“That, like a fox in midst of harvest time,
Doth prey upon my flocks of passengers.”
—MARLOWE, in _Tamburlaine_.
By noon on the following day the whole colony had heard the tale of a
desperate fight on this peaceful island, of an unimaginable, living death
amid savage captors, and of a miraculous deliverance.
“He fought ten, single-handed, and so escaped,” said one of the planters,
joining a number of his companions, who were hastening toward Vytal’s
house.
“He was half roasted,” declared another, shuddering, “and prodded with
stones red hot.”
“His house,” asserted a third, “was burned to cinders while he defended
it within this very clearing.”
Throughout the whole morning small parties, thus discussing the subject,
sought to gain a view of the man who filled their thoughts. Inquisitively
they came and, looking in at the doorway of the cabin, surveyed the
youth, who sat just across the threshold, mumbling to himself and bowing
to them with a pitiable smile of welcome. Then, silently, they would
return to their various labors, awe-struck and uneasy.
But at mid-day there was a larger gathering at Vytal’s door. Ralph
Contempt stood in the centre of the circle, describing rapidly his
misadventures with a new grasp of detail and some continuity of incident.
His mental powers had evidently been refreshed by sleep and sustenance;
his memory now offered a more vivid and coherent depiction of the fight,
bondage, and escape. His listeners, men and women, stood enthralled and
terrified, the cold fingers of fear insidiously touching their nerves
and heart-strings to play the shivering discord of alarm. Perhaps no
instrument was more perfectly attuned to the notes of apprehension
than the heart of Ananias Dare. He stood near the speaker, with an
ill-disguised attempt to suppress the terror that, like an east wind,
froze his marrow with an actual chill. He was entirely sober, and,
therefore, completely unmanned. His face, pallid and tense, was yet
beautiful, its terror strangely heightening the effect of beauty as
though by a magic but despicable art. For the expression, emasculated by
fright, was remembered long after by those who had read the reflection
of its fear in their own hearts. The shallowest eye can express the
deepest apprehension; the nature devoid of capacity for all other intense
emotion, may yet be keenly and desperately subject to the power of fear.
The study of cowardice reveals peculiar inconsistencies. For instance,
here stood Ananias, a man of insignificant psychal stature, surpassing
all his fellows in the height of his alarm. His eyes, often but vague
films beneath the fumes of wine, were now clarified and made brilliant by
the horror of their gaze.
And here, too, listening to the narrative of Ralph Contempt, stood Simon
Ferdinando, a coward of another sort, with eyes more furtive and less
intense, who seemed already to consider the question of escape, while the
other only remained paralyzed by the menace of a danger that might at any
time repeat itself. But Dare bore unmistakable traces even now of gentle
birth and a lost manhood, whereas Ferdinando appeared not unlike a
frightened rat looking for its hole. The one inspired contempt and pity,
the other contempt alone.
And the man who called himself Contempt wore an expression as he talked
according well with the appellation. Directing his words and gestures
toward these two, not pointedly, but in a subtle manner, he so worked
upon them and all the others that, when his repeated story of the
massacre was told and he paused breathless, a low, moaning sigh fell from
many lips, like the wail of a night wind. Then suddenly Ferdinando cried
out: “To the ships! To the ships! Must we, too, perish thus? Nay!” His
voice rose to a high pitch. “To the ships and England!”
“Ay, ay,” came hoarsely from the terrified group.
“Ay, away from this accursed country,” said Ananias Dare, who at last had
found voice to speak. But a new look, more pitiable than all the weakness
of his first expression, crossed his face. “Yet, stay!” he cried, as
though with a great effort, some latent nobility, the mere memory of a
dead courage, asserting itself.
Ralph Contempt turned to the others as if he had not heard. “A huge
devil,” he resumed, “brained my sole surviving comrade with an axe of
stone, whereat, dragging me by the hair, for I was bound by leathern
thongs, he rolled me among the burning timbers of my own house. Next,
another savage—” But he was interrupted by a second shrill cry from
Ferdinando:
“Even now the Indians may be on their way; even now it may be too late!”
“Yes,” moaned Ananias, his short-lived courage failing, “too late.”
“To the ships!”
It was the voice not of one man but of all, while panic-stricken they
turned and, with a rush, made for the main enclosure of the town. Only
the youth, who had caused the stampede, delayed, and he, smiling, started
to re-enter the hut. But on the threshold he paused and looked back
again. For he heard a new voice rising above the clamor of his retreating
audience, a voice that he recognized instantly. Seeing the men and women
hanging back before Vytal himself, who had met them at the narrow opening
in the palisade, he returned to the group leisurely, his eyes on the tall
figure and stern face in the gateway.
“How now?” demanded the soldier, quietly. “What means this panic?” Not
one gave answer. “What means it?” The words came more sharply than
before. But still there was no response, each being ready to cast on his
fellow the onus of explanation. And still they all hung back, their eyes
cast down.
