly at us. I knew their ways, and how they
valued pride, indifference, and a bravado disregard of the worst an
enemy could do. They should not find the white man less proud than the
savage.
They gave us readily enough the pipes I asked for. Diccon lit one and I
the other, and sitting side by side we smoked in a contentment as
absolute as the Indians' own. With his eyes upon the werowance, Diccon
told an old story of a piece of Paspahegh villainy and of the payment
which the English exacted, and I laughed as at the most amusing thing in
the world. The story ended, we smoked with serenity for a while; then I
drew my dice from my pocket, and, beginning to throw, we were at once as
much absorbed in the game as if there were no other stake in the world
beside the remnant of gold that I piled between us. The strange people
in whose power we found ourselves looked on with grim approval, as at
brave men who could laugh in Death's face.
The sun was high in the heavens when we bade the Pamunkeys farewell. The
cleared ground, the mulberry trees, and the grass beneath, the few rude
lodges with the curling smoke above them, the warriors and women and
brown naked children,--all vanished, and the forest closed around us. A
high wind was blowing, and the branches far above beat at one another
furiously, while the pendent, leafless vines swayed against us, and the
dead leaves went past in the whirlwind. A monstrous flight of pigeons
crossed the heavens, flying from west to east, and darkening the land
beneath like a transient cloud. We came to a plain covered with very
tall trees that had one and all been ringed by the Indians. Long dead,
and partially stripped of the bark, with their branches, great and
small, squandered upon the ground, they stood, gaunt and silver gray,
ready for their fall. As we passed, the wind brought two crashing to the
earth. In the centre of the plain something--deer or wolf or bear or
man--lay dead, for to that point the buzzards were sweeping from every
quarter of the blue. Beyond was a pine wood, silent and dim, with a high
green roof and a smooth and scented floor. We walked through it for an
hour, and it led us to the Pamunkey. A tiny village, counting no more
than a dozen warriors, stood among the pines that ran to the water's
edge, and tied to the trees that shadowed the slow-moving flood were its
canoes. When the people came forth to meet us, the Paspaheghs bought
from them, for a string of roanoke, two of these boats; and we made no
tarrying, but, embarking at once, rowed up river toward Uttamussac and
its three temples.
Diccon and I were placed in the same canoe. We were not bound: what need
of bonds, when we had no friend nearer than the Powhatan, and when
Uttamussac was so near? After a time the paddles were put into our
hands, and we were required to row while our captors rested. There was
no use in sulkiness; we laughed as at some huge jest, and bent to the
task with a will that sent our canoe well in advance of its mate.
Diccon burst into an old song that we had sung in the Low Countries, by
camp fires, on the march, before the battle. The forest echoed to the
loud and warlike tune, and a multitude of birds rose startled from the
trees upon the bank. The Indians frowned, and one in the boat behind
called out to strike the singer upon the mouth; but the werowance shook
his head. There were none upon that river who might not know that the
Paspaheghs journeyed to Uttamussac with prisoners in their midst. Diccon
sang on, his head thrown back, the old bold laugh in his eyes. When he
came to the chorus I joined my voice to his, and the woodland rang to
the song. A psalm had better befitted our lips than those rude and
vaunting words, seeing that we should never sing again upon this earth;
but at least we sang bravely and gaily, with minds that were reasonably
quiet.
The sun dropped low in the heavens, and the trees cast shadows across
the water. The Paspaheghs now began to recount the entertainment they
meant to offer us in the morning. All those tortures that they were wont
to practise with hellish ingenuity they told over, slowly and
tauntingly, watching to see a lip whiten or an eyelid quiver. They
boasted that they would make women of us at the stake. At all events,
they made not women of us beforehand. We laughed as we rowed, and Diccon
whistled to the leaping fish, and the fish-hawk, and the otter lying
along a fallen tree beneath the bank.
The sunset came, and the river lay beneath the coloured clouds like
molten gold, with the gaunt forest black upon either hand. From the
lifted paddles the water showered in golden drops. The wind died away,
and with it all noises, and a dank stillness settled upon the flood and
upon the endless forest. We were nearing Uttamussac, and the Indians
rowed quietly, with bent heads and fearful glances; for Okee brooded
over this place, and he might be angry. It grew colder and stiller, but
the light dwelt in the heavens, and was reflected in the bosom of the
river. The trees upon the southern bank were all pines; as if they had
been carved from black stone they stood rigid against the saffron sky.
Presently, back from the shore, there rose before us a few small hills,
treeless, but covered with some low, dark growth. The one that stood the
highest bore upon its crest three black houses shaped like coffins.
Behind them was the deep yellow of the sunset.
An Indian rowing in the second canoe commenced a chant or prayer to
Okee. The notes were low and broken, unutterably wild and melancholy.
One by one his fellows took up the strain; it swelled higher, louder,
and sterner, became a deafening cry, then ceased abruptly, making the
stillness that followed like death itself. Both canoes swung round from
the middle stream and made for the bank. When the boats had slipped from
the stripe of gold into the inky shadow of the pines, the Paspaheghs
began to divest themselves of this or that which they conceived Okee
might desire to possess. One flung into the stream a handful of copper
links, another the chaplet of feathers from his head, a third a
bracelet of blue beads. The werowance drew out the arrows from a gaudily
painted and beaded quiver, stuck them into his belt, and dropped the
quiver into the water.
We landed, dragging the canoes into a covert of overhanging bushes and
fastening them there; then struck through the pines toward the rising
ground, and presently came to a large village, with many long huts, and
a great central lodge where dwelt the emperors when they came to
Uttamussac. It was vacant now, Opechancanough being no man knew where.
When the usual stately welcome had been extended to the Paspaheghs, and
when they had returned as stately thanks, the werowance began a harangue
for which I furnished the matter. When he ceased to speak a great
acclamation and tumult arose, and I thought they would scarce wait for
the morrow. But it was late, and their werowance and conjurer restrained
them. In the end the men drew off, and the yelling of the children and
the passionate cries of the women, importunate for vengeance, were
stilled. A guard was placed around the vacant lodge, and we two
Englishmen were taken within and bound down to great logs, such as the
Indians use to roll against their doors when they go from home.
There was revelry in the village; for hours after the night came,
everywhere were bright firelight and the rise and fall of laughter and
song. The voices of the women were musical, tender, and plaintive, and
yet they waited for the morrow as for a gala day. I thought of a woman
who used to sing, softly and sweetly, in the twilight at Weyanoke, in
the firelight at the minister's house. At last the noises ceased, the
light died away, and the village slept beneath a heaven that seemed
somewhat deaf and blind.