In which Nantauquas Comes to our Rescue
A man who hath been a soldier and an adventurer into far and strange
countries must needs have faced Death many times and in many guises. I
had learned to know that grim countenance, and to have no great fear of
it. And beneath the ugliness of the mask that now presented itself there
was only Death at last. I was no babe to whimper at a sudden darkness,
to cry out against a curtain that a Hand chose to drop between me and
the life I had lived. Death frighted me not, but when I thought of one
whom I should leave behind me I feared lest I should go mad. Had this
thing come to me a year before, I could have slept the night through;
now--now----
I lay, bound to the log, before the open door of the lodge, and, looking
through it, saw the pines waving in the night wind and the gleam of the
river beneath the stars, and saw her as plainly as though she had stood
there under the trees, in a flood of noon sunshine. Now she was the
Jocelyn Percy of Weyanoke, now of the minister's house, now of a
storm-tossed boat and a pirate ship, now of the gaol at Jamestown. One
of my arms was free; I could take from within my doublet the little
purple flower, and drop my face upon the hand that held it. The bloom
was quite withered, and scalding tears would not give it life again.
The face that was now gay, now defiant, now pale and suffering, became
steadfastly the face that had leaned upon my breast in the Jamestown
gaol, and looked at me with a mournful brightness of love and sorrow.
Spring was in the land, and the summer would come, but not to us. I
stretched forth my hand to the wife who was not there, and my heart lay
crushed within me. She had been my wife not a year; it was but the other
day that I knew she loved me----
After a while the anguish lessened, and I lay, dull and hopeless,
thinking of trifling things, counting the stars between the pines.
Another slow hour, and, a braver mood coming upon me, I thought of
Diccon, who was in that plight because of me, and spoke to him, asking
him how he did. He answered from the other side of the lodge, but the
words were scarcely out of his mouth before our guard broke in upon us
commanding silence. Diccon cursed them, whereupon a savage struck him
across the head with the handle of a tomahawk, stunning him for a time.
As soon as I heard him move I spoke again, to know if he were much hurt;
when he had answered in the negative we said no more.
It was now moonlight without the lodge and very quiet. The night was far
gone; already we could smell the morning, and it would come apace.
Knowing the swiftness of that approach, and what the early light would
bring, I strove for a courage which should be the steadfastness of the
Christian, and not the vainglorious pride of the heathen. If my thoughts
wandered, if her face would come athwart the verses I tried to remember,
the prayer I tried to frame, perhaps He who made her lovely understood
and forgave. I said the prayer I used to say when I was a child, and
wished with all my heart for Jeremy.
Suddenly, in the first gray dawn, as at a trumpet's call, the village
awoke. From the long communal houses poured forth men, women, and
children; fires sprang up, dispersing the mist, and a commotion arose
through the length and breadth of the place. The women made haste with
their cooking, and bore maize cakes and broiled fish to the warriors who
sat on the ground in front of the royal lodge. Diccon and I were loosed,
brought without, and allotted our share of the food. We ate sitting side
by side with our captors, and Diccon, with a great cut across his head,
seized the Indian girl who brought him his platter of fish, and pulling
her down beside him kissed her soundly, whereat the maid seemed not ill
pleased and the warriors laughed.
In the usual order of things, the meal over, tobacco should have
followed. But now not a pipe was lit, and the women made haste to take
away the platters and to get all things in readiness. The werowance of
the Paspaheghs rose to his feet, cast aside his mantle, and began to
speak. He was a man in the prime of life, of a great figure, strong as a
Susquehannock, and a savage cruel and crafty beyond measure. Over his
breast, stained with strange figures, hung a chain of small bones, and
the scalp locks of his enemies fringed his moccasins. His tribe being
the nearest to Jamestown, and in frequent altercation with us, I had
heard him speak many times, and knew his power over the passions of his
people. No player could be more skilful in gesture and expression, no
poet more nice in the choice of words, no general more quick to raise a
wild enthusiasm in the soldiers to whom he called. All Indians are
eloquent, but this savage was a leader among them.