Vytal looked at one and another with an infinite scorn, omitting only
the forlorn Ananias in his searching gaze; for a brief glance at the
governor’s son-in-law had shown him a figure of despicable shame.
“No man enters the town until the truth is told.” And, drawing his
rapier, he waited.
“The bodkin!” muttered Ferdinando, who, drawing back to the outskirts
of the group, sought to hide himself from view. At that moment Ralph
Contempt went to Simon and spoke a low word in the sailing-master’s ear.
Hearing it, Ferdinando started with an exclamation of surprise, and then,
in evident relief, maintained silence, obedient to the other’s mute
command. On this the youth, sauntering unconcernedly toward Vytal, spoke
that all might hear him:
“An none other can find his tongue, mine must needs confess itself
guilty.”
His manner became wandering, and he passed a hand across his brow. “The
tongue is an unruly member … very mischievous … so mischievous that
sometimes the painted devils put cinders on it, and the cinders sizzle to
hiss its prayers.”
Vytal scrutinized the speaker, first keenly, then with that look of
bewilderment which not until lately had been seen in the soldier’s face.
“These men fear a second massacre,” added Ralph, more sanely, “and would
return to England.”
Vytal’s expression went darker yet. “Fools!” he exclaimed, and then with
less severity, as a grieved look came into his eyes, “I had not thought
to find men turned to sheep—_men_!”
He emphasized the last word as though to convey its full meaning to
their hearts. His face, resolute, fearless, but more sorrowing now than
scornful, imparted some of its own courage to those about him. Ananias
Dare, for one, seemed to have lost much of his fear. Vytal alone had the
power to fortify his faint heart. In the soldier’s presence he was a
different man.
“I strove to stop them,” he said, “but the effort was vain.” Yet still
Vytal withheld his look from the assistant, for this weakling, all
unknowing, was the one man the mere sight of whom could cut him to the
quick.
“You will return to your duty—_all_!” It was not a question, but a quiet,
doubtless command. He stepped aside from the gateway. One after another
they filed past him, each more eager than his predecessor to hurry beyond
the paling and the captain’s view. Ananias Dare and Ferdinando brought
up the rear of this ignominious procession, the one slowly, the other
scurrying like a rat.
Within the enclosure they all separated silently, each seeming to desire
a temporary solitude in the pursuit of his work.
“They would defend the town most gallantly against attack,” observed
Ralph, dryly.
“They _will_,” returned Vytal, emphasizing the change of tense. “But
your story is told. They have heard enough. You will strive to forbear
hereafter.”
The youth smiled. “Forbearance is my chief virtue,” and he went away,
leaving his host alone in the cabin.
As he walked through the woods he came to a narrow creek that ran inland
from the sea; and, following this toward the shore, he chanced on a sight
that caused him to stop and smile with genuine light-hearted boyishness.
For there, in the middle of the shallow stream, her back toward him,
stood Mistress Gyll Croyden, bending low over the water. In one hand she
held a forked stick which now and again she darted viciously into the
muddy bed of the inlet, while with her other hand she held her skirts
above the knee.
“Is it possible,” called the youth, “that even a crab is so heartless as
to run away? Now, were I the crab—” but her expression, as she turned,
brought another peal of laughter from his lips. “Yes,” he said, “you are
caught instead of the shell-fish.”
At this the smile which had been rising to the surface of her eyes,
whether she would or no, culminated in a laugh as merry as his own. She
waded to the bank. “My patient is come to life at the wrong moment; but
sit you down, pretty boy, and talk to me. Well?” she said, dangling a
pair of white feet in the sluggish stream—“Well?”
“What is the meaning of your expectancy?” he inquired, stretching himself
at full length on the mossy ground. “You wait, I suppose, for a seemly
expression of gratitude. Thank you, then,” and, taking her hand, he
kissed it lazily. But she was pouting. “Oh, I am wrong. What is it, then?
Ah, I see. You wait to be told of your beauty, and how the sight of a
maid crabbing is beyond description. Methinks there’s another will tell
thee that, and more besides. I saw the mountebank to-day ogling thee with
eyes distraught and bulging.”
Gyll laughed. “’Tis Roger Prat. He hath no thought o’ me. He’s all for
the bear and Vytal.”
“Ah, well,” said Ralph, “thou’rt not so wondrous comely. I tell thee,
wench, for all thy prettiness, there’s one outshines thee as the moon
a will-o’-the-wisp. Nay, look not angry. ’Tis the governor’s daughter,
Mistress Dare. I’ve seen her at her window thrice this very day. My heart
goes wild of love for so fair a face, so unobtainable a damsel.”
At this Gyll made a wry face. “Pah! she loses her beauty quickly. When we
set out from England she was fairer far than now. I saw her go aboard at
Plymouth.”
