"That is Florida," said Paradise at my elbow, "and there are reefs and shoals enough between us. It was Kirby's luck that the fog lifted. Yonder tall ship hath a less fortunate star."

She lay between us and the white beach, evidently in shoal and dangerous waters. She too had encountered a hurricane, and had not come forth victorious. Foremast and forecastle were gone, and her bowsprit was broken. She lay heavily, her ports but a few inches above the water. Though we did not know it then, most of her ordnance had been flung overboard to lighten her. Crippled as she was, with what sail she could set, she was beating back to open sea from that dangerous offing.

"Where she went we can follow!" sang out a voice from the throng in our waist. "A d—d easy prize! And we'll give no quarter this time!" There was a grimness in the applause of his fellows that boded little good to some on either ship.

"Lord help all poor souls this day!" ejaculated the minister in undertones; then aloud and more hopefully, "She hath not the look of a don; maybe she's buccaneer."

"She is an English merchantman," said Paradise. "Look at her colors. A Company ship, probably, bound for Virginia, with a cargo of servants, gentlemen out at elbows, felons, children for apprentices, traders, French vignerons, glasswork Italians, returning Councilors and heads of hundreds, with their wives and daughters, men servants and maid servants. I made the Virginia voyage once myself, captain."

I did not answer. I too saw the two crosses, and I did not doubt that the arms upon the flag beneath were those of the Company. The vessel, which was of about two hundred tons, had mightily the look of the George, a ship with which we at Jamestown were all familiar. Sparrow spoke for me.

"An English ship!" he cried out of the simplicity of his heart. "Then she's safe enough for us! Perhaps we might speak her and show her that we are English, too! Perhaps"—He looked at me eagerly.

"Perhaps you might be let to go off to her in one of the boats," finished Paradise dryly. "I think not, Master Sparrow."

"It's other guess messengers that they'll send," muttered Diccon. "They're uncovering the guns, sir."

Every man of those villains, save one, was of English birth; every man knew that the disabled ship was an English merchantman filled with peaceful folk, but the knowledge changed their plans no whit. There was a great hubbub; cries and oaths and brutal laughter, the noise of the gunners with their guns, the clang of cutlass and pike as they were dealt out, but not a voice raised against the murder that was to be done. I looked from the doomed ship, upon which there was now frantic haste and confusion, to the excited throng below me, and knew that I had as well cry for mercy to winter wolves.

The helmsman behind me had not waited for orders, and we were bearing down upon the disabled bark. Ahead of us, upon our larboard bow, was a patch of lighter green, and beyond it a slight hurry and foam of the waters. Half a dozen voices cried warning to the helmsman. It was he of the woman's mantle, whom I had run through the shoulder on the island off Cape Charles, and he had been Kirby's pilot from Maracaibo to Fort Caroline. Now he answered with a burst of vaunting oaths: "We're in deep water, and there's deep water beyond. I've passed this way before, and I'll carry ye safe past that reef were 't hell's gate!"

The desperadoes who heard him swore applause, and thought no more of the reef that lay in wait. Long since they had gone through the gates of hell for the sake of the prize beyond. Knowing the appeal to be hopeless, I yet made it.

"She is English, men!" I shouted. "We will fight the Spaniards while they have a flag in the Indies, but our own people we will not touch!"

The clamor of shouts and oaths suddenly fell, and the wind in the rigging, the water at the keel, the surf on the shore, made themselves heard. In the silence, the terror of the fated ship became audible. Confused voices came to us, and the scream of a woman.

On the faces of a very few of the pirates there was a look of momentary doubt and wavering; it passed, and the most had never worn it. They began to press forward toward the poop, cursing and threatening, working themselves up into a rage that would not care for my sword, the minister's cutlass, or Diccon's pike. One who called himself a wit cried out something about Kirby and his methods, and two or three laughed.

"I find that the role of Kirby wearies me," I said. "I am an English gentleman, and I will not fire upon an English ship."

As if in answer there came from our forecastle a flame and thunder of guns. The gunners there, intent upon their business, and now within range of the merchantman, had fired the three forecastle culverins. The shot cut her rigging and brought down the flag. The pirates' shout of triumph was echoed by a cry from her decks and the defiant roar of her few remaining guns.

I drew my sword. The minister and Diccon moved nearer to me, and the King's ward, still and white and braver than a man, stood beside me. From the pirates that we faced came one deep breath, like the first sigh of the wind before the blast strikes. Suddenly the Spaniard pushed himself to the front; with his gaunt figure and sable dress he had the seeming of a raven come to croak over the dead. He rested his gloomy eyes upon my lord. The latter, very white, returned the look; then, with his head held high, crossed the deck with a measured step and took his place among us. He was followed a moment later by Paradise. "I never thought to die in my bed, captain," said the latter nonchalantly. "Sooner or later, what does it matter? And you must know that before I was a pirate I was a gentleman." Turning, he doffed his hat with a flourish to those he had quitted. "Hell litter!" he cried. "I have run with you long enough. Now I have a mind to die an honest man."

At this defection a dead hush of amazement fell upon that crew. One and all they stared at the man in black and silver, moistening their lips, but saying no word. We were five armed and desperate men; they were fourscore. We might send many to death before us, but at the last we ourselves must die,—we and those aboard the helpless ship.

In the moment's respite I bowed my head and whispered to the King's ward.

"I had rather it were your sword," she answered in a low voice, in which there was neither dread nor sorrow. "You must not let it grieve you; it will be added to your good deeds. And it is I that should ask your forgiveness, not you mine."

Though there was scant time for such dalliance, I bent my knee and rested my forehead upon her hand. As I rose, the minister's hand touched my shoulder and the voice spoke in my ear. "There is another way," he said. "There is God's death, and not man's. Look and see what I mean."

I followed the pointing of his eyes, and saw how close we were to those white and tumbling waters, the danger signal, the rattle of the hidden snake. The eyes of the pirate at the helm, too, were upon them; his brows were drawn downward, his lips pressed together, the whole man bent upon the ship's safe passage.... The low thunder of the surf, the cry of a wheeling sea bird, the gleaming lonely shore, the cloudless sky, the ocean, and the white sand far, far below, where one might sleep well, sleep well, with other valiant dead, long drowned, long changed. "Of their bones are coral made."

The storm broke with fury and outcries, and a blue radiance of drawn steel. A pistol ball sang past my ear.

"Don't shoot!" roared the gravedigger to the man who had fired the shot. "Don't cut them down! Take them and thrust them under hatches until we've time to give them a slow death! And hands off the woman until we've time to draw lots!"

He and the Spaniard led the rush. I turned my head and nodded to Sparrow, then faced them again. "Then may the Lord have mercy upon your souls!" I said.

