“From forth her ashes shall advance her head,
And flourish once again that erst was dead.”
—MARLOWE, in _Dido, Queen of Carthage_.
Vytal frowned and bit his lip. “When did he go, and whither?”
“When, I can say, for I have heard. It was yesterday, the day after the
great ship and our father, the governor, came to Roanoke, before we
ourselves arrived. But whither I know not, save that it was toward the
great forest of the South.”
“Alone?”
The Indian’s brow clouded. “Nay, I grieve that he went with Towaye, my
kinsman, who came from England on the _Admiral_. I await thy word to
follow the trail by which Towaye, for some unknown purpose, guides thine
enemy.”
“I thank you, but I am glad that he is gone. He has no knowledge of
the fly-boat’s arrival, and thus will miscalculate our strength. He is
bound, an I mistake not, for the Spanish city of St. Augustine. Is it not
accessible from here by land?”
“It is,” replied Manteo, “for men of a kindred race came hither that way
at the beginning of the world, and were slain as foes. But the trail
hides itself as the trail a dead man follows. It runs through an endless
forest, our forefathers have said, and over the face of angry waters.
The white man must be brave, though evil, and my kinsman but one of many
guides. For passing through Secotan, five-and-twenty leagues to the
southward, they must go, with many windings, as serpents go, to the land
of Casicola, lord of ten thousand. Also they must pass the Weroances,
Dicassa, and Toupee Kyn, of whom our men know nothing save the sound of
their names, which comes like an echo without meaning. And they will come
to La Grande Copal, where there are stars in the earth your people call
jewels, and buy with cloth.”
Vytal’s face grew more troubled as the Indian proceeded. “It is
impossible that he has gone so far.”
“Yes, but there may be yet another way. The river called Waterin[4] is a
trail itself, leading perhaps to the Spanish towns.”
Vytal seemed but half satisfied. “Are you sure he has left the island?”
“No, but I will see.”
“Go, then, Manteo.”
“I return not,” said the Indian, “until I know,” and in a minute he was
lost in the adjacent woods.
For a week the foremost consideration in Vytal’s mind, after the cargo
had been landed, was to ascertain, if possible, the whereabouts of
the fifteen men who, being the stoutest spirits of an earlier colony,
had been left the year before to hold the territory for England. The
inadequacy of this arrangement, by which a garrison that would not
have sufficed to defend a small fortress was left to guard a boundless
acquisition, is perhaps unparalleled in history. But to many of the newly
arrived colonists the utter futility of the plan was not apparent. They
had not yet experienced the desperate hardships of an infant settlement,
nor realized the extent and latent ferocity of the savage hordes that
overran the continent. Furthermore, the magnitude and nature of the
territory which fifteen men had been appointed to hold was by no means
appreciated. Nevertheless, in the minds of men who had played their games
of life against odds and could justly estimate the hazards of existence,
the likelihood of finding the little company seemed very small. Vytal,
for one, felt far from sanguine, but the kindly, impractical governor,
although he had already searched the whole Island of Roanoke in vain,
still held out hope of ultimate success.
“I doubt not we shall find them yet,” he said one evening to Vytal, “on
some adjacent island.”
The soldier shook his head. “Let us go once again and inspect the site of
their settlement.”
“It is a most dismal scene,” declared the governor, leading the way to a
road running inward from the shore. “But my men can soon make the place
habitable.”
“Habitable!” exclaimed a voice behind them; “’tis a perfect Eden,” and
the speaker joined them.
“Ay, Master Marlowe,” returned the governor, glancing at the new-comer
with a look of indulgent admiration. “But Eden is forsook.”
“’Tis the old story,” observed the poet, “of an enforced exodus, but
wherein lay the fatal sin? Are birds evil? Nay, but their little fate in
a falcon’s guise destroys them.”
The governor looked at him askance. “I have heard of your loose theology,
sir, but pray you to restrain it here. We are a lonely people, and need
God.”
