Chapter 6

"Then we should make for Jamestown as for life," I said, "not sleeping or eating or making pause?"

"Yes," he replied, "if you would not die, you and all your people."

In the silence of the hut the fire crackled, and the branches of the trees outside, bent by the wind, made a grating sound against the bark roof.

"How die?" I asked at last. "Speak out!"

"Die by the arrow and the tomahawk," he answered,--"yea, and by the guns you have given the red men. To-morrow's sun, and the next, and the next--three suns--and the tribes will fall upon the English. At the same hour, when the men are in the fields and the women and children are in the houses, they will strike--all the tribes, as one man; and from where the Powhatan falls over the rocks to the salt water beyond Accomac, there will not be one white man left alive."

He ceased to speak, and for a minute the fire made the only sound in the hut. Then I asked, "All die? There are three thousand Englishmen in Virginia."

"They are scattered and unwarned. The fighting men of the villages of the Powhatan and the Pamunkey and the great bay are many, and they have sharpened their hatchets and filled their quivers with arrows."

"Scattered!" I cried. "Strewn broadcast up and down the river--here a lonely house, there a cluster of two or three--the men in the fields or at the wharves, the women and children busy within doors, all unwarned!"

I leaned against the side of the hut, for my heart beat like a frightened woman's. "Three days!" I exclaimed. "If we go with all our speed, we shall be in time. When did you learn this thing?"

"While you watched the dance," the Indian answered, "Opechancanough and I sat within his lodge in the darkness. His heart was moved, and he talked to me of his own youth in a strange country, south of the sunset. Also he spoke to me of Powhatan, my father--of how wise he was and how great a chief before the English came, and how he hated them. And then--then I heard what I have told you!"

"How long has this been planned?"

"For many moons. I have been a child, fooled and turned aside from the trail; not wise enough to see it beneath the flowers, through the smoke of the peace pipes."

"Why does Opechancanough send us back to the settlements?" I demanded.

"It is his fancy. Every hunter and trader and learner of our tongues, living in the villages or straying in the woods, has been sent back to Jamestown or his home with presents and fair words. You will lull the English in Jamestown into a faith in the smiling sky just before the storm bursts on them in fullest fury."

There was a pause.

"Nantaquas," I said, "you are not the first child of Powhatan who has loved and shielded the white men."

"Pocahontas was a woman, a child," he answered. "Out of pity she saved your lives, not knowing that it was to the hurt of her people. Then you were few and weak and could not take your revenge. Now, if you die not, you will drink deep of vengeance--so deep that your lips may never leave the cup. More ships will come, and more; you will grow ever stronger. There may come a moon when the deep forests and the shining rivers will know us, to whom [v]Kiwassa gave them, no more."

"You will be with your people in the war?" I asked.

"I am an Indian," was his simple reply.

"Come against us if you will," I returned. "Nobly warned, fair upon our guard, we will meet you as knightly foe should be met."

Very slowly he raised his arm from his side and held out his hand. His eyes met mine in somber inquiry, half eager, half proudly doubtful. I went to him at once and took his hand in mine. No word was spoken. Presently he withdrew his hand from my clasp, and, putting his finger to his lips, whistled low to the Indian girl. She drew aside the mats, and we passed out, Diccon and I, leaving him standing as we had found him, upright against the post, in the red firelight.

Should we ever go through the woods, pass through that gathering storm, reach Jamestown, warn them there of the death that was rushing upon them? Should we ever leave that hated village? Would the morning ever come? It was an alarm that was sounding, and there were only two to hear; miles away beneath the mute stars English men and women lay asleep, with the hour thundering at their gates, and there was none to cry, "Awake!" I could have cried out in that agony of waiting, with the leagues on leagues to be traveled and the time so short! I saw, in my mind's eye, the dark warriors gathering, tribe on tribe, war party on war party, thick crowding shadows of death, slipping through the silent forest ... and in the clearings the women and children!

It came to an end, as all things earthly will. When the ruffled pools amid the marshes were rosy red beneath the sunrise, the women brought us food, and the warriors and old men gathered about us. I offered them bread and meat and told them that they must come to Jamestown to taste the white man's cookery.

Scarcely was the meal over when Opechancanough issued from his lodge, and, coming slowly up to us, took his seat upon the white mat that was spread for him. Through his scalp lock was stuck an eagle's feather; across his face, from temple to chin, was a bar of red paint; the eyes above were very bright and watchful.

One of his young men brought a great pipe, carved and painted, stem and bowl; it was filled with tobacco, lit, and borne to the emperor. He put it to his lips and smoked in silence, while the sun climbed higher and higher and the golden minutes that were more precious than heart's blood went by swiftly.

At last, his part in the solemn mockery played, he held out the pipe to me.

