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 bloodstained
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
bloodstained 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 further 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
hear 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."