The poet made no answer. The unquestioning faith of men like Vytal and
the governor—the faith direct, plain, and utterly free from the cant
he hated—caused him at times to covet their deep simplicity; again, he
would rail against religion, and wander with vain eagerness through the
mazes of a complex Pantheism. But at last, poetry, pure and undefiled by
sophistries, would return to him with her quieting, magical touch, and
restore the sunshine to his world. “Dreamed you ever of such verdure?”
he said, at length. “Nature is prodigal here, a spendthrift in a far
country.”
They were now on an eminence dominating the bay and sea. Vytal stood
still and looked inland, then turned and faced the water. He spoke no
word, but only gazed off to the distant shore. At last, catching sight of
the busy group beneath him, he turned again and rejoined the others. “He
knows it all,” thought Marlowe, “even better than I, yet says nothing.”
The road, overgrown with weeds and scarcely visible in places, led them
at last to a number of huts in a wide clearing at the north end of the
island. Here a scene of decay and desolation met their eyes. The sun, now
setting, shot long, slanting rays across the oval, as though to exhibit
every detail of the picture in one merciless moment and then be gone.
“’Tis an impious revelation,” said Marlowe, glancing about drearily at
the numerous deserted huts. “Look at that hovel; ’tis but the corpse of
a house. And that! Its windows leer like the eye-holes of a skull. And
this one, the least decayed. It stands to prove itself a home, with the
mere memory of protection. How vacantly they stare at us, like melancholy
madmen! Come, let us begone.” He would have started back, but seeing
that Vytal and the governor had not yet finished their more practical
investigation, followed them in silence.
Most of the hovels had been torn down to within about eight feet of the
ground. The small boards which had served to barricade their windows
were scattered about like the fallen slabs of graves, while here and
there a door, evidently unhinged by violence, lay flat against the earth,
as though, if raised, it would reveal the entrance to a subterranean
vault. The roofs, which were but the ceilings of the first stories,
yawned wide to the sky, save where a few mouldering, worm-pitted rafters
deepened the inner gloom. Melons grew about walls and thresholds in
rotting profusion, while a hoard of parasitic weeds and wild grape-vines
ran in and out between the logs. Some of the cabins, having fared yet
worse, were now but black heaps of charred timber, half covered with long
green tendrils, as if the fingers of Nature were striving to drag them
back to life. And near the middle of the clearing a large pile of logs,
rafters, bricks, and stone blocks showed that a fortress had been razed
to the ground.
The three men walked on with few words, until Vytal, standing at the
margin of the oval, called Marlowe’s attention to a narrow pathway almost
concealed by shrubs and fallen leaves. It led through the dense forest.
Impulsively, Marlowe started to follow it, but the governor would have
restrained him. “Have a care, Sir Poet; mayhap this is an Indian trail,
and leads to danger!”
“No,” called Marlowe, who, unheeding the other’s protest, had hastened
along the path to a distance of several rods. “Come.”
They followed him and, to their surprise, came presently out on a
second clearing, much smaller than the first. Here a cabin, entirely
unobservable from the main opening, stood more boldly than all the rest,
despite its isolation. It was entirely encircled by trees, save on the
western side, where a broad breach in the line of foliage admitted a
flood of relentless sunlight.
The three men started forward eagerly, for this house might even then
have contained a tenant. Its door was closed, its windows barred. The
roof had not entirely fallen, for a willow’s branches swept across it
with a thousand restless whispers, as though to a being within. But here,
too, lank weeds clawed the walls, and melons rotted before the threshold.
Vytal tried the door. It resisted his strong pressure. But Marlowe,
raising to the level of his shoulder a large stone, not unlike a
cannon-ball in shape and size, flung it against the oaken barrier. It
crashed through a decayed board and fell inside, first with a dull thud,
and then, as it rolled, a crackling sound like the snapping of dry twigs.