"The sky will fall, and the rivers will run dry, and the birds cease to sing," he said, "before the smoke of this peace-pipe fades from the land."

I took the symbol of peace and smoked it as silently and soberly as he had done before me, then laid it leisurely aside and held out my hand.

"Come to Jamestown," I said, "to smoke of the Englishman's pipe and receive rich presents--a red robe like your brother Powhatan, and a cup from which you shall drink, you and all your people."

But the cup I meant was that of punishment.

The savage laid his dark fingers in mine for an instant, withdrew them, and, rising to his feet, motioned to three Indians who stood out from the throng of warriors.

"These are Captain Percy's guides and friends," he announced. "The sun is high; it is time that he was gone. Here are presents for him and my brother the governor." As he spoke, he took from his neck the rope of pearls and from his arm a copper bracelet, and laid both upon my palm.

"Thank you, Opechancanough," I said briefly. "When we meet again I will not greet you with empty thanks."

We bade farewell to the noisy throng and went down to the river, where we found a canoe and rowers, crossed the stream, and entered the forest, which stretched black and forbidding before us--the blacker that we now knew the dreadful secret it guarded.

II

After leaving the Indian village, Captain Percy and Diccon found that their guides purposely delayed the march, so that they would not reach Jamestown until just before the beginning of the attack, when it would be too late for them to warn the English, if they suspected anything. Percy and Diccon, in this dilemma, surprised the Indian guides and killed them, then hurried on with all possible speed toward Jamestown. As they hastened through the forest, Diccon was shot by an Indian and mortally wounded; Captain Percy remained with him until his death, and again took up the journey, now alone and greatly fearing that he would arrive too late.

The dusk had quite fallen when I reached the neck of land. Arriving at the palisade that protected Jamestown, I beat upon the gate and called to the warden to open. He did so with starting eyes. Giving him a few words and cautioning him to raise no alarm in the town, I hurried by him into the street and down it toward the house that was set aside for the governor of Virginia, Sir Francis Wyatt.

The governor's door was open, and in the hall servingmen were moving to and fro. When I came in upon them, they cried out as if it had been a ghost, and one fellow let a silver dish fall to the floor with a clatter. They shook with fright and stood back as I passed them without a word and went on to the governor's great room. The door was ajar, and I pushed it open and stood for a minute on the threshold. They were all there--the principal men of the colony, the governor, the [v]treasurer, [v]West, [v]John Rolfe.

At sight of me the governor sprang to his feet; through the treasurer's lips came a long, sighing breath; West's dark face was ashen. I came forward to the table, and leaned my weight upon it; for all the waves of the sea were roaring in my ears and the lights were going up and down.

"Are you man or spirit!" cried Rolfe through white lips. "Are you Ralph Percy?"

"Yes," I said, "I am Percy."

With an effort I drew myself erect, and standing so, told my tidings, quietly and with circumstance, so as to leave no room for doubt as to their verity, or as to the sanity of him who brought them. They listened with shaking limbs and gasping breath; for it was the fall and wiping out of a people of which I brought warning.

When all was told I thought to ask a question myself; but before my tongue could frame it, the roaring of the sea became so loud that I could hear naught else, and the lights all ran together into a wheel of fire. Then in a moment all sounds ceased and to the lights succeeded the blackness of outer darkness.

When I awoke from the sleep into which I must have passed from that swoon, it was to find myself lying in a room flooded with sunshine. For a moment I lay still, 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.

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; men went to and fro, the most grimly silent, but a few talking loudly.

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, for Indian warfare ran more to ambuscade and surprise than to assault in the open field.

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, who was coming along the way. "A boat has just drifted ashore, with two men in it, dead and scalped!"

I looked again at the neck of land and the forest beyond, and now, as if by magic, from the forest and up and down the river as far as the eye could reach, rose here and there thin columns of smoke. Suddenly, as I stared, three or four white smoke puffs, like giant flowers, started out of the shadowy woods across the neck. Following the crack of the muskets--fired out of pure bravado by the Indians--came the yelling of the savages. The sound was prolonged and deep, as though issuing from many throats.

The street, when I went out into it, was very quiet. All windows and doors were closed and barred. The yelling from the forest had ceased for the moment, but I knew well that it would soon begin with doubled noise. I hurried along the street to the palisade, where all the men of Jamestown were gathered, armed and helmeted and breast-plated, waiting for the foe in grim silence.

Through a loophole in the gate of the palisade I looked and saw the sandy neck joining the town to the mainland, and the deep and dark woods beyond, the fairy mantle giving invisibility to the foe. I drew back from my loophole and held out my hand to a woman for a loaded musket. A quick murmur like the drawing of a breath came from our line. The governor, standing near me, cast an anxious glance along the stretch of wooden stakes that were neither so high nor so thick as they should have been.