As I spoke the minister sprang upon the helmsman, and, striking him to the deck with one blow of his huge fist, himself seized the wheel. Before the pirates could draw breath he had jammed the helm to starboard, and the reef lay right across our bows.

A dreadful cry went up from that black ship to a deaf Heaven,—a cry that was echoed by a wild shout of triumph from the merchantman. The mass fronting us broke in terror and rage and confusion. Some ran frantically up and down with shrieks and curses; others sprang overboard. A few made a dash for the poop and for us who stood to meet them. They were led by the Spaniard and the gravedigger. The former I met and sent tumbling back into the waist; the latter whirled past me, and rushing upon Paradise thrust him through with a pike, then dashed on to the wheel, to be met and hewn down by Diccon.

The ship struck. I put my arm around my wife, and my hand before her eyes; and while I looked only at her, in that storm of terrible cries, of flapping canvas, rushing water, and crashing timbers, the Spaniard clambered like a catamount upon the poop, that was now high above the broken forepart of the ship, and fired his pistol at me point-blank.



CHAPTER XXV IN WHICH MY LORD HATH HIS DAY

I AND Black Lamoral were leading a forlorn hope. With all my old company behind us, we were thundering upon an enemy as thick as ants, covering the face of the earth. Down came Black Lamoral, and the hoofs of every mad charger went over me. For a time I was dead; then I lived again, and was walking with the forester's daughter in the green chase at home. The oaks stretched broad sheltering arms above the young fern and the little wild flowers, and the deer turned and looked at us. In the open spaces, starring the lush grass, were all the yellow primroses that ever bloomed. I gathered them for her, but when I would have given them to her she was no longer the forester's daughter, but a proud lady, heiress to lands and gold, the ward of the King. She would not take the primroses from a poor gentleman, but shook her head and laughed sweetly, and faded into a waterfall that leaped from a pink hill into a waveless sea. Another darkness, and I was captive to the Chickahominies, tied to the stake. My arm and shoulder were on fire, and Opechancanough came and looked at me, with his dark, still face and his burning eyes. The fierce pain died, and I with it, and I lay in a grave and listened to the loud and deep murmur of the forest above. I lay there for ages on ages before I awoke to the fact that the darkness about me was the darkness of a ship's hold, and the murmur of the forest the wash of the water alongside. I put out an arm and touched, not the side of a grave, but a ship's timbers. I stretched forth the other arm, then dropped it with a groan. Some one bent over me and held water to my lips. I drank, and my senses came fully to me. "Diccon!" I said.

"It's not Diccon," replied the figure, setting down a pitcher. "It is Jeremy Sparrow. Thank God, you are yourself again!"

"Where are we?" I asked, when I had lain and listened to the water a little longer.

"In the hold of the George," he answered. "The ship sank by the bows, and well-nigh all were drowned. But when they upon the George saw that there was a woman amongst us who clung to the poop deck, they sent their longboat to take us off."

The light was too dim for me to read his face, so I touched his arm.

"She was saved," he said. "She is safe now. There are gentlewomen aboard, and she is in their care."

I put my unhurt arm across my eyes.

"You are weak yet," said the minister gently. "The Spaniard's ball, you know, went through your shoulder, and in some way your arm was badly torn from shoulder to wrist. You have been out of your head ever since we were brought here, three days ago. The chirurgeon came and dressed your wound, and it is healing well. Don't try to speak,—I'll tell you all. Diccon has been pressed into service, as the ship is short of hands, having lost some by fever and some overboard. Four of the pirates were picked up, and hung at the yardarm next morning."

He moved as he spoke, and something clanked in the stillness. "You are ironed!" I exclaimed.

"Only my ankles. My lord would have had me bound hand and foot; but you were raving for water, and, taking you for a dying man, they were so humane as to leave my hands free to attend you."

"My lord would have had you bound," I said slowly. "Then it's my lord's day."

"High noon and blazing sunshine," he answered, with a rueful laugh. "It seems that half the folk on board had gaped at him at court. Lord! when he put his foot over the side of the ship, how the women screeched and the men stared! He 's cock of the walk now, my Lord Carnal, the King's favorite!"

"And we are pirates."

"That 's the case in a nutshell," he answered cheerfully.

"Do they know how the ship came to strike upon that reef?" I asked.

"Probably not, unless madam has enlightened them. I did n't take the trouble,—they would n't have believed me,—and I can take my oath my lord has n't. He was only our helpless prisoner, you know; and they would think madam mistaken or bewitched."

"It 's not a likely tale," I said grimly, "seeing that we had already opened fire upon them."

"I trust in heaven the sharks got the men who fired the culverins!" he cried, and then laughed at his own savagery.

I lay still and tried to think. "Who are they on board?" I asked at last.

"I don't know," he replied. "I was only on deck until my lord had had his say in the poop cabin with the master and a gentleman who appeared most in authority. Then the pirates were strung up, and we were bundled down here in quick order. But there seems to be more of quality than usual aboard."

"You do not know where we are?"

"We lay at anchor for a day,—whilst they patched her up, I suppose,—and since then there has been rough weather. We must be still off Florida, and that is all I know. Now go to sleep. You'll get your strength best so, and there's nothing to be gotten by waking."

He began to croon a many-versed psalm. I slept and waked, and slept again, and was waked by the light of a torch against my eyes. The torch was held by a much-betarred seaman, and by its light a gentleman of a very meagre aspect, with a weazen face and small black eyes, was busily examining my wounded shoulder and arm.

"It passeth belief," he said in a sing-song voice, "how often wounds, with naught in the world done for them outside of fair water and a clean rag, do turn to and heal out of sheer perversity. Now, if I had been allowed to treat this one properly with scalding oil and melted lead, and to have bled the patient as he should have been bled, it is ten to one that by this time there would have been a pirate the less in the world." He rose to his feet with a highly injured countenance.

"Then he's doing well?" asked Sparrow.

"So well that he could n't do better," replied the other. "The arm was a trifling matter, though no doubt exquisitely painful. The wound in the shoulder is miraculously healing, without either blood-letting or cauteries. You'll have to hang after all, my friend." He looked at me with his little beady eyes. "It must have been a grand life," he said regretfully. "I never expected to see a pirate chief in the flesh. When I was a boy, I used to dream of the black ships and the gold and the fighting. By the serpent of Esculapius, in my heart of hearts I would rather be such a world's thief, uncaught, than Governor of Virginia!" He gathered up the tools of his trade, and motioned to his torchbearer to go before. "I'll have to report you rapidly recovering," he said warningly, as he turned to follow the light.

"Very well," I made answer. "To whom am I indebted for so much kindness?"

