“Browsing soul! I cannot contemplate so much obtuseness without longing to prod thee to some show of wakefulness with my sword!”
It was Roger Prat who spoke, and Hugh Rouse who gave no answer. They were lying at full length on the brow of a low cliff, looking out across the water. It was night. Not a star shone. The town lay seemingly asleep behind them. A large culverin stood close to one side, also peering through a fringe of grasses. The two ships, at anchor within musket-range, carried no lights.
“Had it not been for your ox-brained stupidity, we might have been laughing at Master Contemptuous even now.” The giant rolled over and surveyed his vituperative companion with a yawn. “Now, had I been there,” Roger persisted, “instead of cooling my heels at the pleasure of these knaves, had I been there in place of a numskull, Master Frazer would have been here. Dolt!”
“Have a care, Roger! I’ll brook little more of thy poet-aping names. ’Twas Marlowe taught them to you, and ever since, like a magpie—”
But the other was shaking with mock laughter. “Brook little more!” he gasped; “brook little more, indeed! And think you I fear the threat of one who lets a laughing infant tweak his nose and run away without so much as spanking the child? I can see him smiling now, as he floated off in the canoe. Why, ’twas in the self-same craft you brought! Now, that was considerate of thee, gull.”
“Leave off, Roger.”
“Wherefore?”
“Think you I like to remember the escape?” There was a note almost pitiful in the gruff voice, a pathetic growl that sounded like a moan. “An I were a wench, Prat, I’d weep for sheer vexation.”
Roger curiously eyed him, and, strangely enough, the idea of this giant weeping failed to touch his bubbling sense of the ludicrous. With an unprecedented consideration of Hugh’s feelings, he changed the subject.
Five miles to the southward another couple held converse. They stood on the deck of a Spanish vessel—by name the Madre de Dios—apart from a company of soldiers.
“The man we sent to await him,” said one, “has returned alone. Yet our esteemed prince was to have left Roanoke this morning.”
“Then what think you, St. Magil?” asked the other, who was evidently a Spanish officer of no mean rank. “I fear his wayward highness has come to harm, and is a prisoner in their fort. Shall we not push forward without further delay?”
“By all means let us hasten to the attack. Towaye, the Indian who guided me from Roanoke, has gone with provisions to meet his highness near the town.”
In the main cabin of an English ship still a third couple conversed with as much import in their words as the second.
“There is yet no sign?”
“Not yet, Captain Vytal.”
“They will carry no lights, Dyonis.”
“Nay, sir, I look for a black shadow, and listen for the ripple under its bow.”
As though the hand of Death were on them, the ships and the town lay still. Only a single circle of light, like a watchful eye with a dark iris, shone through an aperture in the fortress wall. The central disk was a cannon’s muzzle.
On the ramparts of the fort a man stood alone, looking out across the water. It was Christopher Marlowe, alert, restless, and impatient.
Below him, in the armory, a small gathering of women and soldiers, under the immediate command of Captain Pomp, sat about in groups, waiting. In one corner, apart from the rest, Eleanor Dare and her father talked in low tones, while Margery Harvie, on a bench beside them, crooned a lullaby to an infant that lay sleeping in her lap.
From time to time another woman, who sat at a table across the room, even now jesting with several soldiers, looked at the central figure of this group with an expression in which resentment and admiration were curiously blended. Gyll Croyden had frequently looked at Eleanor thus, and always as though from a distance greater than the actual space which lay between them.
Suddenly the child, who had been christened Virginia, in honor of England’s possession, awoke, crying feebly, and Eleanor, with much concern, took it in her arms. Her expression, as she looked down into the little face, suggested varied emotions. There was a mother’s love in her eyes, a deep maternal devotion; but, mingled with this, another, less obvious, expression seemed to betray some depth of feeling at odds with the first, and possibly stronger, though more subtle and indefinable.
She turned to her father. “Must we wait forever here? It seems an eternity, and I grow fearful lest—”
The kindly governor interrupted her. “Nay, there is naught to fear, my little one. They will doubtless attack the ships at first, thinking us all unwatchful, or vigilant only in the town. It is for that reason, you know, that Captain Vytal, seeking to repulse and overwhelm them at the first onset, has manned the Admiral and concealed over seventy men below. Of a surety the enemy will attack this vessel first, as it lies to the south and is the larger prize. Yet, mark you, they will be utterly unable thus to cut off our last means of retreat.”
But his attempt to reassure her failed. “I fear many will be killed,” she said, half to herself, and he saw that her eyes were moist with unshed tears.
“Let us pray it may not be so, Eleanor. Our people seem to have caught Vytal’s unflinching courage; moreover, the men, well armed and galliated, will find our foe all unprepared for so sudden a resistance.”
To this a new voice, gentle but masculine, made rejoinder, and the Oxford preacher stood beside them. “You have said ‘Let us pray’; with your Excellency’s permission I will do so.” In a moment the whole company were on their knees, while the preacher invoked the aid of the God of battles in simple words.
The infant in its mother’s lap was crying more pitifully now than heretofore. And, without warning, as the soldiers resumed their games again and Gyll Croyden her babble, a convulsion seized it, distorting the diminutive features cruelly.
Eleanor, rising, rocked it to and fro in her arms. The mother’s love was now unquestionably predominant. Handing the child to Margery Harvie, she spoke a few words to her father: “There is an herb which Manteo has shown me; boiled in water, it will restore her at once. I must get it.”
“Nay, but—”
“Oh, there is no danger. It grows but just behind the palisade. I go myself, for I alone can find it.”
“I will go with you.”
“No, stay here. Your presence is needed to encourage them. I will take two soldiers, if you so desire,” and she beckoned to a couple of fighting-men who sat near by. “Bring a lanthorn, concealed as best you can beneath your cloak.”
She led the way to a rear entrance. As the soldiers unbarred the open door, a woman’s voice addressed her. “I go with you an I may. Two women are safer than one alone.” It was Gyll Croyden.
Eleanor turned and looked into her face for an instant, then accepted her offer. “I thank you.”
In another minute they were hastening silently to the palisade in single file, one of their guardians leading, the other bringing up the rear. With difficulty they groped their way to the southern entrance of the town, and, after a word to the sentry stationed there, passed out. Soon Eleanor, by the aid of the soldier’s lanthorn, was plucking leaves from a bush that grew not over a furlong from the town.