He spoke now to some effect. Commencing with a day in the moon of
blossoms when for the first time winged canoes brought white men into
the Powhatan, he came down through year after year to the present hour,
ceased, and stood in silence, regarding his triumph. It was complete. In
its wild excitement the village was ready then and there to make an end
of us who had sprung to our feet and stood with our backs against a
great bay tree, facing the maddened throng. So much the best for us
would it be if the tomahawks left the hands that were drawn back to
throw, if the knives that were flourished in our faces should be buried
to the haft in our hearts, that we courted death, striving with word and
look to infuriate our executioners to the point of forgetting their
former purpose in the lust for instant vengeance. It was not to be. The
werowance spoke again, pointing to the hills with the black houses upon
them, dimly seen through the mist. A moment, and the hands clenched upon
the weapons fell; another, and we were upon the march.
As one man, the village swept through the forest toward the rising
ground that was but a few bowshots away. The young men bounded ahead to
make preparation; but the approved warriors and the old men went more
sedately, and with them walked Diccon and I, as steady of step as they.
The women and children for the most part brought up the rear, though a
few impatient hags ran past us, calling the men tortoises who would
never reach the goal. One of these women bore a great burning torch, the
flame and smoke streaming over her shoulder as she ran. Others carried
pieces of bark heaped with the slivers of pine of which every wigwam has
store.
The sun was yet to rise when we reached a hollow amongst the low red
hills. Above us were the three long houses in which they keep the image
of Okee and the mummies of their kings. These temples faced the crimson
east, and the mist was yet about them. Hideous priests, painted over
with strange devices, the stuffed skins of snakes knotted about their
heads, in their hands great rattles which they shook vehemently, rushed
through the doors and down the bank to meet us, and began to dance
around us, contorting their bodies, throwing up their arms, and making a
hellish noise. Diccon stared at them, shrugged his shoulders, and with a
grunt of contempt sat down upon a fallen tree to watch the enemy's
manoeuvres.
The place was a natural amphitheatre, well fitted for a spectacle. Those
Indians who could not crowd into the narrow level spread themselves over
the rising ground, and looked down with fierce laughter upon the
driving of the stakes which the young men brought. The women and
children scattered into the woods beyond the cleft between the hills,
and returned bearing great armfuls of dry branches. The hollow rang to
the exultation of the playgoers. Taunting laughter, cries of savage
triumph, the shaking of the rattles, and the furious beating of two
great drums combined to make a clamour deafening to stupor. And above
the hollow was the angry reddening of the heavens, and the white mist
curling up like smoke.
I sat down beside Diccon on the log. Beneath it there were growing tufts
of a pale blue, slender--stemmed flower. I plucked a handful of the
blossoms, and thought how blue they would look against the whiteness of
her hand; then dropped them in a sudden shame that in that hour I was so
little steadfast to things which were not of earth. I did not speak to
Diccon, nor he to me. There seemed no need of speech. In the pandemonium
to which the world had narrowed, the one familiar, matter-of-course
thing was that he and I were to die together.
The stakes were in the ground and painted red, the wood properly
arranged. The Indian woman who held the torch that was to light the pile
ran past us, whirling the wood around her head to make it blaze more
fiercely. As she went by she lowered the brand and slowly dragged it
across my wrists. The beating of the drums suddenly ceased, and the loud
voices died away. To Indians no music is so sweet as the cry of an
enemy; if they have wrung it from a brave man who has striven to
endure, so much the better. They were very still now, because they would
not lose so much as a drawing in of the breath.
Seeing that they were coming for us, Diccon and I rose to await them.
When they were nearly upon us, I turned to him and held out my hand.