"I am new to this warfare, Captain Percy," he said. "Do they think to use those logs they carry as battering rams?"

"As scaling ladders, your honor," I replied. "It is possible that we may have some sword play after all."

"We'll take your advice the next time we build a palisade, Ralph Percy," muttered West on my other side. Mounting the breastwork that we had thrown up to shelter the women who were to load the muskets, he coolly looked over the pales at the oncoming savages.

"Wait until they pass the blasted pine, men!" he cried. "Then give them a hail of lead that will beat them back to the Pamunkey."

An arrow whistled by his ear; a second struck him on the shoulder but pierced not his coat of mail. He came down from his dangerous post with a laugh.

"If the leader could be picked off"--I said. "It's a long shot, but there's no harm in trying."

As I spoke I raised my gun to my shoulder, but West leaned across Rolfe, who stood between us, and plucked me by the sleeve.

"You've not looked at him closely," he said. "Look again."

I did as he told me, and lowered my musket. It was not for me to send that Indian leader to his account. Rolfe's lips tightened and a sudden pallor overspread his face. "Nantaquas?" he muttered in my ear, and I nodded yes.

The volley that we fired full into the ranks of our foe was deadly, and we looked to see them turn and flee, as they had fled so often before at a hot volley. But this time they were led by one who had been trained in English steadfastness. Broken for the moment by our fire, they rallied and came on yelling, bearing logs, thick branches of trees, oars tied together--anything by whose help they could hope to surmount the palisade. We fired again, but they had planted their ladders. Before we could snatch the loaded muskets from the women a dozen painted figures appeared above the sharpened stakes. A moment, and they and a score behind them had leaped down upon us.

It was no time now to skulk behind a palisade. At all hazards, that tide from the forest must be stemmed. Those that were among us we might kill, but more were swarming after them, and from the neck came the exultant yelling of madly hurrying reinforcements.

We flung open the gates. I drove my sword through the heart of an Indian who would have opposed me, and, calling for my men to follow, sprang forward. Perhaps thirty came at my call; together we made for the opening. A party of the savages in our midst interposed. We set upon them with sword and musket butt, and though they fought like very devils drove them before us through the gateway. Behind us were wild clamor, the shrieking of women, the stern shouts of the English, the whooping of the savages; before us a rush that must be met and turned.

It was done. A moment's fierce fighting, then the Indians wavered, broke, and fled. Like sheep we drove them before us, across the neck, to the edge of the forest, into which they plunged. Into that ambush we cared not to follow, but fell back to the palisade and the town, believing, and with reason, that the lesson had been taught. The strip of sand was strewn with the dead and the dying, but they belonged not to us. Our dead numbered but three, and we bore their bodies with us.

Within the palisade we found the English in sufficiently good case. Of the score or more Indians cut off by us from their mates and penned within that death trap, half at least were already dead, run through with sword and pike, shot down with the muskets that there was now time to load. The remainder, hemmed about, pressed against the wall, were fast meeting with a like fate. They stood no chance against us; we cared not to make prisoners of them; it was a slaughter, but they had taken the [v]initiative. They fought with the courage of despair, striving to spring in upon us, and striking when they could with hatchet and knife. They were brave men that we slew that day.

At last there was left but the leader--unharmed, unwounded, though time and again he had striven to close with some one of us, to strike and to die striking with his fellows. Behind him was the wall; of the half circle which he faced, well-nigh all were old soldiers and servants of the colony. We were swordsmen all. When in his desperation he would have thrown himself upon us, we contented ourselves with keeping him at sword's length, and at last West sent the knife in the dark hand whirling over the palisade. Some one had shouted to the musketeers to spare him.

When he saw that he stood alone, he stepped back against the wall, drew himself up to his full height, and folded his arms. Perhaps he thought that we would shoot him down then and there; perhaps he saw himself a captive amongst us, a show for the idle and for the strangers that the ships brought in.

The din had ceased, and we the living, the victors, stood and looked at the vanquished dead at our feet, and at the dead beyond the gates, and at the neck upon which was no living foe, and at the blue sky bending over all. Our hearts told us, and truly, that the lesson had been taught, and that no more forever need we at Jamestown fear an Indian attack. And then we looked at him whose life we had spared.

He opposed our gaze with his folded arms and his head held high and his back against the wall. Slowly, as one man and with no spoken word, we fell back, the half circle straightening into a line, and leaving a clear pathway to the open gates. The wind had ceased to blow, and a sunny stillness lay upon the sand and the rough-hewn wooden stakes and a little patch of tender grass. The church bell began to ring.