“Ay,” laughed Ralph, “she was younger, but her face lacked its present
fire in the London days.”
“What!” cried Gyll, “you saw her there?”
“Nay, nay,” he returned quickly, “’tis a delusion of my addled brain.”
She looked down at his incongruous beard, and then into the youthful eyes
indulgently. “Poor boy!”
“Poor boy!” he echoed. “You call me nothing but ‘poor boy.’”
“Nay, nay, your Majesty,” she contradicted, mocking his assumed
haughtiness. “When have I said such a thing before?”
“Was it not when I—” But Ralph hesitated. “Oh no, perhaps not,” he added,
quickly, and rambled back to the praise of her appearance.
“If your Majesty will permit me,” she said, complacently, “I will pull on
my stockings.”
To this he made a strange rejoinder. “Mistress Croyden, you are a
prophetess, a sibyl who reads the future.”
She looked at him questioningly, with a kind concern, believing him again
bereft of reason. “Because I predict the donning of my hose? Is it, then,
so easy to be a prophetess?” She picked up a pair of red stockings and
wound them about her fingers.
“Consider that the premonition an you will,” he replied, knowingly. “’Tis
perhaps as fruitful.” He seemed to delight for the moment in propounding,
by voice and look, an enigma. But in the next instant he meandered on
after his usual manner, with flattery and idle jests.
In the evening, Gyll, meeting Marlowe in the town, pronounced Master
Ralph Contempt hopelessly insane. “Or,” she added, “a knavish actor, who
demands more sympathy than he merits, for he heard me say ‘poor boy’ when
we thought him lifeless in a swoon. But he is a ‘poor boy’ for a’ that.
Think of the tortures!”
* * * * *
Following this, three days went by without incident, and still Hugh Rouse
and Roger Prat, stationed at the southern end of the island as outposts,
gave no warning.
Vytal changed. His taciturnity, which had increased of late, was broken
more often as the danger became imminent. His impassive face, in which
only Marlowe could read the quietude of self-restraint, grew eager with
the anticipation of an actual, tangible conflict between right and wrong.
Here was a condition all-absorbing, and, above all, a condition the
soldier could meet face to face with comprehension. He could cope with
_this_, at least. The spirit of action, always ready to assert itself in
him, but sometimes of necessity repressed, finally had become paramount
again, once more to resume full sway. His step became lighter, his deep
blue eyes less cold, and many, noting the alteration, wondered, only the
veteran soldiers and the poet dimly understanding their leader’s change.
“My brother, they approach.” It was the Indian who, having again
reconnoitred, vouchsafed this information on the fourth day after the
advent of Ralph Contempt.
Late in the evening, Vytal started homeward to seek Marlowe. The
night was dark and still, as though Fate, with finger to lips, had
set a seal of silence on the world, which the distant surf and a slow
rainfall on the sea of leaves intensified monotonously. But a new sound
suddenly broke the stillness. A cry, a single cry—plaintive, feeble,
and unutterably doleful—then a silence even deeper than before. Vytal,
pausing near the palisade, looked up at the dwelling of John White. A
rabbit, startled by the sound of the cry, darted across his pathway
into the woods. An owl, high above him, answered the voice with a
wailing screech. A deer, that had been watching his approach beyond the
gate, ran away timidly through the forest. He remembered all this long
afterward—the white flash of the rabbit, the owl’s response, the rustling
of leaves as the deer withdrew.
He waited. Again the cry, louder, but none the less pitiful and lonely.
The muscles of his face grew tense, the veins big like whipcords. He
turned, as though to lean against the paling, but then, as with a
strenuous effort, refused even that support, and stood motionless like
stone.
And now, as a side door directly before him opened, a flood of light fell
across the pathway from within. It shone in a pool of rain at his feet,
and played about his drawn face with profane curiosity. Ananias Dare
stood in the doorway looking at him. But suddenly the assistant lurched
back, and, snatching a silver cup from the table behind him, brought it
out, with reeling, splashing footsteps, to Vytal.
“Drink,” he mumbled, thickly. “Drink, good my captain, to the health of
my first-born child! A toast, sir, to my daughter—a deep toast, a very
deep toast—to the first English child—the first, mark you—is it not a
great honor?—the first English child born in America—world-wide America!”
He stood, all unheedful of the rain, bareheaded and half dressed, swaying
as though at any minute he might fall to the wet ground.
He offered the cup to Vytal. His hand shook, and the troubled wine
overflowed the brim. “Drink,” he repeated, laughing hilariously. “Such a
toast, such a child! You’ve heard her voice already. Damn it! Drink! Will
you?”
For an instant Vytal’s face went livid with a fury no man had ever seen
there until now. He clinched his fists; the nails bit into the palms.
“Desecrator!” And in another minute he was groping his way through the
darkness toward the gate, until, finding the path, his step became firm
and regular on the hard earth, as though he were marching, then died away
slowly in the woods.