"I am Dr. John Pott, newly appointed physician general to the colony of Virginia. It is little of my skill I could give you, but that little I gladly bestow upon a real pirate. What a life it must have been! And to have to part with it when you are yet young! And the good red gold and the rich gems all at the bottom of the sea!"

He sighed heavily and went his way. The hatches were closed after him, and the minister and I were left in darkness while the slow hours dragged themselves past us. Through the chinks of the hatches a very faint light streamed down, and made the darkness gray instead of black. The minister and I saw each other dimly, as spectres. Some one brought us mouldy biscuit that I wanted not, and water for which I thirsted. Sparrow put the small pitcher to his lips, kept it there a moment, then held it to mine. I drank, and with that generous draught tasted pure bliss. It was not until five minutes later that I raised myself upon my elbow and turned on him.

"The pitcher felt full to my lips!" I exclaimed. "Did you drink when you said you did?"

He put out his great hand and pushed me gently down. "I have no wound," he said, "and there was not enough for two."

The light that trembled through the cracks above died away, and the darkness became gross. The air in the hold was stifling; our souls panted for the wind and the stars outside. At the worst, when the fetid blackness lay upon our chests like a nightmare, the hatch was suddenly lifted, a rush of pure air came to us, and with it the sound of men's voices speaking on the deck above. Said one, "True the doctor pronounces him out of all danger, yet he is a wounded man."

"He is a desperate and dangerous man," broke in another harshly. "I know not how you will answer to your Company for leaving him unironed so long."

"I and the Company understand each other, my lord," rejoined the first speaker, with some haughtiness. "I can keep my prisoner without advice. If I now order irons to be put upon him and his accomplice, it is because I see fit to do so, and not because of your suggestion, my lord. You wish to take this opportunity to have speech with him,—to that I can have no objection."

The speaker moved away. As his footsteps died in the distance my lord laughed, and his merriment was echoed by three or four harsh voices. Some one struck flint against steel, and there was a sudden flare of torches and the steadier light of a lantern. A man with a brutal, weather-beaten face—the master of the ship, we guessed—came down the ladder, lantern in hand, turned when he had reached the foot, and held up the lantern to light my lord down. I lay and watched the King's favorite as he descended. The torches held slantingly above cast a fiery light over his stately figure and the face which had raised him from the low estate of a doubtful birth and a most lean purse to a pinnacle too near the sun for men to gaze at with undazzled eyes. In his rich dress and the splendor of his beauty, with the red glow enveloping him, he lit the darkness like a baleful star.

The two torchbearers and a third man descended, closing the hatch after them. When all were down, my lord, the master at his heels, came and stood over me. I raised myself, though with difficulty, for the fever had left me weak as a babe, and met his gaze. His was a cruel look; if I had expected, as assuredly I did not expect, mercy or generosity from this my dearest foe, his look would have struck such a hope dead. Presently he beckoned to the men behind him. "Put the manacles upon him first," he said, with a jerk of his thumb toward Sparrow.

The man who had come down last, and who carried irons enough to fetter six pirates, started forward to do my lord's bidding. The master glanced at Sparrow's great frame, and pulled out a pistol. The minister laughed. "You'll not need it, friend. I know when the odds are too great." He held out his arms, and the men fettered them wrist to wrist. When they had finished he said calmly: "'I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.'"

My lord turned from him, and pointed to me. He kept his eyes upon my face while they shackled me hand and foot; then said abruptly, "You have cords there: bind his arms to his sides." The men wound the cords around me many times. "Draw them tight," commanded my lord.

There came a wrathful clank of the minister's chains. "The arm is torn and inflamed from shoulder to wrist, as I make no doubt you have been told!" he cried. "For very shame, man!"

"Draw them tighter," said my lord, between his teeth.

The men knotted the cords, and rose to their feet, to be dismissed by my lord with a curt "You may go." They drew back to the foot of the ladder, while the master of the ship went and perched himself upon one of the rungs. "The air is fresher here beneath the hatch," he remarked.

As for me, though I lay at my enemy's feet, I could yet set my teeth and look him in the eyes. The cup was bitter, but I could drink it with an unmoved face.

"Art paid?" he demanded. "Art paid for the tree in the red forest without the haunted wood? Art paid, thou bridegroom?"

"No," I answered. "Bring her here to laugh at me as she laughed in the twilight beneath the guesthouse window."

I thought he would murder me with the poniard he drew, but presently he put it up.

"She is come to her senses," he said. "Up in the state cabin are bright lights, and wine and laughter. There are gentlewomen aboard, and I have been singing to the lute, to them—and to her. She is saved from the peril into which you plunged her; she knows that the King's Court of High Commission, to say nothing of the hangman, will soon snap the fetters which she now shudders to think of; that the King and one besides will condone her past short madness. Her cheeks are roses, her eyes are stars. But now, when I pressed her hand between the verses of my song, she smiled and sighed and blushed. She is again the dutiful ward of the King, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh—she hath asked to be so called"—

"You lie," I said. "She is my true and noble wife. She may sit in the state cabin, in the air and warmth and light, she may even laugh with her lips, but her heart is here with me in the hold."

As I spoke, I knew, and knew not how I knew, that the thing which I had said was true. With that knowledge came a happiness so deep and strong that it swept aside like straw the torment of those cords, and the deeper hurt that I lay at his feet. I suppose my face altered, and mirrored that blessed glow about my heart, for into his own came a white fury, changing its beauty into something inhuman and terrifying. He looked a devil baffled. For a minute he stood there rigid, with hands clenched. "Embrace her heart, if thou canst," he said, in a voice so low that it came like a whisper from the realm he might have left. "I shall press my face against her bosom."

Another minute of a silence that I disdained to break; then he turned and went up the ladder. The seamen and the master followed. The hatch was clapped to and fastened, and we were left to the darkness and the heavy air, and to a grim endurance of what could not be cured.

During those hours of thirst and torment I came indeed to know the man who sat beside me. His hands were so fastened that he could not loosen the cords, and there was no water for him to give me; but he could and did bestow a higher alms,—the tenderness of a brother, the manly sympathy of a soldier, the balm of the priest of God. I lay in silence, and he spoke not often; but when he did so, there was that in the tone of his voice—Another cycle of pain, and I awoke from a half swoon, in which there was water to drink and no anguish, to hear him praying beside me. He ceased to speak, and in the darkness I heard him draw his breath hard and his great muscles crack. Suddenly there came a sharp sound of breaking iron, and a low "Thank Thee, Lord!" Another moment, and I felt his hands busy at the knotted cords. "I will have them off thee in a twinkling, Ralph," he said, "thanks to Him who taught my hands to war, and my arms to break in two a bow of steel." As he spoke, the cords loosened beneath his fingers.

I raised my head and laid it on his knee, and he put his great arm, with the broken chain dangling from it, around me, and, like a mother with a babe, crooned me to sleep with the twenty-third psalm.