They started to return, but paused, breathless, hearing a rustle of leaves behind them.
Then, suddenly, a low whir, as of a bird’s wing, and the rearmost soldier fell on his face, dead. A long, slender arrow, the like of which they had never seen, quivered between his shoulder-blades, a shimmering reed in the lanthorn light.
They broke into a run.
Again the whisper of Death, and their second escort, struck in the hip, staggered and fell to his knees. At this Gyll Croyden, crying aloud for help, started forward again, but Eleanor had stopped to succor the wounded man.
In that moment the two women heard a quick step behind them, and, before they could turn about, their arms were seized and pinioned at their backs. A silken kerchief fell like a thick veil over Eleanor’s eyes and tightened, but not so suddenly as to shut out the sight of a short, half-naked Indian, who was engaged in blindfolding Gyll Croyden. Then a voice, evidently from the man who had bandaged her own eyes, spoke in a low tone, and she recognized the accents with dismay.
They were Frazer’s. “To the ravine, Towaye, and await me there.” His voice sank to a whisper, yet not too low for Eleanor’s quick ears. “Remember, no harm to them an you value life.”
By now the wounded guardsman, having dragged himself toward Ralph, wildly drew his sword; then, painfully struggling to his knees, thrust in blind desperation, but only succeeded in pricking Frazer’s arm.
The youth turned, and, overestimating his opponent’s strength, despatched the kneeling soldier with no compunction nor instinctive mercy. He was a man who would demand little quarter, and who, for all his boyish fribbling, gave less.
“Quick, Towaye!” But once more Gyll cried out, though Eleanor stood impassive by her side. The youth frowned. “Gag them,” and he hurried to Eleanor. “My love,” he whispered, “the king wins.”
On the water a dense shadow moved slowly toward Roanoke. Like Destiny it glided forward, silent, inexorable, black.
Without resistance, it came closer and yet closer to its quarry, until at last the shadow met a shadow like itself, as cloud meets cloud. And as from clouds, a guttural oath of thunder burst suddenly forth in fury to smite and profane the ear of night.
The shadow was a panther of the sea, stealing on a prey seemingly tranquil and asleep—a wild beast of the desert coming to claim by the law of might an oasis in the waste.
The crucial moment, so long awaited, had come at last.
Two ships became alive and fought for Roanoke Island.
“Captain Vytal, they are here!”
“How near, Dyonis?”
“So near that in another instant they will board us.”
“To arms, then!”
“Ay,” and a whisper ran from mouth to mouth along the deck. There was a low click as of pistol-triggers cocking, and fifty dark shadows, which had lain prone behind the bulwark, rose, each to one knee.
The ships lay breast to breast, feeling each other’s sides. And suddenly the glare of a hundred new-lit torches illumined the Spanish deck; but the Admiral’s bulwark shielded her ambush from the light.
Without warning, a line of steel corselets and morions, flashing in the radiance, started forward from the Madre de Dios, started, rolled on, and rose to the bulwark as a silver wave rises in the moonlight, superb, brilliant, invincible, vaunting itself before the sable shore. And, like moon-rays playing across the crest, a hundred swords flashed high.
The silver surf, crashing, broke. Hidden rocks had awaited it in darkness. Baffled, it lashed them, rose, fell, dispersed, concentrated—a wild seethe of tormented fury.
The wave was foam: there was momentarily no concertion, no detail. Chaos rose above order, anarchy above method, chagrined amazement above victorious triumph.
The surprise was complete. At both ends the Spanish line wavered. Here the counter-attack began more suddenly than in the centre.
Vytal at one end, Dyonis Harvie at the other, turned both flanks of the enemy. It was a manœuvre that gave the lie to chaos. Method lurked in the seeming madness. The Spanish cannoneers, having heard the sounds of a hand-to-hand conflict, at the first surprise rushed to their comrades’ aid. The culverins and minions, nosing the Admiral’s hull, were for a moment deserted. The impulse had been foreseen; hence the flank movement.
Vytal’s first tactic, bold and open, succeeded. Fortunately, the Madre de Dios was not a man-of-war, but only a Biscayan carack, transformed temporarily and diverted from her commerce between St. Augustine and Spain. Thus her ports were few, and the guns below deck, being inconsiderable in number, were easily seized to prevent bombardment. A score of English, pursued by the now witting gunners, gained the command of these pieces. In an instant the guns were spiked, their silence maintained with iron gags, their deep throats choking.
Harvie, with his men, defended them. Vytal returned to the bulwark. The Spanish cannoneers, finding recapture impossible, likewise joined the main body.
Then for a time mere carnal bloodshed followed. The steel sea had leaped back upon itself. The Spanish aggressors became defenders on their own decks. The ranks of both sides were broken. Each man fought for himself.
Here it was sword against sword; there pike and pike. Here pistols and arquebuses, mouthing each other, thundered spitefully at closest range; there a piece of brass ordnance on deck shone in the torch-glare, itself a flame that belched flame and shot out clanking chain-shot, gobbets of iron or missiles like dumb-bells—twin deaths. Here it was hand-to-hand, men glutting the lust of their inborn hatred by sheer brute force, weaponless; there a crimson poniard gleamed dully for a second, and a figure lurched backward to the slippery deck. Here, whirring, a garish firebrand fell to an upturned face and burned away the look of anguish; there a sword bled a shadow.
But strategy worked in silence and darkness. The first tactic of Vytal was answered by St. Magil. A man made his way to the bow of the Madre de Dios, shielding a torch. The wind favored his project.
There was a flash of light across the strip of water from prow to prow, a tongue of flame in the air, and the firebrand fell flaring to a mat on the Admiral’s beak-head. The man, cowering, watched it, safe in the knowledge that his vessel lay immediately to windward of the foe. Gradually the unnoticed fire spread to the bowsprit’s mat, and thence to the false stem of wood. At the same moment a number of chains and ropes were flung out like the tentacles of a polypus from the Spanish yards to the rigging of the Admiral. At the ends of these groping fingers, irons like talons grappled with halyards and naked spars.