He made no motion to take it. Instead he stood with fixed eyes looking
past me and slightly upwards. A sudden pallor had overspread the bronze
of his face. "There's a verse somewhere," he said in a quiet
voice,--"it's in the Bible, I think,--I heard it once long ago, before I
was lost: '_I will look unto the hills from whence cometh my help_'----
Look, sir!"
I turned and followed with my eyes the pointing of his finger. In front
of us the bank rose steeply, bare to the summit,--no trees, only the red
earth, with here and there a low growth of leafless bushes. Behind it
was the eastern sky. Upon the crest, against the sunrise, stood the
figure of a man,--an Indian. From one shoulder hung an otterskin, and a
great bow was in his hand. His limbs were bare, and as he stood
motionless, bathed in the rosy light, he looked like some bronze god,
perfect from the beaded moccasins to the calm, uneager face below the
feathered headdress. He had but just risen above the brow of the hill;
the Indians in the hollow saw him not.
While Diccon and I stared, our tormentors were upon us. They came a
dozen or more at once, and we had no weapons. Two hung upon my arms,
while a third laid hold of my doublet to rend it from me. An arrow
whistled over our heads and stuck into a tree behind us. The hands that
clutched me dropped, and with a yell the busy throng turned their faces
in the direction whence had come the arrow.
The Indian who had sent that dart before him was descending the bank. An
instant's breathless hush while they stared at the solitary figure; then
the dark forms bent forward for the rush straightened, and there arose a
loud cry of recognition. "The son of Powhatan! The son of Powhatan!"
He came down the hillside to the level of the hollow, the authority of
his look and gesture making way for him through the crowd that surged
this way and that, and walked up to us where we stood, hemmed round, but
no longer in the clutch of our enemies. "It was a very big wolf this
time, Captain Percy," he said.
"You were never more welcome, Nantauquas," I answered,--"unless, indeed,
the wolf intends making a meal of three instead of two."
He smiled. "The wolf will go hungry to--day." Taking my hand in his, he
turned to his frowning countrymen. "Men of the Pamunkeys" he cried.
"This is Nantauquas' friend, and so the friend of all the tribes that
called Powhatan 'father.' The fire is not for him nor for his servant;
keep it for the Monacans and for the dogs of the Long House! The calumet
is for the friend of Nantauquas, and the dance of the maidens, the
noblest buck and the best of the weirs----"
There was a surging forward of the Indians, and a fierce murmur of
dissent. The werowance, standing out from the throng, lifted his voice.
"There was a time," he cried, "when Nantauquas was the panther crouched
upon the bough above the leader of the herd; now Nantauquas is a tame
panther and rolls at the white men's feet! There was a time when the
word of the son of Powhatan weighed more than the lives of many dogs
such as these, but now I know not why we should put out the fire at his
command! He is war chief no longer, for Opechancanough will have no tame
panther to lead the tribes. Opechancanough is our head, and
Opechancanough kindleth a fire indeed! We will give to this one what
fuel we choose, and to-night Nantauquas may look for the bones of the
white men!"
He ended, and a great clamour arose. The Paspaheghs would have cast
themselves upon us again but for a sudden action of the young chief, who
had stood motionless, with raised head and unmoved face, during the
werowance's bitter speech. Now he flung up his hand, and in it was a
bracelet of gold carved and twisted like a coiled snake and set with a
green stone. I had never seen the toy before, but evidently others had
done so. The excited voices fell, and the Indians, Pamunkeys and
Paspaheghs alike, stood as though turned to stone.
Nantauquas smiled coldly. "This day hath Opechancanough made me war
chief again. We have smoked the peace pipe together--my father's brother
and I--in the starlight, sitting before his lodge, with the wide marshes
and the river dark at our feet. Singing birds in the forest have been
many; evil tales have they told; Opechancanough has stopped his ears
against their false singing. My friends are his friends, my brother is
his brother, my word is his word: witness the armlet that hath no like;
that Opechancanough brought with him when he came from no man knows
where to the land of the Powhatans, many Huskanawings ago; that no white
men but these have ever seen. Opechancanough is at hand; he comes
through the forest with his two hundred warriors that are as tall as
Susquehannocks, and as brave as the children of Wahunsonacock. He comes
to the temples to pray to Kiwassa for a great hunting. Will you, when
you lie at his feet, that he ask you, 'Where is the friend of my friend,
of my war chief, of the Panther who is one with me again?'"