Vytal looked through the aperture, but could distinguish nothing for the
gloom, and Marlowe peered in with no better success. “It holds all the
shadows of the forest in its heart,” he said, thrusting a hand through
the hole. “There is a bar of iron across the doorway.” He dislodged the
metal rod, and letting it fall, pulled open the door, whose rusty hinges
creaked remonstrance as he entered.
Vytal and the governor, following him, found themselves standing on hard,
cold earth, to which the stone and iron bar had fallen.
A sudden gust of wind slammed the door behind them. Vytal stepped back
to reopen it and admit light into the gloomy interior, but the last rays
of sunshine crept now almost horizontally through a rift in the western
wall. “They desecrate a tomb,” said Marlowe, “by revealing its contents.
Look!” He pointed to a number of white streaks in a corner on the earth.
The sunbeams frolicked across them.
“They are the bones of a fellow-creature,” exclaimed the governor,
leaving the cabin with horror.
He spoke truth. In the corner lay a man’s bones, the skull, the body’s
frame, the limbs, all close together, but separate.
“There are two skulls!” ejaculated Marlowe.
“No; one is but the stone you threw.” Vytal was not mistaken, for the
stone had rolled among the white streaks, snapping some and crushing
others to a powder that shone like phosphorus in the sunlight.
The two men turned away from the ghastly sight in silence, to survey the
room. An old musket stood against the wall, its barrel poked through the
narrow chink, peering out at the forest. A rusty pike lay near by, its
long, wooden staff stretched out from the white finger-bones of its dead
possessor.
The cabin was devoid of furniture save for a rough-hewn table and an
upturned stool, about the legs of which the long sinews of a plant,
having entered stealthily from without through numerous knot-holes, had
twined themselves tenaciously.
But there were few weeds growing within the hovel, for the earth, like
adamant, offered no fertility even to the rankest vegetation.
Suddenly the sunlight left the room, and a chilling miasma seemed to fill
it. Marlowe shuddered. “Let us leave this grave. Its gloom gets into my
brain. One man outlived his mates and dwelt alone in this vast country,
daring to fight single-handed against Destiny—and this is the result—a
few porous sticks bleached by the frivolous sunbeams, a delusive glow
suggesting the divine spark—and oblivion!” So saying, the poet, wrapping
his cloak closer about him, withdrew to the open air, where the governor,
also dolefully affected, awaited him.
Vytal came out slowly. “He is accustomed to scenes of death,” said the
governor to Marlowe. “Death, with all its grim carnality, has grown
familiar in the years of war.”
“Yes, but the gloom of the story is in his heart, beside which the
shadows of the room are as nothing. He feels these things down deep, but
is ever silent.”
They stood on the edge of the glade waiting for the subject of their
conversation, who was walking slowly around the cabin. “He looks for
further traces of the lost men,” remarked the governor.
“No, it is for some other reason.” Marlowe was not mistaken, Vytal’s
close inspection of the hut’s vicinage being from a widely different
motive. Carefully he examined the glade’s border on all sides. To the
west he found a wide, natural avenue in the forest that lost itself in
the purple distance; to the north, a dense jungle seemingly impassable
for man or beast; to the east, a double file of oaks and elms, growing
with some regularity on the brow of a low cliff, their trunks surrounded
by a tangle of underbrush that rose to the height of several feet and
fell away again, to ramble through long grass in all directions. Being
tall enough to look over this wild hedge-row, Vytal could catch a
glimpse of the sound beneath him, and, from a vantage-point where a dead
oak-branch left the view unobscured, he could just distinguish the two
ships riding at anchor, within musket-range of his position.
Turning then to the south side of the clearing, he came to a strip of
woods, perhaps fifty yards in width, which separated the hut from the
deserted settlement. Evidently satisfied by his observations, he rejoined
his companions.
“With your permission,” he said to Governor White, “I make this my
dwelling-place.”
The governor expostulated, being astonished at the voluntary choice of
so dismal and isolated a habitation, but Marlowe understood.
“I prefer it to any other,” said the soldier. “Have you not yet suspected
that we are likely to meet enemies here on Roanoke?”