CHAPTER XXVI IN WHICH I AM BROUGHT TO TRIAL

MY lord came not again into the hold, and the untied cords and the broken chain were not replaced. Morning and evening we were brought a niggard allowance of bread and water; but the man who carried it bore no light, and may not even have observed their absence. We saw no one in authority. Hour by hour my wounds healed and my strength returned. If it was a dark and noisome prison, if there were hunger and thirst and inaction to be endured, if we knew not how near to us might be a death of ignominy, yet the minister and I found the jewel in the head of the toad; for in that time of pain and heaviness we became as David and Jonathan.

At last some one came beside the brute who brought us food. A quiet gentleman, with whitening hair and bright dark eyes, stood before us. He had ordered the two men with him to leave open the hatch, and he held in his hand a sponge soaked with vinegar. "Which of you is—or rather was—Captain Ralph Percy?" he asked, in a grave but pleasant voice.

"I am Captain Percy," I answered.

He looked at me with attention. "I have heard of you before," he said. "I read the letter you wrote to Sir Edwyn Sandys, and thought it an excellently conceived and manly epistle. What magic transformed a gentleman and a soldier into a pirate?"

As he waited for me to speak, I gave him for answer, "Necessity."

"A sad metamorphosis," he said. "I had rather read of nymphs changed into laurel and gushing springs. I am come to take you, sir, before the officers of the Company aboard this ship, when, if you have aught to say for yourself, you may say it. I need not tell you, who saw so clearly some time ago the danger in which you then stood, that your plight is now a thousandfold worse."

"I am perfectly aware of it," I said. "Am I to go in fetters?"

"No," he replied, with a smile. "I have no instructions on the subject, but I will take it upon myself to free you from them,—even for the sake of that excellently writ letter."

"Is not this gentleman to go too?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I have no orders to that effect."

While the men who were with him removed the irons from my wrists and ankles he stood in silence, regarding me with a scrutiny so close that it would have been offensive had I been in a position to take offense. When they had finished I turned and held Jeremy's hand in mine for an instant, then followed the new-comer to the ladder and out of the hold; the two men coming after us, and resolving themselves above into a guard. As we traversed the main deck we came upon Diccon, busy with two or three others about the ports. He saw me, and, dropping the bar that he held, started forward, to be plucked back by an angry arm. The men who guarded me pushed in between us, and there was no word spoken by either. I walked on, the gentleman at my side, and presently came to an open port, and saw, with an intake of my breath, the sunshine, a dark blue heaven flecked with white, and a quiet ocean. My companion glanced at me keenly.

"Doubtless it seems fair enough, after that Cimmerian darkness below," he remarked. "Would you like to rest here a moment?"

"Yes," I said, and, leaning against the side of the port, looked out at the beauty of the light.

"We are off Hatteras," he informed me, "but we have not met with the stormy seas that vex poor mariners hereabouts. Those sails you see on our quarter belong to our consort. We were separated by the hurricane that nigh sunk us, and finally drove us, helpless as we were, toward the Florida coast and across your path. For us that was a fortunate reef upon which you dashed. The gods must have made your helmsman blind, for he ran you into a destruction that gaped not for you. Why did every wretch that we hung next morning curse you before he died?"

"If I told you, you would not believe me," I replied.

I was dizzy with the bliss of the air and the light, and it seemed a small thing that he would not believe me. The wind sounded in my ears like a harp, and the sea beckoned. A white bird flashed down into the crystal hollow between two waves, hung there a second, then rose, a silver radiance against the blue. Suddenly I saw a river, dark and ridged beneath thunderclouds, a boat, and in it, her head pillowed upon her arm, a woman, who pretended that she slept. With a shock my senses steadied, and I became myself again. The sea was but the sea, the wind the wind; in the hold below me lay my friend; somewhere in that ship was my wife; and awaiting me in the state cabin were men who perhaps had the will, as they had the right and the might, to hang me at the yardarm that same hour.

"I have had my fill of rest," I said. "Whom am I to stand before?"

"The newly appointed officers of the Company, bound in this ship for Virginia," he answered. "The ship carries Sir Francis Wyatt, the new Governor; Master Davison, the Secretary; young Clayborne, the surveyor general; the knight marshal, the physician general, and the Treasurer, with other gentlemen, and with fair ladies, their wives and sisters. I am George Sandys, the Treasurer."

The blood rushed to my face, for it hurt me that the brother of Sir Edwyn Sandys should believe that the firing of those guns had been my act. His was the trained observation of the traveler and writer, and he probably read the color aright. "I pity you, if I can no longer esteem you," he said, after a pause. "I know no sorrier sight than a brave man's shield reversed."

I bit my lip and kept back the angry word. The next minute saw us at the door of the state cabin. It opened, and my companion entered, and I after him, with my two guards at my back. Around a large table were gathered a number of gentlemen, some seated, some standing. There were but two among them whom I had seen before,—the physician who had dressed my wound and my Lord Carnal. The latter was seated in a great chair, beside a gentleman with a pleasant active face and light brown curling hair,—the new Governor, as I guessed. The Treasurer, nodding to the two men to fall back to the window, glided to a seat upon my lord's other hand, and I went and stood before the Governor of Virginia.

For some moments there was silence in the cabin, every man being engaged in staring at me with all his eyes; then the Governor spoke: "It should be upon your knees, sir."

"I am neither petitioner nor penitent," I said. "I know no reason why I should kneel, your Honor."

"There 's reason, God wot, why you should be both!" he exclaimed. "Did you not, now some months agone, defy the writ of the King and Company, refusing to stand when called upon to do so in the King's name?"

"Yes."

"Did you not, when he would have stayed your lawless flight, lay violent hands upon a nobleman high in the King's favor, and, overpowering him with numbers, carry him out of the King's realm?"

"Yes."

"Did you not seduce from her duty to the King, and force to fly with you, his Majesty's ward, the Lady Jocelyn Leigh?"

"No," I said. "There was with me only my wife, who chose to follow the fortunes of her husband."

He frowned, and my lord swore beneath his breath. "Did you not, falling in with a pirate ship, cast in your lot with the scoundrels upon it, and yourself turn pirate?"

"In some sort."

"And become their chief?"

"Since there was no other situation open,—yes."

"Taking with you as captives upon the pirate ship that lady and that nobleman?"

"Yes."

"You proceeded to ravage the dominions of the King of Spain, with whom his Majesty is at peace"—

"Like Drake and Raleigh,—yes," I said.

He smiled, then frowned "Tempora mutantur," he said dryly. "And I have never heard that Drake or Raleigh attacked an English ship."

"Nor have I attacked one," I said.

