THE SILENT VILLAGE
As soon as the _Pelican_ was out of arrow-shot of the cliff, the
Beothics disappeared. Ouenwa laid aside his bow with a sigh of regret.
Then he tried to repeat to Kingswell what he had heard from Panounia.
After a deal of questioning, sign-making, and mental exertion, the
Englishman gathered the information that treachery and murder had taken
place up the river, and that his young friend hated the new leader of
the tribe with a bitter hatred. He did not wonder at the bitterness. He
looked at the young savage's flushed face and glowing eyes with sympathy
and admiration. His liking for the boy had grown in every hour of their
companionship, and, by this time, had developed into a decided fondness.
"Sit down, lad, and let your guns cool," he said, with a light hand on
the other's knee. "Your enemies are my enemies," he continued, "and
we'll fight the dogs every time we see 'em."
Ouenwa sat quiet and tried to look calm. He was soothed by the evident
kindliness of Kingswell's tone and manner, though he had failed to
translate his speech. The men on the thwarts had caught the words,
however. They nodded heavily to one another.
"Ye say the very word what was in my mind, sir," spoke up Tom Bent,
"an', if I may make so bold as to say further, your enemies be your
servants' enemies, sir. Therefore the young un's enemies must be our
enemies, holus bolus." The other sailors nodded decidedly. "Therefore,"
continued Tom Bent, "all they cowardly heathen aft on the cliff has to
reckon, hereafter, with Thomas Bent an' the crew o' this craft."
"Well spoken, Tom," replied Kingswell, with the smile that always won
him the heart and hand of every man he favoured with it,--and of every
maid, too, more than likely. "But we can't enthuse on empty stomachs.
Pass out the bread and the cold meat," he added.
For fully two hours the _Pelican_ rocked about within half a mile of her
night's anchorage. Kingswell was not in a desperate hurry, and so his
men pulled at the oars just enough to hold the boat clear of the rocks.
A sharp lookout was kept along the coast, but not a sight nor a sound
of the Beothics rewarded their vigilance.
"They be up to some devilment, ye may lay to that," said Tom Bent.
At last a wind fluttered to them out of the nor'east, and the square
sail was hoisted and sheeted home. Again the _Pelican_ dipped her bows
and wet her rail on the voyage of exploration.
After two hours of sailing, and just when they were off the mouth of a
little river and a fair valley, a fog overtook them. Kingswell was for
running in, but Ouenwa objected.
"Panounia follow," he said. "He great angry. Drop irons," he added,
pointing to the little anchors.
"Panounia is wounded. You winged him yourself," replied Kingswell. "He
could not follow us around that coast, lad, at the clip we were coming."
Ouenwa considered the words with puckered brows. They were beyond him.
The commander pointed shoreward.
"All safe," he said. "All safe."
"No, no," cried the lad. "All kill. No safe."
During this controversy the sail had been partly lowered, and the
_Pelican_ had been slowly running landward with the fog.
Kingswell looked from the young Beothic to the seamen with a smile of
whimsical uncertainty.
"Out o' the mouths o' babes an' sucklin's," remarked Tom Bent, with his
deep-set eyes fixed on nothing in particular. Kingswell's glance rested,
for a moment, on the ancient mariner.
"Lower away," he said. The sail flapped down, and was quickly stowed.
"Let go the anchors," he commanded. The grapplings splashed into the
gray waves. The fog crawled over the boat and shut her off from land and
sky. With a last dreary whistle, the wind died out entirely.
"Rip me!" exclaimed Master Kingswell, "but here is caution that smells
remarkably like cowardice." Fretfully sighing, he produced his pipe,
tobacco, and tinder-box. Soon the fragrant smoke was mingling with the
fog. The young commander leaned back, taking his comfort where he could,
like the courageous gentleman that he was. The habit of burning
Virginian tobacco was an expensive one, confined to the wealthy and the
adventurous. The seamen, who, of course, had not yet acquired it,
watched their captain with open interest. When a puff was blown through
the nostrils, or sent aloft in a series of rings, they nudged one
another, like children at a show. By this time the walls of fog had made
of the _Pelican_ a tiny, lost world by itself. Suddenly Ouenwa raised
his hand. "Sh!" he whispered. Kingswell removed the pipe-stem from his
mouth, and inclined his head toward the hidden river and valley. All
strained their ears, to wrest some sound from the surrounding gray other
than the lapping of the tide along the unseen land-wash. But they could
hear nothing.
"Village," whispered Ouenwa, pointing landward.
"But we saw no signs of a village," protested Kingswell, gently.
"Village," repeated the lad. "Ouenwa hear. Ouenwa smell."