There came a long, deep breath from the Indians, then a silence, in
which they fell back, slowly and sullenly; whipped hounds, but with the
will to break that leash of fear.
"Hark!" said Nantauquas, smiling. "I hear Opechancanough and his
warriors coming over the leaves."
The noise of many footsteps was indeed audible, coming toward the hollow
from the woods beyond. With a burst of cries, the priests and the
conjurer whirled away to bear the welcome of Okee to the royal
worshipper, and at their heels went the chief men of the Pamunkeys. The
werowance of the Paspaheghs was one that sailed with the wind; he
listened to the deepening sound, and glanced at the son of Powhatan
where he stood, calm and confident, then smoothed his own countenance
and made a most pacific speech, in which all the blame of the late
proceedings was laid upon the singing birds. When he had done speaking,
the young men tore the stakes from the earth and threw them into a
thicket, while the women plucked apart the newly-kindled fire and flung
the brands into a little near-by stream, where they went out in a cloud
of hissing steam.
I turned to the Indian who had wrought this miracle. "Art sure it is not
a dream, Nantauquas?" I said. "I think that Opechancanough would not
lift a finger to save me from all the deaths the tribes could invent."
"Opechancanough is very wise," he answered quietly. "He says that now
the English will believe in his love indeed when they see that he holds
dear even one who might be called his enemy, who hath spoken against him
at the Englishmen's council fire. He says that for five suns Captain
Percy shall feast with Opechancanough, and that then he shall be sent
back free to Jamestown. He thinks that then Captain Percy will not speak
against him any more, calling his love to the white men only words with
no good deeds behind."
He spoke simply, out of the nobility of his nature, believing his own
speech. I that was older, and had more knowledge of men and the masks
that they wear, was but half deceived. My belief in the hatred of the
dark Emperor was not shaken, and I looked yet to find the drop of poison
within this honey flower. How poisoned was that bloom God knows I could
not guess!
"When you were missed, three suns ago," Nantauquas went on, "I and my
brother tracked you to the hut beside the forest, where we found only
the dead panther. There we struck the trail of the Paspaheghs; but
presently we came to running water, and the trail was gone."
"We walked up the bed of the stream for half the night," I said.
The Indian nodded. "I know. My brother went back to Jamestown for men
and boats and guns to go to the Paspahegh village and up the Powhatan.
He was wise with the wisdom of the white men, but I, who needed no gun,
and who would not fight against my own people, I stepped into the stream
and walked up it until past the full sun power. Then I found a broken
twig and the print of a moccasin, half hidden by a bush, overlooked when
the other prints were smoothed away. I left the stream and followed the
trail until it was broken again. I looked for it no more then, for I
knew that the Paspaheghs had turned their faces toward Uttamussac, and
that they would make a fire where many others had been made, in the
hollow below the three temples. Instead I went with speed to seek
Opechancanough. Yesterday, when the sun was low, I found him, sitting in
his lodge above the marshes and the coloured river. We smoked the peace
pipe together, and I am his war chief again. I asked for the green
stone, that I might show it to the Paspaheghs for a sign. He gave it,
but he willed to come to Uttamussac with me."
"I owe you my life," I said, with my hand upon his. "I and Diccon----"
What I would have said he put aside with a fine gesture. "Captain Percy
is my friend. My brother loves him, and he was kind to Matoax when she
was brought prisoner to Jamestown. I am glad that I could pull off this
wolf."
"Tell me one thing," I asked. "Before you left Jamestown, had you heard
aught of my wife or of my enemy?"