He leaned back in his chair and stared at me. "We saw the flame and heard the thunder of your guns, and our rigging was cut by the shot. Did you expect me to believe that last assertion?"

"No."

"Then you might have spared yourself—and us—that lie," he said coldly.

The Treasurer moved restlessly in his seat, and began to whisper to his neighbor the Secretary. A young man, with the eyes of a hawk and an iron jaw,—Clayborne, the surveyor general,—who sat at the end of the table beside the window, turned and gazed out upon the clouds and the sea, as if, contempt having taken the place of curiosity, he had no further interest in the proceedings. As for me, I set my face like a flint, and looked past the man who might have saved me that last speech of the Governor's as if he had never been.

There was a closed door in the cabin, opposite the one by which I had entered. Suddenly from behind it came the sound of a short struggle, followed by the quick turn of a key in the lock. The door was flung open, and two women entered the cabin. One, a fair young gentlewoman, with tears in her brown eyes, came forward hurriedly with outspread hands.

"I did what I could, Frank!" she cried. "When she would not listen to reason, I e'en locked the door; but she is strong, for all that she has been ill, and she forced the key out of my hand!" She looked at the red mark upon the white hand, and two tears fell from her long lashes upon her wild-rose cheeks.

With a smile the Governor put out an arm and drew her down upon a stool beside him, then rose and bowed low to the King's ward. "You are not yet well enough to leave your cabin, as our worthy physician general will assure you, lady," he said courteously, but firmly. "Permit me to lead you back to it."

Still smiling he made as if to advance, when she stayed him with a gesture of her raised hand, at once so majestic and so pleading that it was as though a strain of music had passed through the stillness of the cabin.

"Sir Francis Wyatt, as you are a gentleman, let me speak," she said. It was the voice of that first night at Weyanoke, all pathos, all sweetness, all entreating.

The Governor stopped short, the smile still upon his lips, his hand still outstretched,—stood thus for a moment, then sat down. Around the half circle of gentlemen went a little rustling sound, like wind in dead leaves. My lord half rose from his seat. "She is bewitched," he said, with dry lips. "She will say what she has been told to say. Lest she speak to her shame, we should refuse to hear her."

She had been standing in the centre of the floor, her hands clasped, her body bowed toward the Governor, but at my lord's words she straightened like a bow unbent. "I may speak, your Honor?" she asked clearly.

The Governor, who had looked askance at the working face of the man beside him, slightly bent his head and leaned back in his great armchair. The King's favorite started to his feet. The King's ward turned her eyes upon him. "Sit down, my lord," she said. "Surely these gentlemen will think that you are afraid of what I, a poor erring woman, rebellious to the King, traitress to mine own honor, late the plaything of a pirate ship, may say or do. Truth, my lord, should be more courageous." Her voice was gentle, even plaintive, but it had in it the quality that lurks in the eyes of the crouching panther.

My lord sat down, one hand hiding his working mouth, the other clenched on the arm of his chair as if it had been an arm of flesh.



CHAPTER XXVII IN WHICH I FIND AN ADVOCATE

SHE came slowly nearer the ring of now very quiet and attentive faces until she stood beside me, but she neither looked at me nor spoke to me. She was thinner and there were heavy shadows beneath her eyes, but she was beautiful.

"I stand before gentlemen to whom, perhaps, I am not utterly unknown," she said. "Some here, perchance, have been to court, and have seen me there. Master Sandys, once, before the Queen died, you came to Greenwich to kiss her Majesty's hands; and while you waited in her antechamber you saw a young maid of honor—scarce more than a child—curled in a window seat with a book. You sat beside her, and told her wonderful tales of sunny lands and gods and nymphs. I was that maid of honor. Master Clayborne, once, hawking near Windsor, I dropped my glove. There were a many out of their saddles before it touched the ground, but a gentleman, not of our party, who had drawn his horse to one side to let us pass, was quicker than they all. Did you not think yourself well paid, sir, when you kissed the hand to which you restored the glove? All here, I think, may have heard my name. If any hath heard aught that ever I did in all my life to tarnish it, I pray him to speak now and shame me before you all!"

Clayborne started up. "I remember that day at Windsor, lady!" he cried. "The man of whom I afterward asked your name was a most libertine courtier, and he raised his hat when he spoke of you, calling you a lily which the mire of the court could not besmirch. I will believe all good, but no harm of you, lady!"

He sat down, and Master Sandys said gravely: "Men need not be courtiers to have known of a lady of great wealth and high birth, a ward of the King's, and both beautiful and pure. I nor no man else, I think, ever heard aught of the Lady Jocelyn Leigh but what became a daughter of her line."

A murmur of assent went round the circle. The Governor, leaning forward from his seat, his wife's hand in his, gravely bent his head. "All this is known, lady," he said courteously.

She did not answer; her eyes were upon the King's favorite, and the circle waited with her.

"It is known," said my lord.

She smiled proudly. "For so much grace, thanks, my lord," she said, then addressed herself again to the Governor: "Your Honor, that is the past, the long past, the long, long past, though not a year has gone by. Then I was a girl, proud and careless; now, your Honor, I am a woman, and I stand here in the dignity of suffering and peril. I fled from England"—She paused, drew herself up, and turned upon my lord a face and form so still, and yet so expressive of noble indignation, outraged womanhood, scorn, and withal a kind of angry pity, that small wonder if he shrank as from a blow. "I left the only world I knew," she said. "I took a way low and narrow and dark and set with thorns, but the only way that I—alone and helpless and bewildered—-could find, because that I, Jocelyn Leigh, willed not to wed with you, my Lord Carnal. Why did you follow me, my lord? You knew that I loved you not. You knew my mind, and that I was weak and friendless, and you used your power. I must tell you, my lord, that you were not chivalrous, nor compassionate, nor brave"—

"I loved you!" he cried, and stretched out his arm toward her across the table. He saw no one but her, spoke to none but her. There was a fierce yearning and a hopelessness in his voice and bent head and outstretched arm that lent for the time a tragic dignity to the pageant, evil and magnificent, of his life.

"You loved me," she said. "I had rather you had hated me, my lord. I came to Virginia, your Honor, and men thought me the thing I professed myself. In the green meadow beyond the church they wooed me as such. This one came and that one, and at last a fellow, when I said him nay and bade him begone, did dare to seize my hands and kiss my lips. While I struggled one came and flung that dastard out of the way, then asked me plainly to become his wife, and there was no laugh or insult in his voice. I was wearied and fordone and desperate.... So I met my husband, and so I married him. That same day I told him a part of my secret, and when my Lord Carnal was come I told him all.... I had not met with much true love or courtesy or compassion in my life. When I saw the danger in which he stood because of me, I told him he might free himself from that coil, might swear to what they pleased, whistle me off, save himself, and I would say no word of blame. There was wine upon the table, and he filled a cup and brought it to me, and we drank of it together. We drank of the same cup then, your Honor, and we will drink of it still. We twain were wedded, and the world strove to part us. Which of you here, in such quarrel, would not withstand the world? Lady Wyatt, would not thy husband hold thee, while he lived, against the world? Then speak for mine!"