The ships were locked in a death-grip.
With a sudden, concerted rush, as though the flames encouraged it to advance, the sea of shining morions and corselets rose once more, surged forward, broke over the Admiral’s bulwark, undulating, clashing, roaring, as the receding line of English fell back before it inch by inch.
The Admiral’s deck was now a heaving sea of molten silver.
But the eyes of St. Magil, looking across to it from the outer shade of the Madre de Dios’s bow, suddenly grew grave and lost their triumph. The wind had changed. Fate intervened. Vytal was backed by the elements. The insidious fire, of Sir Walter’s own kindling, had recoiled. The Admiral carried no sails, the Madre de Dios many. The fire returned to feed itself. Leaving behind it a burning skeleton superstructure, from which small spars fell flaming on the combatants amid a maze of ropes that glowed like fuses over all, it glided back, a venomous snake, to the Spanish vessel, or, rather, like a hundred snakes, for the very grapple-ropes by which St. Magil had bound his enemy were golden serpents now writhing to the shrouds.
Suddenly a tongue of fire, licking the Spanish bowsprit and spritsail yards, lolled listlessly for an instant, as though satiated and fatigued, then shot up all the more greedily to the foretop.
And now a wavering sheet of flame rose and swayed like an immense golden flag, as though the fire itself had flung to the breeze a royal emblem of destruction.
But at the instant, when only the bowsprit and spritsail yard had as yet succumbed, St. Magil had hastened amidships. Here he commanded the few Spaniards who had not yet forced their way to the English vessel to cut the grapples and cast off immediately. But the intertwining fingers that he himself had stretched out to enfold the prey held tenaciously. Snarled inextricably, they lay across from ship to ship, high and low, a hopeless tangle of fetters.
When finally the sheet of flame unspread itself aloft, St. Magil desisted. His men would have rushed then to the Admiral, preferring the chance of battle to a furnace death; but he controlled with desperate power.
“Cut away the bowsprit and foretop-gallant-mast!”
The men, following him, ran to the forecastle. “The foretop-gallant-mast is too high. It burns!”
“The foretop-mast, then, quick! and cut the halyards!”
A sudden descending flare, as if the heavens had opened to envelop the striving seamen, and the flag of flame lay roaring at their feet. The fire had struck its colors. They grasped the burning canvas and flung it overboard.
“To the attack!” And St. Magil, at last drawing his sword for open fight, led them in the main contest.
Two score Englishmen, in double file, stood side by side on the Admiral’s deck repelling a superior force that strove to exterminate them. The front line fought with swords; the rear with pistols and musketoons, whose barrels looked out between friendly shoulders before them. Thus the swordsmen, ranged alternately with the musketeers, were slightly in advance, and must needs bear the brunt of the onslaught.
In this file Vytal held a central position. Beside him, either by accident or purpose, stood Ananias Dare, and beyond the assistant, Dyonis Harvie, who had been recalled. In a line at their feet lay their fallen comrades and opponents, forming, in the final throes of death, a ghastly rampart across which the living fought.
Again and again the onrush and repulse. The double file was a wall of stone.
St. Magil himself, springing into the middle breach of his foremost rank, armed with a broadsword, made bold to attack the man whom he held responsible for the unflinching resistance. Vytal, who now carried a heavy blade himself, met his chief antagonist with stern, almost business-like precision, as he had encountered all the unknown soldiers that had come before.
Suddenly St. Magil turned aside to Ananias Dare and thrust viciously. The stroke threatened death. Vytal parried it. For many minutes, that seemed years, he had been defending two men at once. St. Magil fell back to the rear ranks with a lifeless arm. A Spanish officer of high rank took his place and, with a rallying cry, led his men once more against the battered English wall.
Steel in torment clashed and rang on shields that thwarted its desire. Leaden bullets, like driven sleet, shot from both sides, buried themselves with a monotonous thud in heavy cotton targets. Every man but one had only himself to guard. Save with Vytal, there was no trust but the cause and the individual.
The Spaniards persisted. They had been held at the last assault, but not repelled. They were on the brink of victory, eight score against less than four; the issue could not be doubtful.
Ananias Dare, although brave with a slight excess of wine and the knowledge that Vytal stood beside him, wavered. St. Magil’s thrust had shattered his puny courage. He gave way and fell back to the line of musketeers. Vytal and Dyonis Harvie closed in before him. But the disastrous effect of even one man’s retreat was not so easily averted. His sword had proved of little service, but the influence of each man on all had been incalculable. A single bolt in the precise mechanism had broken. The machine shook, grated, and threatened to fall in pieces.
The line tottered. Ananias, perceiving with terror the result of his cowardice, sought to retrieve himself by rallying his fellows with a cry. But despair rose above encouragement in the call. His eyes, wild and horror-struck, looked over Harvie’s shoulder at the force that must surely in another instant overrun him. He was thinking only of himself then, not of the cause nor of his countrymen. His headpiece had fallen off, revealing a dishevelled mass of silken hair, wet with the sweat of fear. His lips dripped foam. The end, he believed, had come.
Yet Vytal, with a sharp word, delayed it. The voice, deep and resonant with desperate command, reawakened hope and energy. The attackers neither gave way nor succeeded in advancing.
Had Vytal lost? It seemed to him impossible. He had never known the word save once, in youth, when a rigid cordon of steel like this had encircled him in the streets of Paris. The memory of that massacre, in which his parents had been murdered by Catholics, like these, redoubled his fury. He flung himself against the line of bristling swords that, impassable as a vast cheval-de-frise, checked him at every quarter. The knowledge that he held another life in trust—a detestable life—nevertheless, must he not preserve it?—quickened his every fibre for a new attempt. But above and beneath all a woman’s name seemed to reverberate through his whole being like the war-cry of a soul.
He thrust, thrust, and thrust again. The swords met, slithered, and the Spanish officer fell groaning on the rampart of dead.