“Nay, the chance is slight. Manteo and Towaye have assured me of their
people’s friendliness.”
Vytal hesitated before he spoke again, but finally concluding that the
time had come for his disclosure, made known the main facts tersely
and without a word of incriminating testimony against the governor’s
son-in-law, Ananias Dare.
Governor White received the information in mute astonishment at first,
seeming loath to believe that any of his followers had planned so
base a conspiracy. But he had been aware before now of Ferdinando’s
untrustworthy character, and although the master had explained away his
desertion of the fly-boat by asserting that its pilot knew the course,
and had requested him not to shorten sail unnecessarily, the governor’s
first mistrust returned to him now with full force. “We must apprehend
this Ferdinando, and bring him to justice.”
“Nay, with your permission, I will leave him at large, yet watch him
carefully. Men of his mould defeat themselves. By close surveillance
we shall discover any mischief he may seek to brew among us. An open
punishment would affright the fellows who, being but tools, were on the
verge of mutiny. These men now are loyal enough, and, if well treated,
will fight for us. Otherwise they might desert.”
The governor’s kindly face was now more grieved than angry. “I had not
thought there was so caitiff a knave as Simon among our people. Think
you Sir Walter St. Magil will return with a force to menace our little
colony?”
“That is wellnigh certain, for St. Magil plays into the hands of Philip,
King of Spain. The Spaniards would extend their possessions northward,
and have found a friend to aid them. This man, believing he has decreased
our numbers by one-half, has gone to inform his patron’s subjects that we
stupidly wait here to be killed.”
“Whither has he gone?”
“That I cannot tell. At first I thought to St. Augustine, but the journey
by land is very difficult. The Spaniards await him, for all I know, in a
camp not half so far.”
The governor, deeply troubled, cast about for the best method of
procedure. “Would it not be well to pursue St. Magil, and overtake him if
possible before he reaches his destination? I have heard that Indians are
as quick and sure as hounds in a pursuit.”
“No. It is best to drill each planter in the use of arms; then, when our
homes are built, to fortify the town as best we may, and wait.”
“But we shall suffer heavy loss, even though successful in the end.”
“Not so much as if we run into a snare with no provision for defence. And
we shall teach them a lesson.”
“But at how great a cost to us? You, Captain Vytal, have not a child to
consider. I have. She is a woman, brave, ’tis true, and stout of heart,
but now not strong in body. You know my daughter, Mistress Eleanor Dare?”
“Yes.”
“I should go down to my grave broken-hearted were harm to come to her.”
“I understand.”
“No, you cannot, you who talk of wars as pastimes, you who have no child
to guard.”
“I understand,” repeated Vytal, breathing heavily, and Marlowe, to
relieve the tension, declared fervently, “We will defend the women to the
last man.”
Vytal turned to him as though he would have asked a question, but looked
away again in silence.
They were now nearing the workers on the beach, who made ready to return
for the night to their cabins in the fly-boat and _Admiral_, where they
were to sleep until the town had been rebuilt. Seeing the governor stop
to speak with one of the assistants, Marlowe turned to his taciturn
friend. “May I share that hermit’s hut with you?”
“I would share it with no other,” and Vytal looked down at the poet as
at a younger brother. Marlowe’s face brightened. He started ahead with a
buoyant step. “Now we shall live together, a pair of barbarians, heavily
armed against the world and waiting to see which must be the last man.”
He would have run on further in his reckless manner, but there came no
response to the outburst of defiant enthusiasm. Turning to ascertain the
reason, he was surprised to find that his companion, who had dropped
behind him, was at this moment entering the woods in company with Manteo,
the Indian.
“My brother, a tongue of smoke licks the sky far to the southward; yet
the forest burns not; the smoke is from the shore.”
“You think it is the camp of white men?”
“I do; for did I not see a ship asleep at anchor and the gleam of armor
under a hill?”
A look of intense satisfaction crossed Vytal’s face. “They are come,” he
said.