He shook his head. "At sunrise, the commander came to rouse my brother,
crying out that you had broken gaol and were nowhere to be found, and
that the man you hate was lying within the guest house, sorely torn by
some beast of the forest. My brother and I followed your trail at once;
the town was scarce awake when we left it behind us,--and I did not
return."
By this we three were alone in the hollow, for all the savages, men and
women, had gone forth to meet the Indian whose word was law from the
falls of the far west to the Chesapeake. The sun now rode above the low
hills, pouring its gold into the hollow and brightening all the world
besides. The little stream flashed diamonds, and the carven devils upon
the black houses above us were frightful no longer. There was not a
menace anywhere from the cloudless skies to the sweet and plaintive
chant to Kiwassa, sung by women and floating to us from the woods beyond
the hollow. The singing grew nearer, and the rustling of the leaves
beneath many feet more loud and deep; then all noise ceased, and
Opechancanough entered the hollow alone. An eagle feather was thrust
through his scalp lock; over his naked breast, that was neither painted
nor pricked into strange figures, hung a triple row of pearls; his
mantle was woven of bluebird feathers, as soft and sleek as satin. The
face of this barbarian was dark, cold, and impassive as death. Behind
that changeless mask, as in a safe retreat, the supersubtle devil that
was the man might plot destruction and plan the laying of dreadful
mines. He had dignity and courage,--no man denied him that. I suppose he
thought that he and his had wrongs: God knows! perhaps they had. But if
ever we were hard or unjust in our dealings with the savages,--I say not
that this was the case,--at least we were not treacherous and dealt not
in Judas kisses.
I stepped forward, and met him on the spot where the fire had been. For
a minute neither spoke. It was true that I had striven against him many
a time, and I knew that he knew it. It was also true that without his
aid Nantauquas could not have rescued us from that dire peril. And it
was again the truth that an Indian neither forgives nor forgets. He was
my saviour, and I knew that mercy had been shown for some dark reason
which I could not divine. Yet I owed him thanks, and gave them as
shortly and simply as I could.
He heard me out with neither liking nor disliking nor any other emotion
written upon his face; but when I had finished, as though he suddenly
bethought himself, he smiled and held out his hand, white-man fashion.
Now, when a man's lips widen I look into his eyes. The eyes of
Opechancanough were as fathomless as a pool at midnight, and as devoid
of mirth or friendliness as the staring orbs of the carven imps upon the
temple corners.
"Singing birds have lied to Captain Percy," he said, and his voice was
like his eyes. "Opechancanough thinks that Captain Percy will never
listen to them again. The chief of the Powhatans is a lover of the white
men, of the English, and of other white men,--if there are others. He
would call the Englishmen his brothers, and be taught of them how to
rule, and who to pray to----"
"Let Opechancanough go with me to-day to Jamestown," I said. "He hath
the wisdom of the woods; let him come and gain that of the town."
The Emperor smiled again. "I will come to Jamestown soon, but not to-day
nor to-morrow nor the next day. And Captain Percy must smoke the peace
pipe in my lodge above the Pamunkey, and watch my young men and maidens
dance, and eat with me five days. Then he may go back to Jamestown with
presents for the great white father there, and with a message that
Opechancanough is coming soon to learn of the white men."
I could have gnashed my teeth at that delay when she must think me dead,
but it would have been the madness of folly to show the impatience which
I felt. I too could smile with my lips when occasion drove, and drink a
bitter draught as though my soul delighted in it. Blithe enough to all
seeming, and with as few inward misgivings as the case called for,
Diccon and I went with the subtle Emperor and the young chief he had
bound to himself once more, and with their fierce train, back to that
village which we had never thought to see again. A day and a night we
stayed there; then Opechancanough sent away the Paspaheghs,--where we
knew not,--and taking us with him went to his own village above the
great marshes of the Pamunkey.