The enemy’s line gave way. The English started forward. But St. Magil, nursing his wounded arm in the rear, met the emergency with a new tactic. Hoarsely he bade a dozen men to stand upon the bulwark, each with a torch in hand. The manœuvre favored him. The English fell back apace. A line of wavering light blinded their eyes. The firebrands’ dazzling glare rendered their thrusts and parries far wilder and more uncertain than before. Vytal’s face, illuminated vividly by the maddening light, grew doubly tense and desperate. Wounded in the left arm by the slash of a cutlass, his corselet dented in many places, his eyes haggard and lips white, his grizzled brow and close-cut beard clotted with sweat and blood, he nevertheless stood there still, a grim, unconquerable Death. He fell to his knee, and fought so; then, staggering, rose again and towered indomitable. Still the word “lose” had no meaning for him save when applied to an enemy. And even now, on the very verge of defeat, his rage and iron will thus applied it in the turmoil of his depths to St. Magil.
Dyonis Harvie fell beside him wounded in the throat. Vytal turned to a musketeer who had stepped forward in the opening. “Mark the torch-bearers!” and then, louder—“The torch-bearers!”
A few shots rang out with new purpose amid the havoc, and three Spaniards lurched backward from the bulwark, flinging toward the English with a last derision the sputtering cressets as they fell. St. Magil turned to the men nearest him. “Replace them!” And three soldiers, leaping to the bulwark, reinforced the lurid line of flambeaus which had worked so much disaster.
The ammunition of the English marksmen had given out. Vytal noted the silence. “Your cutlasses! Stand close to me! We are Englishmen.… There!… Good!… Hold fast!… Death is not defeat, surrender is!… We … win … dying!”
His words took the place of bullets, his voice of the steel blades which were now but streaks of crimson on the deck.
“Dying!”
But no; suddenly from the near shore, on which a little knot of women stood wringing their hands in grief, a canoe shot out toward the Madre de Dios. It held one man. Then a second craft glided swiftly from the land as though in pursuit, and this, too, was propelled by a single paddle. Next, yet a third boat, and a fourth—but these were barges—joined in what seemed a chase, and each contained ten soldiers from the fort.
In a moment the foremost craft had gained the Spanish vessel, and Frazer was climbing up a rope to the top deck. Marlowe, from the second canoe, followed close upon his heels, livid with fury. Frazer turned to cut the rope, but, finding himself too late, rushed through a network of burning stays and spars to the scene of the last stand. In a second he was lost in the mêlée. Marlowe, once on the deck, forbore to pursue him farther, and turned to Captain Pomp, who, with twenty soldiers, was scaling the vessel’s side from the barges. “Not a word, any of you, concerning Mistress Dare. Are your arms ready?”
“Ay.”
They advanced rapidly, Marlowe and Captain Pomp leading through a whirl of smoke—all but one, who broke away, and, creeping into the darkness, gained the forecastle. Then, swinging himself like a monkey across to the Admiral’s bow, this deserter disappeared in the English hold. It was Ferdinando, who had been left by Vytal under the surveillance of the guard, and who, in the confusion, had been carelessly permitted to join the party of rescue.
Marlowe attacked the enemy’s rear. A hoarse cheer rose from Vytal’s company. The Spaniards had been hemmed in, but Frazer spoke hurriedly to St. Magil. “Their fort is utterly deserted. Send a score to land. We shall win the town.”
At a whispered command twenty men from the end of the Spanish line wheeled, and, cutting their way past Marlowe, scrambled down into the barges. The poet could not bring himself to order a pursuit. The sight of his friend fighting there, grimly, against so great odds, deterred him. He must save Vytal.
Two barges glided out from the Madre de Dios across the golden water which, reflecting the flaming tracery of the rigging, lay between them and land. But suddenly from the brow of a low cliff there came a roar of thunder, and an iron ball struck the foremost barge.
The Spaniards in the second turned back to the ship, others swimming in their wake. “We have underestimated their force,” said one; “the whole cliff is fortified.” And, as if to emphasize his words, a second ball splashed in the water at his side.
It was for this that Prat and Rouse had waited, each, through the long moments, commanding the other’s patience. They could not fire at the carack, fearing to hit friends, but the course of a separate landing-force had been purposely covered by their culverin. Here Vytal had stationed them for the final defence; here, apart from all their fellows, two men held no mean portion of a continent.
Seeing the Spaniards returning, Frazer sought to reassure them; but in the middle of his remonstrance St. Magil bade them reinforce their comrades on the Admiral.
They strove to obey, but could not. Their friends, retreating in disorder, fell back before the concerted attack of Vytal and Marlowe. Many, who at the first had been hemmed in, lay lifeless across the scuppers, weltering in a stream of blood that could find no outlet to the sea. Others, more fortunate, now stampeded back over the Spanish bulwark and formed a compact phalanx for defence.
The tide had turned. The English, reforming their ranks, were on the point of advancing with a rush. Frazer, however, had foreseen the issue. “Cut the grapples!” The ropes, now severed by fire, held in few places.
In a moment the Madre de Dios began to fall away. At this instant a small, stooping figure scurried like a rat from the Admiral’s forward hatches and sprang across the widening strip of water to the Spanish ship. Vytal saw the man. “Who is that?” And some one answered, “Ferdinando.”
Marlowe blanched. “My God! the powder in the hold—a dozen kegs of Benjamin! Is it possible that—”
But Vytal, wounded though he was and blinded with sweat, had already gained the hatches. With his sword he fought the last foe—a long, slow-burning fuse, whose spark shone like a glow-worm in the darkness. Severing the slow-match with a stroke of his weapon, he ground his heel into the spark and glanced about sharply to make sure of no further danger. Then, regaining the deck, he looked first at Dyonis Harvie, who was being lowered by Captain Pomp into a cock-boat, and next out across the water with haggard but victorious eyes. “It is well,” he said, in a low voice, for he could just distinguish the Madre de Dios, like a beaten hound, dragging herself away into the gloom.
Suddenly, as if life had ended with the necessity for action, he fell back senseless into Marlowe’s arms.
CHAPTER XV
“Dearest, the king wins.” When Frazer had spoken these words, prior to the meeting of the ships, Eleanor Dare and Gyll Croyden were led away into the forest by Towaye, the Indian. They gave no outcry, each having across her mouth a bandage of silk, nor was resistance possible, their hands being firmly tied behind them. Yet Gyll, at last, would have thrown herself upon the ground and refused positively to walk farther had she not feared a worse fate at the hands of their escort. Moreover, she heard Eleanor’s footsteps rustling just ahead without cessation, and her heart took courage of the example.
