第106章

WHEN I awoke from the sleep or stupor into which I must have passed from that swoon, it was to find myself lying upon a bed in a room flooded with sunshine. I was alone. For a moment I lay still, staring at the blue sky without the window, and wondering where I was and how I came there. A drum beat, a dog barked, and a man's quick voice gave a command. The sounds stung me into remembrance, and I was at the window while the voice was yet speaking.

It was West in the street below, pointing with his sword now to the fort, now to the palisade, and giving directions to the armed men about him. There were many people in the street. Women hurried by to the fort with white, scared faces, their arms filled with household gear; children ran beside them, sturdily bearing their share of the goods, but pressing close to their elders' skirts; men went to and fro, the most grimly silent, but a few talking loudly.

Not all of the faces in the crowd belonged to the town: there were Kingsmell and his wife from the main, and John Ellison from Archer's Hope, and the Italians Vincencio and Bernardo from the Glass House. The nearer plantations, then, had been warned, and their people had come for refuge to the city. A negro passed, but on that morning, alone of many days, no Indian aired his paint and feathers in the white man's village.

I could not see the palisade across the neck, but I knew that it was there that the fight - if fight there were - would be made. Should the Indians take the palisade, there would yet be the houses of the town, and, last of all, the fort in which to make a stand. I believed not that they would take it. Long since we had found out their method of warfare. They used ambuscade, surprise, and massacre; when withstood in force and with determination they withdrew to their stronghold the forest, there to bide their time until, in the blackness of some night, they could again swoop down upon a sleeping foe.

The drum beat again, and a messenger from the palisade came down the street at a run. "They're in the woods over against us, thicker than ants!" he cried to West as he passed. "A boat has just drifted ashore yonder, with two men in it, dead and scalped!"

I turned to leave the room, and ran against Master Pory coming in on tiptoe, with a red and solemn face. He started when he saw me.

"The roll of the drum brought you to your feet, then!" he cried.

"You've lain like the dead all night. I came but to see if you were breathing."

"When I have eaten, I shall be myself again," I said. "There's no attack as yet?"

"No," he answered. "They must know that we are prepared. But they have kindled fires along the river bank, and we can hear them yelling. Whether they'll be mad enough to come against us remains to be seen."

"The nearest settlements have been warned?"

"Ay. The Governor offered a thousand pounds of tobacco and the perpetual esteem of the Company to the man or men who would carry the news. Six volunteered, and went off in boats, three up river, three down. How many they reached, or if they still have their scalps, we know not. And awhile ago, just before daybreak, comes with frantic haste Richard Pace, who had rowed up from Pace's Pains to tell the news which you had already brought.

Chanco the Christian had betrayed the plot to him, and he managed to give warning at Powel's and one or two other places as he came up the river."

He broke off, but when I would have spoken interrupted me with:

"And so you were on the Pamunkey all this while! Then the Paspaheghs fooled us with the simple truth, for they swore so stoutly that their absent chief men were but gone on a hunt toward the Pamunkey that we had no choice but to believe them gone in quite another direction. And one and all of every tribe we questioned swore that Opechancanough was at Orapax. So Master Rolfe puts off up river to find, if not you, then the Emperor, and make him give up your murderers; and the Governor sends a party along the bay, and West another up the Chickahominy. And there you were, all the time, mewed up in the village above the marshes!

And Nantauquas, after saving our lives like one of us, is turned Indian again! And your man is killed! Alackaday! there's naught but trouble in the world. 'As the sparks fly upwards,' you know.

But a brave man draws his breath and sets his teeth."

In his manner, his rapid talk, his uneasy glances toward the door, I found something forced and strange. "I thought Rolfe was behind me," he said, "but he must have been delayed. There are meat and drink set out in the great room, where the Governor and those of the Council who are safe here with us are advising together. Let's descend; you've not eaten, and the good sack will give you strength. Wilt come?"

"Ay," I answered, "but tell me the news as we go. I have been gone ten days, - faith, it seems ten years! There have no ships sailed, Master Pory? The George is still here?" I looked him full in the eye, for a sudden guess at a possible reason for his confusion had stabbed me like a knife.

"Ay," he said, with a readiness that could scarce be feigned. "She was to have sailed this week, it is true, the Governor fearing to keep her longer. But the Esperance, coming in yesterday, brought news which removed his Honor's scruples. Now she'll wait to see out this hand at the cards, and to take home the names of those who are left alive in Virginia. If the red varlets do swarm in upon us, there are her twelve-pounders; they and the fort guns" -

I let him talk on. The George had not sailed. I saw again a firelit hut, and a man and a panther who went down together. Those claws had dug deep; the man across whose face they had torn their way would keep his room in the guest house at Jamestown until his wounds were somewhat healed. The George would wait for him, would scarcely dare to sail without him, and I should find the lady whom she was to carry away to England in Virginia still. It was this that I had built upon, the grain of comfort, the passionate hope, the sustaining cordial, of those year-long days in the village above the Pamunkey.