"Frank, Frank!" cried Lady Wyatt. "They love each other!"

"If he withstood the King," went on the King's ward, "it was for his honor and for mine. If he fled from Virginia, it was because I willed it so. Had he stayed, my Lord Carnal, and had you willed to follow me again, you must have made a yet longer journey to a most distant bourne. That wild night when we fled, why did you come upon us, my lord? The moon burst forth from a black cloud, and you stood there upon the wharf above us, calling to the footsteps behind to hasten. We would have left you there in safety, and gone ourselves alone down that stream as black and strange as death. Why did you spring down the steps and grapple with the minister? And he that might have thrust you beneath the flood and drowned you there did but fling you into the boat. We wished not your company, my lord; we would willingly have gone without you. I trust, my lord, you have made honest report of this matter, and have told these gentlemen that my husband gave you, a prisoner whom he wanted not, all fair and honorable treatment. That you have done this I dare take my oath, my lord"—

She stood silent, her eyes upon his. The men around stirred, and a little flash like the glint of drawn steel went from one pair of eyes to another.

"My lord, my lord!" said the King's ward. "Long ago you won my hatred; an you would not win my contempt, speak truth this day!"

In his eyes, which he had never taken from her face, there leaped to meet the proud appeal in her own a strange fire. That he loved her with a great and evil passion, I, who needs had watched him closely, had long known. Suddenly he burst into jarring laughter. "Yea, he treated me fairly enough, damn him to everlasting hell! But he 's a pirate, sweet bird; he's a pirate, and must swing as such!"

"A pirate!" she cried. "But he was none! My lord, you know he was none! Your Honor"—

The Governor interrupted her: "He made himself captain of a pirate ship, lady. He took and sunk ships of Spain."

"In what sort did he become their chief?" she cried. "In such sort, gentlemen, as the bravest of you, in like straits, would have been blithe to be, an you had had like measure of wit and daring! Your Honor, the wind before which our boat drave like a leaf, the waves that would engulf us, wrecked us upon a desert isle. There was no food or water or shelter. That night, while we slept, a pirate ship anchored off the beach, and in the morning the pirates came ashore to bury their captain. My husband met them alone, fought their would-be leaders one by one, and forced the election to fall upon himself. Well he knew that if he left not that isle their leader, he would leave it their captive; and not he alone! God's mercy, gentlemen, what other could he do? I pray you to hold him absolved from a willing embrace of that life! Sunk ships of Spain! Yea, forsooth; and how long hath it been since other English gentlemen sunk other ships of Spain? The world hath changed indeed if to fight the Spaniard in the Indies, e'en though at home we be at peace with him, be conceived so black a crime! He fought their galleons fair and knightly, with his life in his hand; he gave quarter, and while they called him chief those pirates tortured no prisoner and wronged no woman. Had he not been there, would the ships have been taken less surely? Had he not been there, God wot, ships and ships' boats alike would have sunk or burned, and no Spanish men and women had rowed away and blessed a generous foe. A pirate! He, with me and with the minister and with my Lord Carnal, was prisoner to the pirates, and out of that danger he plucked safety for us all! Who hath so misnamed a gallant gentleman? Was it you, my lord?"

Eyes and voice were imperious, and in her cheeks burned an indignant crimson. My lord's face was set and white; he looked at her, but spoke no word.

"The Spanish ships might pass, lady," said the Governor; "but this is an English ship, with the flag of England above her."

"Yea," she said. "What then?"

The circle rustled again. The Governor loosed his wife's fingers and leaned forward. "You plead well, lady!" he exclaimed. "You might win, an Captain Percy had not seen fit to fire upon us."

A dead silence followed his words. Outside the square window a cloud passed from the face of the sun, and a great burst of sunshine entered the cabin. She stood in the heart of it, and looked a goddess angered. My lord, with his haggard face and burning eyes, slowly rose from his seat, and they faced each other.

"You told them not who fired those guns, who sunk that pirate ship?" she said. "Because he was your enemy, you held your tongue? Knight and gentleman—my Lord Carnal—my Lord Coward!"

"Honor is an empty word to me," he answered. "For you I would dive into the deepest hell,—if there be a deeper than that which burns me, day in, day out.... Jocelyn, Jocelyn, Jocelyn!"

"You love me so?" she said. "Then do me pleasure. Because I ask it of you, tell these men the truth." She came a step nearer, and held out her clasped hands to him. "Tell them how it was, my lord, and I will strive to hate you no longer. The harm that you have done me I will pray for strength to forgive. Ah, my lord, let me not ask in vain! Will you that I kneel to you?"

"I fix my own price," he said. "I will do what you ask, an you will let me kiss your lips."

I sprang forward with an oath. Some one behind caught both my wrists in an iron grasp and pulled me back. "Be not a fool!" growled Clayborne in my ear. "The cord's loosening fast: if you interfere, it may tighten with a jerk!" I freed my hands from his grasp. The Treasurer, sitting next him, leaned across the table and motioned to the two seamen beside the window. They left their station, and each seized me by an arm. "Be guided, Captain Percy," said Master Sandys in a low voice. "We wish you well. Let her win you through."

"First tell the truth, my lord," said the King's ward; "then come and take the reward you ask."

"Jocelyn!" I cried. "I command you"—

She turned upon me a perfectly colorless face. "All my life after I will be to you an obedient wife," she said. "This once I pray you to hold me excused.... Speak, my lord."

There was the mirth of the lost in the laugh with which he turned to the Governor. "That pretty little tale, sir, that I regaled you with, the day you obligingly picked me up, was pure imagination; the wetting must have disordered my reason. A potion sweeter than the honey of Hybla, which I am about to drink, hath restored me beforehand. Gentlemen all, there was mutiny aboard that ship which so providentially sank before your very eyes. For why? The crew, who were pirates, and the captain, who was yonder gentleman, did not agree. The one wished to attack you, board you, rummage you, and slay, after recondite fashions, every mother's son of you; the other demurred,—so strongly, in fact, that his life ceased to be worth a pin's purchase. Indeed, I believe he resigned his captaincy then and there, and, declining to lift a finger against an English ship, defied them to do their worst. He had no hand in the firing of those culverins; the mutineers touched them off without so much as a 'by your leave.' His attention was otherwise occupied. Good sirs, there was not the slightest reason in nature why the ship should have struck upon that sunken reef, to the damnation of her people and the salvation of yours. Why do you suppose she diverged from the path of safety to split into slivers against that fortunate ledge?"