Finally, after they had followed a narrow trail seemingly for miles, Towaye, who brought up the rear of the single file, halted. Then, unblinding their eyes and unshackling their wrists, probably by another’s command, he bade them be seated on the trunk of a fallen elm to rest themselves. Each was but a shadow to the other, so deep lay the darkness in the forest. But the shadows were not long motionless, for presently, with a word, Towaye told them to rise, and, binding their hands now before them, yet leaving their eyes unbandaged, pushed them once more ahead of him on the trail. Thus they walked for an hour in silence until commanded to turn aside, at which, after entering a small clearing, they were once more permitted to halt.
Apparently they had now reached their destination, for the Indian, striking two stones, one against another, set fire to a heap of dry leaves, on which he threw an armful of brushwood. As the glade was illuminated the women glanced about them quickly, for they were not long allowed to remain in the opening. Leading them to the clearing’s margin, near a deep ravine, Towaye drew aside a hanging curtain of grape-vines and motioned them into a natural arbor whose walls and roof were formed by an inextricable tangle of tough tendrils, which rendered the stronghold as impervious as though it had been enclosed by stone. The curtain, drawn back and twisted like a portière, left open a narrow, brambly entrance, through which the near fire cast its glare to light up the interior. Large clusters of grapes hung in profusion on every side and carpeted the earth, their rich fragrance filling the air as they were trod under foot by the two who entered.
The Indian, and doubtless Frazer, too, had been here earlier in the day, for just within scope of the firelight was the carcass of a young deer, while on the ground a pannier of various provisions lay beside the arbor’s entrance. Furthermore, a long riding-cloak had been spread out like a rug in the natural cell.
“Master Frazer is most thoughtful of our comfort,” observed Gyll, seating herself thereon, with a laugh. But Eleanor, sinking down, fatigued and despairing, made no answer. Meanwhile their captor was methodically cutting from the deer a steak, which he presently held over the fire on the prongs of a green crotch. Soon the meat sizzled and grew black, whereupon, turning to his captives, the Indian held it out, and, with a gesture, bade them eat. Gyll laughed. “Are we to devour it whole, Towaye?”
The Indian, who, thanks to his sojourn in England, understood their language, considered the question for a minute; then, evidently suspecting that Gyll thus sought to obtain a weapon, smiled craftily, laid down the meat, and proceeded to cut it up with a knife of Frazer’s resembling a Toledo poniard. Next, taking the pieces in his fingers, he piled them on a pewter plate which he drew from the pannier, and offered his guests the savory dish with a grunt of hospitality.
Again Gyll laughed. “But our hands are tied.”
Towaye shrugged his shoulders, and, squatting on the ground, held his wrists together, then raised the dark fingers to his lips. “This way,” he said, “prisoners eat.” And now, turning away, he busied himself in preparing his own meal of venison.
Gyll, with a wry face, stood upon her feet, and, reaching to the low roof, plucked a bunch of grapes—necessarily with both hands at once—which she offered to Eleanor. Then, having provided herself with another cluster, she sat down again and bit off the grapes one by one, with evident relish. Eleanor, however, only looked out listlessly to the crackling fire, her hands clasped, her fingers intertwined with feverish strength. Tears fell slowly on the forgotten fruit in her lap, causing it to shine like a cluster of inestimable rubies in the firelight. Her face, even now like a child’s, but very spiritual for all its witchery, was more sad than fearful, more given over to an expression of deep distress and hopelessness than to terror and apprehension. Her hazel eyes, moist and lustrous, seemed to have gained a new depth, which for the first time reached to her very soul. Their look was a prayer. “My little one, my little Virginia,” again and again she repeated inwardly, half to herself and half to a Higher Power—“My little Virginia.” Like the dull surge of heavy, monotonous surf, her thoughts beat upon her brain, now in comprehending supplication, now in mere unconscious repetition, until suddenly the despair of her eyes became less passive and more intense. Another name sprang into the ceaseless, unutterable murmur and all but escaped her pale lips—“John Vytal.”
Gyll Croyden lay, with elbows on the ground and chin in hand, watching her. The two faces presented a striking contrast, Eleanor’s as we have seen it, Gyll’s an almost indescribable paradox, so suggestive was it of contradictory emotions. The whole expression showed, first, that she had utterly forgotten her plight and surroundings. Eleanor’s face absorbed her thoughts, thoughts which were, apparently, at odds. In her unaccustomed silence there was consideration of her companion’s feelings; in her eyes an unmistakable admiration and kind of wonder; while about the corners of her mouth a look of ironical amusement played unforbidden. Adding an expression more serious—if the word is permissible in connection with so gay a face—her brows were contracted defiantly. And, stranger than all, a keen observer would have noted an unwonted sadness, very subtle, that lay neither in this feature nor in that, but rather, as it were, behind them all.
At last, however, the defiance assumed sway; the consideration was forgotten. “Kyt says all men love thee,” she observed, critically; “now, wherefore, I wonder?” and, as Eleanor turned to her in silent surprise, “Wherefore do they love thee? Thou hast no merry jest of good comradeship, nor yet those subtler, intoxicating ways to madden a man and enslave him. See! hast ever looked at men like this?” She tossed her curls back and smiled roguishly, with a full consciousness of her beauty. “Or this?” She leaned forward, arms outstretched languorously, lips slightly parted, lashes drooping, as though to veil and soften the light of her eyes. And the eyes were now shimmering, alluring, full of a mystic, though physical, enthralment.
Eleanor drew back, with a tremor of repulsion.
“Oh, you recoil,” said Gyll, laughing, with a somewhat hollow mirth; then, mockingly: “And why should you hold aloof? ’Tis better to be a woman than a statue—and not so wonderful a statue, after all. Believe me, ’tis the mere poetry of the thing entrances addle-pated Kyt—the mere delusion. ’Tis the rhythm wherewith he describes you to himself. He writes of you in plays, he calls you so-and-so in this and that. ’Tis all fancy. There is no real you. Indeed, I doubt if you are more than a dream to any man. Now, I am an actual, vivid desire.” And so she prattled on until, at last pausing, as the firelight grew dimmer, she stretched out her arms and buried her head in them on Frazer’s cloak.