Immediately the four Englishmen began to sniff the fog, like hounds
taking a scent on the wind. But their nostrils were not the nostrils of
either hounds or Beothics. They sniffed to no purpose. They shook their
heads. Kingswell wagged a chiding finger at their keen-nosed companion.
The boy read the inference of the gesture, and flushed indignantly.
"Village," he whispered, shrilly. "Village, village, village."
Kingswell looked distressed. The sailors grinned leniently at the
determined boy. They had great faith in their own noses, had those
mariners of Bristol and thereabouts. Ouenwa, frowning a little, sank
into a moody contemplation of the fog.
"This is dull," exclaimed Kingswell, after a half-hour of silence.
"Tom, pipe us a stave, like a good lad."
The boatswain scratched his head reflectively. Presently he cleared his
throat with energy.
"Me voice be a bit husky, sir, to what it once were," he murmured, "but
I'll do me best--an' no sailorman can say fairer nor that."
Straightway he struck into a heroic ballad of a sea-fight, in a high,
tottering tenor. The song dealt with Spanish swagger and English daring,
with bloody decks, falling spars, and flying splinters. Harding joined
in the chorus with a booming bass. Clotworthy and the commander soon
followed. Kingswell's voice was clear and strong and wonderfully
melodious. Ouenwa's eyes glowed and his muscles trembled. Though the
words held no meaning for him, the rollicking, dashing swing of the tune
fired his excitable blood. He forgot all about Panounia, and the
suspected village on the river so near at hand ceased to trouble him. He
beat time to the singing with his moccasined feet, and clapped his hands
together in rhythmic appreciation of his comrades' efforts. In time the
ballad was finished. The last member of the craven crew of the _Teressa
Maria_ had tasted English steel and been tossed to the sharks. Then
Master Kingswell sprang to his feet and sang a sentimental ditty. It
was of roses and fountains, of latticed windows and undying affection.
The air was captivating. The singer's voice rang tender and clear. Old
Tom Bent remembered lost years. Harding thought of a Devon orchard, and
of a Devon lass at work harvesting the ruddy fruit. Clotworthy saw a
cottage beside a little wood, and a woman and a little child gazing
seaward and westward from the door.
For several seconds after the last note had died away, the little
company remained silent and motionless, fully occupied with its various
thoughts. Ouenwa was the first to break the spell of the song. He laid
his hand on Kingswell's arm with a quick gesture, and leaned toward him.
"Canoe," he whispered.
The sound that had caught Ouenwa's attention was repeated--a short rap,
like the inadvertent striking of a paddle against a gunwale. They all
heard it, and, with as little noise as possible, set to work at getting
out cutlasses and loading muskets. Kingswell crawled forward and
whispered with old Tom Bent. The boatswain nodded and turned to Harding.
That sturdy young seaman crawled to the bows and placed his hands on the
hawser of the forward anchor. He looked aft. Kingswell, who had returned
to his seat at the tiller, leaned over the stern and cut the manilla
rope that tethered the boat at that end. Harding immediately pulled on
his rope until he was directly over the light bow anchor. Then, strongly
and slowly, and without noise, he brought the four-fingered iron up and
into the bows. They were free of the bottom, anyway, and with the loss
of only one anchor. Kingswell breathed a sigh of relief.
The _Pelican_ drifted, and the crew stared into the fog, with wide eyes
and alert ears. Then, to seaward and surely not ten yards away, sounded
a plover-call. Kingswell signalled to Bent to man the seaward side and
Clotworthy and Harding the other. They rested the barrels of their great
matchlocks on the gunwales. Suddenly the prow of a canoe pierced the
curtain of fog not four yards from Tom Bent. He touched the match to the
short fuse. There was a terrific report, and a chorus of wild yells. In
the excitement that followed, the others discharged their pieces.
Kingswell grabbed an oar, slipped it into a notch beside the tiller and
began to "scull" the boat seaward. The men reloaded their muskets and
peered into the fog. They heard splashings and cries on all sides, but
could see nothing. Ouenwa, standing erect, discharged arrow after arrow
at the hidden enemy.
The splashings grew fainter, and the cries ceased entirely. Kingswell
passed the oar which he had been using to Harding, and told the men to
lay aside their muskets and row. Ouenwa let fly his last arrow, in the
names of his murdered father and grandfather.
For a long and weary time the _Pelican_ lay off the hidden land,
shrouded in fog and silence. A few hours before sunset a wind from the
west found her out, drove away the fog, and disclosed the sea and the
coast and the open sky.
"Pull her head 'round," commanded Kingswell, "and hoist the sail. We are
going back to have a look at that village."
The men obeyed eagerly. They were itching for a chance to repay the
savages for the fright in the dark.