The men around drew in their breath, and one or two sprang to their feet. My lord laughed again. "Have you seen the pious man who left Jamestown and went aboard the pirate ship as this gentleman's lieutenant? He hath the strength of a bull. Captain Percy here had but to nod his head, and hey, presto! the helmsman was bowled over, and the minister had the helm. The ship struck: the pirates went to hell, and you, gentlemen, were preserved to order all things well in Virginia. May she long be grateful! The man who dared that death rather than attack the ship he guessed to be the Company's is my mortal foe, whom I will yet sweep from my path, but he is not a pirate. Ay, take it down, an it please you, Master Secretary! I retreat from a most choice position, to be sure, but what care I? I see a vantage ground more to my liking. I have lost a throw, perhaps, but I will recoup ten such losses with one such kiss. By your leave, lady."

He went up to her where she stood, with hanging arms, her head a little bent, white and cold and yielding as a lady done in snow; gazed at her a moment, with his passion written in his fierce eyes and haggard, handsome face; then crushed her to him.

If I could have struck him dead, I would have done so. When her word had been kept, she released herself with a quiet and resolute dignity. As for him, he sank back into the great chair beside the Governor's, leaned an elbow on the table, and hid his eyes with one shaking hand.

The Governor rose to his feet, and motioned away the two seamen who held me fast. "We'll have no hanging this morning, gentlemen," he announced. "Captain Percy, I beg to apologize to you for words that were never meant for a brave and gallant gentleman, but for a pirate who I find does not exist. I pray you to forget them, quite."

I returned his bow, but my eyes traveled past him.

"I will allow you no words with my Lord Carnal," he said. "With your wife,—that is different." He moved aside with a smile.

She was standing, pale, with downcast eyes, where my lord had left her. "Jocelyn," I said. She turned toward me, crimsoned deeply, uttered a low cry, half laughter, half a sob, then covered her face with her hands. I took them away and spoke her name again, and this time she hid her face upon my breast.

A moment thus; then—for all eyes were upon her—I lifted her head, kissed her, and gave her to Lady Wyatt, whom I found at my side. "I commend my wife to your ladyship's care," I said. "As you are woman, deal sisterly by her!"

"You may trust me, sir," she made answer, the tears upon her cheeks. "I did not know,—I did not understand....Dear heart, come away,—come away with Margaret Wyatt."

Clayborne opened the door of the cabin, and stood aside with a low bow. The men who had sat to judge me rose; only the King's favorite kept his seat. With Lady Wyatt's arm about her, the King's ward passed between the lines of standing gentlemen to the door, there hesitated, turned, and, facing them with I know not what of pride and shame, wistfulness of entreaty and noble challenge to belief in the face and form that were of all women's most beautiful, curtsied to them until her knee touched the floor. She was gone, and the sunlight with her.

When I turned upon that shameless lord where he sat in his evil beauty, with his honor dead before him, men came hastily in between. I put them aside with a laugh. I had but wanted to look at him. I had no sword,—already he lay beneath my challenge,—and words are weak things.

At length he rose, as arrogant as ever in his port, as evilly superb in his towering pride, and as amazingly indifferent to the thoughts of men who lied not. "This case hath wearied me," he said. "I will retire for a while to rest, and in dreams to live over a past sweetness. Give you good-day, gentles! Sir Francis Wyatt, you will remember that this gentleman did resist arrest, and that he lieth under the King's displeasure!" So saying he clapped his hat upon his head and walked out of the cabin. The Company's officers drew a long breath, as if a fresher air had come in with his departure.

"I have no choice, Captain Percy, but to keep you still under restraint, both here and when we shall reach Jamestown," said the Governor. "All that the Company, through me, can do, consistent with its duty to his Majesty, to lighten your confinement shall be done"—

"Then send him not again into the hold, Sir Francis!" exclaimed the Treasurer, with a wry face.

The Governor laughed. "Lighter and sweeter quarters shall be found. Your wife's a brave lady, Captain Percy"—

"And a passing fair one," said Claybourne under his breath.

"I left a friend below in the hold, your Honor," I said. "He came with me from Jamestown because he was my friend. The King hath never heard of him. And he's no more a pirate than I or you, your Honor. He is a minister,—a sober, meek, and godly man"—

From behind the Secretary rose the singsong of my acquaintance of the hold, Dr. John Pott. "He is Jeremy, your Honor, Jeremy who made the town merry at Blackfriars. Your Honor remembers him? He had a sickness, and forsook the life and went into the country. He was known to the Dean of St. Paul's. All the town laughed when it heard that he had taken orders."

"Jeremy!" cried out the Treasurer. "Nick Bottom! Christopher Sly! Sir Toby Belch! Sir Francis, give me Jeremy to keep in my cabin!"

The Governor laughed. "He shall be bestowed with Captain Percy where he'll not lack for company, I warrant! Jeremy! Ben Jonson loved him; they drank together at the Mermaid."

A little later the Treasurer turned to leave my new quarters, to which he had walked beside me, glanced at the men who waited for him without,—Jeremy had not yet been brought from the hold,—and returned to my side to say, in a low voice, but with emphasis: "Captain Percy has been a long time without news from home,—from England. What would he most desire to hear?"

"Of the welfare of his Grace of Buckingham," I replied.

He smiled. "His Grace is as well as heart could desire, and as powerful. The Queen's dog now tuggeth the sow by the ears this way or that, as it pleaseth him. Since we are not to hang you as a pirate, Captain Percy, I incline to think your affairs in better posture than when you left Virginia."

"I think so too, sir," I said, and gave him thanks for his courtesy, and wished him good-day, being anxious to sit still and thank God, with my face in my hands and summer in my heart.



CHAPTER XXVIII IN WHICH THE SPRINGTIME IS AT HAND

TIRED of dicing against myself, and of the books that Rolfe had sent me, I betook myself to the gaol window, and, leaning against the bars, looked out in search of entertainment. The nearest if not the merriest thing the prospect had to offer was the pillory. It was built so tall that it was but little lower than the low upper story of the gaol, and it faced my window at so short a distance that I could hear the long, whistling breath of the wretch who happened to occupy it. It was not a pleasant sound; neither was a livid face, new branded on the cheek with a great R, and with a trickle of dark blood from the mutilated ears staining the board in which the head was immovably fixed, a pleasant sight. A little to one side was the whipping post: a woman had been whipped that morning, and her cries had tainted the air even more effectually than had the decayed matter with which certain small devils had pelted the runaway in the pillory. I looked away from the poor rogue below me into the clear, hard brightness of the March day, and was most heartily weary of the bars between me and it. The wind blew keenly; the sky was blue as blue could be, and the river a great ribbon of azure sewn with diamonds. All colors were vivid and all distances near. There was no haze over the forest; brown and bare it struck the cloudless blue. The marsh was emerald, the green of the pines deep and rich, the budding maples redder than coral. The church, with the low green graves around it, appeared not a stone's throw away, and the voices of the children up and down the street sounded clearly, as though they played in the brown square below me. When the drum beat for the nooning the roll was close in my ears. The world looked so bright and keen that it seemed new made, and the brilliant sunshine and the cold wind stirred the blood like wine.