Eleanor’s eyes, cast down on the graceful figure, grew more tender. “I am so sorry for you,” she said, “poor—” but Gyll had sprung to her feet.
“Sorry? Sorry?” she demanded, with railing sarcasm. “Your sympathies, Mistress Dare, would better be directed toward yourself. Sorry! Oh—and poor! Hast never seen my wardrobe—the rich broidered stomacher, the rare silk and sarsanet, the fine linen of my smocks, the gold-fringed roundels, drawn out with cypress, the silken simar lined with furs? Methinks the governor’s lofty daughter herself has no such raiment. And then the ear-rings of silver and pearl, the necklaces—oh, poor! An this be poverty, I rest content to be a pauper. Poor, indeed! Poor!” and she laughed as at an absurdity.
Eleanor could not comprehend the tone. She never knew whether Gyll had wilfully misinterpreted the adjective, or whether its true meaning had sunk down into the woman’s heart and only hardened it the more. “I pray you keep silent,” she said, in a low voice; “incontinent laughter and vanity seem little suited to our condition.”
Gyll responded with a grimace that was by no means pretty, and puckered up the corners of her mouth, which had never been made for sarcasm. Nevertheless she obeyed with silence, as gradually the present circumstances were borne in upon her again, recalled, no doubt, by Eleanor’s words. She looked down at Towaye, who sat near the entrance, busily occupied in extracting the marrow from a shank of venison. Then her eyes fell to the pannier behind him, and particularly upon one of the objects it contained. She lay down again upon the ground, and, gazing up at the gnarled and braided branches of the arbor’s roof, appeared to have forgotten her outburst. At last, with a seeming purpose wholly foreign to her usual manner, she whispered a suggestion in Eleanor’s ear, concluding with, “It is at least a chance.”
“Yes, but, failing, the result would be terrible, unimaginable. Besides, he is too cautious.”
Gyll shook her head knowingly. “Wait and see.”
Then, seating herself near the grassy threshold of the arbor, she spoke in a louder tone, still addressing Eleanor. “Master Frazer is well provided. I see that his friends have sent him wine from the ship. A bottle’s neck looks temptingly out of the pannier. Wine, wine! ’twas for gods that grapes were grown. Hast ever felt the thrill, the pleasant effects of the golden liquid?” She paused, listening. Towaye was no longer gnawing his marrow-bone. “Venison and wine! ’Tis the dinner of kings; and, besides, when one dies of thirst as we do—” her voice fell lower, but purposely not too low for the jailer’s ears. “Wait. I can reach it.”
She moved nearer to the entrance, intentionally rustling leaves and grasses as she did so. Her bandaged hands reached out. But the Indian’s dusky arm, with quick stealth, forestalled her. It was for this that she had hoped. Greedily, yet half fearfully, Towaye seized the bottle. She saw him turn it about in his fingers for an instant, inspecting it from neck to bottom much as a child surveys a new toy, wonderful and strange beyond comprehension. And, as a child, he seemed half in fear because of the mystery. To avoid temptation, he turned about toward the arbor, and Gyll noticed the awe underlying his desire. Presently he spoke. “In England Manteo said, ‘Drink not. There is an evil spell in wine. The sunlight therein is angry at being imprisoned and not free as on the water. Behold how it affects the English, turning them to madmen. Learn, and drink not.’ These were the words of Manteo. He is a wise counsellor.”
Gyll laughed. “Wise, I doubt not,” said she, “but deceived. Wine is rather the cure for madness—the madness of thirst, suffering, cold, and all that tortures men. I pray you give it to us.”
Seeming reassured by her words, and yet more by her apparent desire to drink the mysterious liquid herself, Towaye grunted a refusal. “It is not for women,” he said, cunningly. “It is for men.”
She bit her lip to refrain from smiling, and drew back beyond the circle of firelight.
Taking Frazer’s poniard in his right hand and still holding the bottle in his left, Towaye hesitated. Yet suddenly an inborn passion, until to-day latent in him, but common to all the human race, predominated. His mouth watered; he must taste the forbidden fruit. The women heard a little crash, and the glass neck fell off under a blow from the poniard’s blade. Frazer’s own weapon, left as a precaution with the Indian, had turned against him.
Towaye drank, and drank again. Gyll peered out and saw his head fall back slowly as, gradually inverting the bottle until it stood bottom up, he drained its contents to the dregs.
At this moment Gyll Croyden did an unaccountable thing. Raising her bound hands to the crown of her head, she surprised Eleanor by untying a short scarlet ribbon that confined her hair, and instantly a radiant cascade of gold rippled and rioted downward, completely enveloping her. “Watch now a piece of play-acting. ’Twould delight Kyt’s heart.”
Towaye rose and entered the arbor. His features were distinctly visible, for the fire, being on the ground partly to one side of the opening, cast its gleam up even to the roof of grapes and obliquely athwart the intruder’s face. His hands, now empty, were half outstretched, palms forward, fingers bent as though to grasp something.
Eleanor drew back with a cry of terror. For a moment the dark form, naked save for an apron of deerskin, stood motionless. Then, with a guttural monosyllable in his own tongue, Towaye started forward. Slowly Gyll arose and faced him. The fire, with a final high flare, lit up her hair. The long tresses, falling in ripples below her knees and completely veiling her face, shone like a flood of sunlight. But for the minute his savage eyes and heavy steps were directed to Eleanor.
Gyll spoke, and the Indian stopped short to look at her. “Towaye,” she said, in a voice that sounded far away behind the golden curtain of her hair, “hark! You stand before the Daughter of the Sun. Advance no farther, or the fire that inflames your brain shall burn your body also.” She paused. Her knowledge of Indian theology was hopelessly scant and indefinite. She had heard that somewhere, in some part of this vast America, there was a people who worshipped the sun. Might not a like heliolatry be induced here, even though the Hatteras tribe acknowledged no such deity? “I, the Daughter of the Sun, command you! Leave me!” She thrust her hands through the shining locks and held them aloft as though to weave a spell. “See, Towaye. Even now the spell of the Sun enthralls thee. Thy legs tremble and waver.” She swayed slightly to and fro to increase his own unsteadiness. “Thy brain whirls as the flame of a camp-fire. Thy thoughts clutch at dreams. In an instant thou shalt be consumed.”
