"He is dead, Master Rolfe," he said. "There can be no other conclusion,--a brave man lost to you and to the colony. We mourn with you, sir."

"We too have searched, Jack," put in West. "We have not been idle, though well-nigh all men believe that the Indians, who we know had a grudge against him, murdered him and his man that night, then threw their bodies into the river, and themselves made off out of our reach.

But we hoped against hope that when your party returned he would be in your midst."

"As for this latest loss," continued the Governor, "within an hour of its discovery this morning search parties were out; yea, if I had allowed it, the whole town would have betaken itself to the woods. The searchers have not returned, and we are gravely anxious. Yet we are not utterly cast down. This trail can hardly be missed, and the Indians are friendly. There were a number in town overnight, and they went with the searchers, volunteering to act as their guides. We cannot but think that of this load, our hearts will soon be eased."

"G.o.d grant it!" groaned Rolfe. "I will drink but a cup of wine, sir, and then will be gone upon this new quest."

There was a movement in the room. "You are worn and spent with your fruitless travel, sir," said the Governor kindly. "I give you my word that all that can be done is doing. Wait at least for the morning, and the good news it may bring."

The other shook his head. "I will go now. I could not look my friend in the face else--G.o.d in heaven!"

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 am Percy," I said. "I have not well understood what quest you would go upon, Rolfe, but you cannot go to-night. And those parties that your Honor talked of, that have gone with Indians to guide them to look for some lost person,--I think that you will never see them again."

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

When all was told, and they stood there before me, white and shaken, seeking in their minds the thing to say or do first, 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.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI IN WHICH I HEAR ILL NEWS

WHEN I awoke from the sleep or stupor into which I must have pa.s.sed 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, st.u.r.dily 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 Gla.s.s House. The nearer plantations, then, had been warned, and their people had come for refuge to the city. A negro pa.s.sed, 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 ma.s.sacre; 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 pa.s.sed. "A boat has just drifted ash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sionate hope, the sustaining cordial, of those year-long days in the village above the Pamunkey.

My heart was sore because of Diccon; but I could speak of that grief to her, and she would grieve with me. There were awe and dread and stern sorrow in the knowledge that even now in the bright spring morning blood from a hundred homes might be flowing to meet the shining, careless river; but it was the springtime, and she was waiting for me. I strode on toward the stairway so fast that when I asked a question Master Pory, at my side, was too out of breath to answer it. Halfway down the stairs I asked it again, and again received no answer save a "Zooks! you go too fast for my years and having in flesh! Go more slowly, Ralph Percy; there's time enough, there's time enough!"

There was a tone in his voice that I liked not, for it savored of pity.

I looked at him with knitted brows; but we were now in the hall, and through the open door of the great room I caught a glimpse of a woman's skirt. There were men in the hall, servants and messengers, who made way for us, staring at me as they did so, and whispering. I knew that my clothing was torn and muddied and stained with blood; as we paused at the door there came to me in a flash that day in the courting meadow when I had tried with my dagger to sc.r.a.pe the dried mud from my boots.

I laughed at myself for caring now, and for thinking that she would care that I was not dressed for a lady's bower. The next moment we were in the great room.

She was not there. The silken skirt that I had seen, and--there being but one woman in all the world for me--had taken for hers, belonged to Lady Wyatt, who, pale and terrified, was sitting with clasped hands, mutely following with her eyes her husband as he walked to and fro. West had come in from the street and was making some report. Around the table were gathered two or three of the Council; Master Sandys stood at a window, Rolfe beside Lady Wyatt's chair. The room was filled with sunshine, and a caged bird was singing, singing. It made the only sound there when they saw that I stood amongst them.

When I had made my bow to Lady Wyatt and to the Governor, and had clasped hands with Rolfe, I began to find in the silence, as I had found in Master Pory's loquaciousness, something strange. They looked at me uneasily, and I caught a swift glance from the Treasurer to Master Pory, and an answering shake of the latter's head. Rolfe was very white and his lips were set; West was pulling at his mustaches and staring at the floor.

"With all our hearts we welcome you back to life and to the service of Virginia, Captain Percy," said the Governor, when the silence had become awkward.

A murmur of a.s.sent went round the room.

I bowed. "I thank you, sir, and these gentlemen very heartily. You have but to command me now. I find that I have to-day the best will in the world toward fighting. I trust that your Honor does not deem it necessary to send me back to gaol?"

"Virginia has no gaol for Captain Percy," he answered gravely. "She has only grateful thanks and fullest sympathy."

I glanced at him keenly. "Then I hold myself at your command, sir, when I shall have seen and spoken with my wife."

He looked at the floor, and they one and all held their peace.

"Madam," I said to Lady Wyatt, "I have been watching your ladyship's face. Will you tell me why it is so very full of pity, and why there are tears in your eyes?"

She shrank back in her chair with a little cry, and Rolfe stepped toward me, then turned sharply aside. "I cannot!" he cried, "I that know"--

I drew myself up to meet the blow, whatever it might be. "I demand of you my wife, Sir Francis Wyatt," I said. "If there is ill news to be told, be so good as to tell it quickly. If she is sick, or hath been sent away to England"--

The Governor made as if to speak, then turned and flung out his hands to his wife. "'T is woman's work, Margaret!" he cried. "Tell him!"

More merciful than the men, she came to me at once, the tears running down her cheeks, and laid one trembling hand upon my arm. "She was a brave lady, Captain Percy," she said. "Bear it as she would have had you bear it."

"I am bearing it, madam," I answered at length. "'She was a brave lady.'

May it please your ladyship to go on?"

"I will tell you all, Captain Percy; I will tell you everything.... She never believed you dead, and she begged upon her knees that we would allow her to go in search of you with Master Rolfe. That could not be; my husband, in duty to the Company, could not let her have her will.

Master Rolfe went, and she sat in the window, yonder, day after day, watching for his return. When other parties went out, she besought the men, as they had wives whom they loved, to search as though those loved ones were in captivity and danger; when they grew weary and fainthearted, to think of her face waiting in the window.... Day after day she sat there watching for them to come back; when they were come, then she watched the river for Master Rolfe's boats. Then came word down the river that he had found no trace of you whom he sought, that he was on his way back to Jamestown, that he too believed you dead.... We put a watch upon her after that, for we feared we knew not what, there was such a light and purpose in her eyes. But two nights ago, in the middle of the night, the woman who stayed in her chamber fell asleep. When she awoke before the dawn, it was to find her gone."

"To find her gone?" I said dully. "To find her dead?"