The Indian out of whose path to life and freedom we had stepped glanced from the line of lowered steel to the open gates and the forest beyond, and understood. For a full minute he waited, not moving a muscle, still and stately as some noble masterpiece in bronze. Then he stepped from the shadow of the wall and moved past us, with his eyes fixed on the forest; there was no change in the superb calm of his face. He went by the huddled dead and the long line of the living that spoke no word, and out of the gates and across the neck, walking slowly, that we might yet shoot him down if we saw fit to repent ourselves. He reached the shadow of the trees: a moment, and the forest had back her own.

We sheathed our swords and listened to the governor's few earnest words of thankfulness and recognition; and then we set to work to search for ways to reach and aid those who might be yet alive in the plantations above and below us.

Presently there came a great noise from the watchers on the river-bank, and a cry that boats were coming down the stream. It was so, and there were in them white men, nearly all of whom had wounds to show, and cowering women and children--all that were left of the people for miles along the James.

Then began that strange procession that lasted throughout the afternoon and night and into the next day, when a sloop dropped down from [v]Henricus with the news that the English were in force there to stand their ground, although their loss had been heavy. Hour after hour they came as fast as sail and oar could bring them, the panic-stricken folk, whose homes were burned, whose kindred were slain, who had themselves escaped as by a miracle. Each boatload had the same tale to tell of treachery, surprise, and fiendish butchery.

Before the dawning we had heard from all save the remoter settlements. The blow had been struck and the hurt was deep. But it was not beyond remedy, thank God! We took stern measures for our protection, and the wound to the colony was soon healed; vengeance was meted out to those who had set upon us in the dark and had failed to reach the heart. The colony of Virginia had passed through its greatest trial and had survived--for what greater ends, under Providence, I knew not.

MARY JOHNSTON.

=HELPS TO STUDY=

I. Describe the situation in which Percy and Diccon found themselves. What preparations did the Indians make for the death of the two men? How were they interrupted? Tell what happened after the appearance of Nantaquas? How were the five days spent? How did Nantaquas come to the rescue of the white men a second time? What did Opechancanough do to try to deepen the impression of friendship?

II. What happened on the way to Jamestown? Describe the scene when Percy entered the governor's house. Give an account of the fight at the palisade. Why was Nantaquas spared? What was the result of the Indian attack? Give your opinion of Nantaquas. Of what Indian in _The Last of the Mohicans_ does he remind you? Of whom does Opechancanough remind you?

Find out all you can of life in Virginia at the time this story was written. Compare the life there with the life in Plymouth colony.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Prisoners of Hope--Mary Johnston. My Lady Pokahontas--John Esten Cooke. The Wept of Wish-ton-wish--J. Fenimore Cooper. Hiawatha--Henry W. Longfellow. Old Virginia and Her Neighbors--John Fiske.

HARRY ESMOND'S BOYHOOD

_Henry Esmond_, by William Makepeace Thackeray, is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of historical novels. It describes life in England during the first years of the eighteenth century, dealing chiefly with people of wealth and high position. "Harry Esmond's Boyhood" narrates the early career of the hero, who was a poor orphan and an inmate of the family of his kinsman, the Viscount of Castlewood.

Harry Esmond had lived to be past fourteen years old; had never possessed but two friends, and had a fond and affectionate heart that would fain attach itself to somebody, and did not seem at rest until it had found a friend who would take charge of it.

At last he found such a friend in his new mistress, the lady of Castlewood. The instinct which led Harry Esmond to admire and love the gracious person, the fair apparition whose beauty and kindness had so moved him when he first beheld her, became soon a devoted affection and passion of gratitude, which entirely filled his young heart that as yet had had very little kindness for which to be thankful.

There seemed, as the boy thought, in every look or gesture of this fair creature, an angelical softness and bright pity--in motion or repose she seemed gracious alike; the tone of her voice, though she uttered words ever so trivial, gave him a pleasure that amounted almost to anguish. It cannot be called love, that a lad of fourteen years of age felt for an exalted lady, his mistress, but it was worship. To catch her glance; to divine her errand, and run on it before she had spoken it; to watch, follow, adore her, became the business of his life. Meanwhile, as is the way often, his idol had idols of her own, and never thought of or suspected the admiration of her little adorer.

My Lady had on her side three idols: first and foremost, [v]Jove and supreme ruler, was her lord, Harry's patron, the good [v]Viscount of Castlewood. All wishes of his were laws with her. If he had a headache, she was ill. If he frowned, she trembled. If he joked, she smiled and was charmed. If he went a-hunting, she was always at the window to see him ride away. She made dishes for his dinner; spiced his wine for him; hushed the house when he slept in his chair, and watched for a look when he woke. Her eyes were never tired of looking at his face and wondering at its perfection. Her little son was his son, and had his father's look and curly brown hair. Her daughter Beatrix was his daughter, and had his eyes--were there ever such beautiful eyes in the world? All the house was arranged so as to bring him ease and give him pleasure.