The Indian groaned and staggered backward. Her voice came lower. “Leave me, Towaye! The Daughter of the Sun hath spoken!”
He stepped back, until his knees weakened suddenly and he sank moaning to the ground. His head lay against the viny side of the natural doorway; his gleaming body stretched across the threshold. Long the heavy lids blinked with a great effort to keep awake; but the mind, utterly unaccustomed to the fumes of wine, succumbed at last. He fell asleep.
Gyll pulled her skirts above the knee, and, beckoning to her companion, would have stepped over the prone figure had not Eleanor detained her. “It cannot last. We shall lose ourselves in the woods and he will readily overtake us. Then—”
“Ay, you are right,” said Gyll. “I had not thought of that; ’twould indeed be madness.” And the two women, once more seating themselves in a corner, surveyed the human barrier before them.
As the firelight waned, Gyll lay on her back again, looking up at the tracery of interlaced grape-vines which were now but vague arabesques on the leafy ceiling. The Indian’s head rested on a similar vine, which formed a pendent arc, a shadowy crescent, beneath his neck. With a sidelong glance at the recumbent figure, and particularly at the head’s posture, Gyll saw that the low-hanging vine on which the cranium rested was about three inches thick and very strong; moreover, it was braided like a woman’s hair. “Like a woman’s hair.” Several times her thoughts repeated the simile, and grew more daring with the repetition. She whispered to Eleanor, and then, a second time lifting her skirts well above the knee, stepped over Towaye and out of the arbor. Her tread was wonderfully light and soundless. Near the fire she stooped and picked up something from the ground that lay near a birch bow and a bundle of flint-headed arrows. Eleanor saw her bending figure, the petticoats still raised to prevent their rustling on the leaves, the red silk hose, the golden cataract of hair, and remembered that picture always.
Gyll returned. Frazer’s poniard was in her hand. Once within the arbor she appeared to hesitate as with a new purpose, and lifted her weapon as though to strike the swarthy breast, but could not. Her poised arm seemed paralyzed. Eleanor, who uttered a low whisper of horrified remonstrance, need not have done so. The impulse was there, but the masculine nerve and implacability were lacking. She resumed her first purpose. Cutting the silken band about her fellow-prisoner’s wrists, she requested Eleanor to respond in kind. Their hands were at last free. Gyll hesitated, turning the bandages about in her fingers. “Nay,” she said at last, “he could easily tear them.”
For a moment she smoothed out her tresses on her knee, passing a palm over them caressingly. Tears fell and mingled with the gold. Her bosom was heaving. Catching up the long strand in a mass, she held it to her lips and kissed it passionately. But then her weeping ceased with a little gulp of determination, and she held out the curling ends to Eleanor. “Hold them thus,” and she raised the poniard quickly to her head. In an instant the tumbling cascade had become a river of gold on the ground, glimmering in the light of the outer embers. With deft fingers Gyll twisted the locks tightly, but left both ends loose as they had fallen. Then she passed the coil over the Indian’s head until it reached his throat. Next she twined it above and beneath the stout, depending branch that formed his pillow. At the nape of his neck she braided the loose strands firmly together, while in and out amid the tresses she intertwined the galloon of ribbon which had previously decked her head. Finally she made fast this strange bond with a hard knot in the ribbon whose scarlet ends were at last bound high above him to an overhanging vine. Then, with a signal to Eleanor, who was now lost in the excitement of the moment, being not a whit behind the other in courage, Gyll stepped across the barrier, and, with the poniard and birch bow in her hands, led the way to the glade’s entrance.
In a moment they had regained the trail. Here they paused, listening, undecided whether to hide in the dense jungle or to follow the pathway. Towaye, however, only snored in sleep. He had moved slightly on feeling the ringlets touch his throat, but the wine still possessed him.
Night and day met. The intermediate hour of dawn brought a dim gray light to the tree-tops. Like a silver-green ocean the high surface of birch and willow foliage, stirred by the whisper of a morning breeze, murmured response from its distant border where the surf of leaves broke slowly into spray.
The sun rose and fathomed the forest obliquely where it could. By the slant of its rays the women gained some knowledge of their position, and, keeping the sun on their right, followed the trail in a northerly direction. For an hour they went on without stopping or turning to look behind.
But at last they came to a sudden halt, hearing a step even lighter than their own just beyond a bend in the trail ahead of them. Drawing to one side behind a wild hedge-row in the forest, they waited, breathless. The low rustle ceased. The person approaching them had evidently come to a stand-still. Then, through the brambles, they saw a figure, dusky and bare save for a girdle of deerskin. The head was hidden by an oak-branch. Gyll’s lips came close to Eleanor’s ear. “’Tis Towaye!”
“No; he is too tall.”
The man stepped forward a pace and stood like a stag, listening. Eleanor grasped Gyll’s arm, compelling silence, while Gyll herself nervously tightened her hold on the dagger’s handle.
Again the Indian advanced, and now turned toward them. Seeing his face, the two women rose to their feet behind the wall of briars. “Manteo!”
An hour later the cressets of the fortress armory cast their glare across many grave and apprehensive faces whose concern was heightened by an enforced silence.
“Say nothing of Mistress Dare; he will consider it his duty to go in search of her, and must not.” The words were Marlowe’s.
Out in the hallway, Governor White, pale and haggard, was giving orders to a small company of soldiers, who, though worn out with fatigue, were re-arming themselves as though for a second combat. “To the south! O my good men, hasten! We must pursue. Even now, perchance, we are too late. But stay … Who comes? … No … there is no need … Ah, my daughter Eleanor, you are here!”
Thus, at the very moment of the governor’s out-starting, which, to his despair, had been so long delayed by the battle, Eleanor returned.
“My father!” Her eyes were moist with tears, her hands caressed him, but even now she could not wait. The armory’s door stood open. “Virginia, little Virginia,” she said in the old, half-mechanical way, yet still very anxiously.
“She is asleep and well.”
“And—” But she could not voice the question of her heart.
The governor smiled in his kindly, unknowing way. “Yes; Ananias, too, is safe. Yet a terrible battle hath been fought.”
She stood for an instant mute and motionless, the dread anguish of uncertainty in her eyes. Then she hurried into the armory.
Here the first sight that met her searching glance was her child sleeping in Margery Harvie’s arms. She bent over and kissed it on the forehead—once; then turned to a group of men who stood in a corner encircling a central, recumbent figure that was resting on a bare settle of oak.
A low moan rose in her heart, and whether or not it escaped her lips she never knew.
On the settle lay John Vytal, prostrate and unconscious, his left arm extended to the floor, to which his half-sheathed sword had fallen, the belt having been unbuckled that his corselet might be unloosed. His fingers tenaciously grasped the scabbard. The right hand lay across his breast, which had been bared that a chirurgeon, who stood near by, might listen to the heart-beats. Under the head of the wounded man a folded cloak had been placed as a pillow, and his morion, having been removed, revealed a great black and gray flecked mane of hair, brushed back to cool his forehead. The brow itself, streaked with crimson, showed a deep line from temple to temple where the helmet had cut into it. The face, as though chiselled in bronze, was still stern and relentless save for a grim, triumphant look of victory that shone in the sharp features like the cresset-light across his sword.
Marlowe stood erect, watching him, until suddenly a voice, inarticulate, low, and questioning, seemed to break the spell that bound them all to the depths of anxious silence.
Marlowe turned. “Thank God!” he said, “you are saved. Speak to him.” And, with all the relief in the poet’s voice, there was a note of pain; for he had read her eyes.
“Captain Vytal.”
The soldier stirred as though in an abyss of sleep, his breast heaving slightly.
“John Vytal.” The name was spoken in a low voice, yet, far away in the world that sound and sight fathom not by utterance or gaze, but only by their meaning, one spirit was calling to another.
The captain opened his eyes slowly.
“Thanks be to Heaven!” And Marlowe turned to Eleanor. “Your salvation is his as well.”
Vytal’s lips parted. “Salvation? What mean you by salvation?” He forced himself to sit upright, and his voice rose harsh as a night wind. “Has Mistress Dare been nigh to danger?”
Neither Marlowe nor Eleanor made answer, but Gyll Croyden, who now had joined the group, replied, laughing: “Ay, that have we both. Master Ralph Contempt and Towaye snared us cunningly, but a wench’s wit outdid them, and, alas! a wench’s hair.”
She stroked her close-cut curls dolefully.
Vytal staggered to his feet, and, facing Marlowe, questioned him like a judge of the Inquisition: “Wherefore didst thou not make this known to me?”
The poet met his gaze unflinchingly. “I thought—”
“Thought!” The word was repeated in a frigid, biting tone. “Thought! ’Twas not your right to think. The daughter of our governor was in jeopardy.”
“Yes, captain, and our colony also. I deemed it advisable not to pit one duty against another. On coming ashore after the battle I would have told you, but you had swooned.”
Vytal looked at him in silence; then, finally sinking down again to a sitting posture, “You were right, Kyt,” and his eyes met Eleanor’s—“’Twas for our colony.”
“I pray you rest,” she said. “Your strength is spent.”
But he sat bolt-upright and made as if to rebuckle his sword-belt in a dazed, automatic way. “Nay, madam; it is unimpaired.”
At about this time a solitary man, far to the southward, struck inland from the shore. It was Frazer, returning from a defeat to what he believed was to be the scene of a conquest which should retrieve it.
On coming to the glade, however, and to the arbor in which Eleanor and Gyll Croyden had been imprisoned, he stood still before the threshold in mute astonishment. There, near the ashes of a fire, lay Towaye, basking in the sunlight, sound asleep. Amazedly the youth started forward and peered into the arbor. It was empty. Assuring himself of this, he stamped and swore roundly, but, with a second glance at the slumbering Indian, his expression changed. A sense of humor asserted itself above chagrin and even astonishment in the boyish eyes. “How now?” he laughed. “’Tis a court masque. Lo, a golden necklace and beribboned peruke garnish our Lucifer!” He shook Towaye none too gently with his foot. The Indian, rolling over, rubbed his eyes and strove to sit upright, but his bond held him fast to the stout grape-vine. “I dreamed that I tried once before,” he said, in sleepy bewilderment; “but the Daughter of the Sun hath woven a spell.”
“Fool!” ejaculated Frazer.
“Nay, no fool. ’Twas she and the captive sunlight which, escaping its bondage, entered my body at her command and overpowered it.”
Frazer’s eyes, falling on an empty bottle, brought him comprehension, and his thoughts went back to another bottle which but recently had worked his own failure. The remembrance decreased his severity. He unbraided the peruke, “like a barber,” he said, and bade the Indian join him in pursuing the women.
At this Sir Walter St. Magil, who had followed him from the shore, entered the opening. “I have come in search of you.”
“Unbidden!” returned Frazer, hotly.
St. Magil smiled. “You will not remonstrate on hearing the cause.”
“Nay, for I have not the time. No cause delays me.”
“Whither go you, then?”
Frazer made no answer.
“Ah, for some liaison, I doubt not. Mark me, a woman will work your downfall.”
The youth laughed carelessly, and would have gone away, but his friend detained him. “A ship from Spain has joined the Madre de Dios. We return across the seas. Philip will invade England.”
Frazer started, trembled. His cheeks flushed, a new light shone in the blue eyes. The whole expression read: Ambition.
“Invade England!”
“Yes; with an armada so great that the issue is foregone. Naturally, your Highness”—the title came half ironical, half serious—“will want to step first on English soil, no more as Ralph Contempt or Frazer.”
“Nay, no more.” The echo sounded dreamy.
“Now,” pursued St. Magil, “we have bigger fish to fry than these of Virginia. Roanoke is but a minnow, England a whale.”
Frazer’s lips parted, smiling. “I have had many names,” he said, “but the whale unpleasantly suggests a new one—Jonah! Now, a minnow—” but he was only babbling words detached from thoughts, all-expectant, bewildered, glad, eager, like a child on Christmas Eve.
“Your Highness,” observed the other, “will make a merry—”
“Hush, Sir Walter, you tempt Fortune.”