Now and then men and women passed through the square below. Well-nigh all glanced up at the window, and their eyes were friendly. It was known now that Buckingham was paramount at home, and my Lord Carnal's following in Virginia was much decayed. Young Hamor strode by, bravely dressed and whistling cheerily, and doffed a hat with a most noble broken feather. "We're going to bait a bear below the fort!" he called. "Sorry you'll miss the sport! There will be all the world—and my Lord Carnal." He whistled himself away, and presently there came along Master Edward Sharpless. He stopped and stared at the rogue in the pillory,—with no prescience, I suppose, of a day when he was to stand there himself; then looked up at me with as much malevolence as his small soul could write upon his mean features, and passed on. He had a jaded look; moreover, his clothes were swamp-stained and his cloak had been torn by briers. "What did you go to the forest for?" I muttered.

The key grated in the door behind me, and it opened to admit the gaoler and Diccon with my dinner,—which I was not sorry to see. "Sir George sent the venison, sir," said the gaoler, grinning, "and Master Piersey the wild fowl, and Madam West the pasty and the marchpane, and Master Pory the sack. Be there anything you lack, sir?"

"Nothing that you can supply," I answered curtly.

The fellow grinned again, straightened the things upon the table, and started for the door. "You can stay until I come for the platters," he said to Diccon, and went out, locking the door after him with ostentation.

I applied myself to the dinner, and Diccon went to the window, and stood there looking out at the blue sky and at the man in the pillory. He had the freedom of the gaol. I was somewhat more straitly confined, though my friends had easy access to me. As for Jeremy Sparrow, he had spent twenty-four hours in gaol, at the end of which time Madam West had a fit of the spleen, declared she was dying, and insisted upon Master Sparrow's being sent for to administer consolation; Master Bucke, unfortunately, having gone up to Henricus on business connected with the college. From the bedside of that despotic lady Sparrow was called to bury a man on the other side of the river, and from the grave to marry a couple at Mulberry Island. And the next day being Sunday, and no minister at hand, he preached again in Master Bucke's pulpit,—and preached a sermon so powerful and moving that its like had never been heard in Virginia. They marched him not back from the pulpit to gaol. There were but five ministers in Virginia, and there were a many more sick to visit and dead to bury. Master Bucke, still feeble in body, tarried up river discussing with Thorpe the latter's darling project of converting every imp of an Indian this side the South Sea, and Jeremy slipped into his old place. There had been some talk of a public censure, but it died away.

The pasty and sack disposed of, I turned in my seat and spoke to Diccon: "I looked for Master Rolfe to-day. Have you heard aught of him?"

"No," he answered. As he spoke, the door was opened and the gaoler put in his head. "A messenger from Master Rolfe, captain." He drew back, and the Indian Nantauquas entered the room.

Rolfe I had seen twice since the arrival of the George at Jamestown, but the Indian had not been with him. The young chief now came forward and touched the hand I held out to him. "My brother will be here before the sun touches the tallest pine," he announced in his grave, calm voice. "He asks Captain Percy to deny himself to any other that may come. He wishes to see him alone."

"I shall hardly be troubled with company," I said. "There's a bear-baiting toward."

Nantauquas smiled. "My brother asked me to find a bear for to-day. I bought one from the Paspaheghs for a piece of copper, and took him to the ring below the fort."

"Where all the town will presently be gone," I said. "I wonder what Rolfe did that for!"

Filling a cup with sack, I pushed it to the Indian across the table. "You are little in the woods nowadays, Nantauquas."

His fine dark face clouded ever so slightly. "Opechancanough has dreamt that I am Indian no longer. Singing birds have lied to him, telling him that I love the white man, and hate my own color. He calls me no more his brave, his brother Powhatan's dear son. I do not sit by his council fire now, nor do I lead his war bands. When I went last to his lodge and stood before him, his eyes burned me like the coals the Monacans once closed my hands upon. He would not speak to me."

"It would not fret me if he never spoke again," I said. "You have been to the forest to-day?"

"Yes," he replied, glancing at the smear of leaf mould upon his beaded moccasins. "Captain Percy's eyes are quick; he should have been an Indian. I went to the Paspaheghs to take them the piece of copper. I could tell Captain Percy a curious thing"—

"Well?" I demanded, as he paused.

"I went to the lodge of the werowance with the copper, and found him not there. The old men declared that he had gone to the weirs for fish,—he and ten of his braves. The old men lied. I had passed the weirs of the Paspaheghs, and no man was there. I sat and smoked before the lodge, and the maidens brought me chinquapin cakes and pohickory; for Nantauquas is a prince and a welcome guest to all save Opechancanough. The old men smoked, with their eyes upon the ground, each seeing only the days when he was even as Nantauquas. They never knew when a wife of the werowance, turned child by pride, unfolded a doeskin and showed Nantauquas a silver cup carved all over and set with colored stones."

"Humph!"

"The cup was a heavy price to pay," continued the Indian. "I do not know what great thing it bought."

"Humph!" I said again. "Did you happen to meet Master Edward Sharpless in the forest?"

He shook his head. "The forest is wide, and there are many trails through it. Nantauquas looked for that of the werowance of the Paspaheghs, but found it not. He had no time to waste upon a white man."

He gathered his otterskin mantle about him and prepared to depart. I rose and gave him my hand, for I thoroughly liked him, and in the past he had made me his debtor. "Tell Rolfe he will find me alone," I said, "and take my thanks for your pains, Nantauquas. If ever we hunt together again, may I have the chance to serve you! I bear the scars of the wolf's teeth yet; you came in the nick of time, that day."

The Indian smiled. "It was a fierce old wolf. I wish Captain Percy free with all my heart, and then we will hunt more wolves, he and I."

When he was gone, and the gaoler and Diccon with him, I returned to the window. The runaway in the pillory was released, and went away homewards, staggering beside his master's stirrup. Passers-by grew more and more infrequent, and up the street came faint sounds of laughter and hurrahing,—the bear must be making good sport. I could see the half-moon, and the guns, and the flag that streamed in the wind, and on the river a sail or two, white in the sunlight as the gulls that swooped past. Beyond rose the bare masts of the George. The Santa Teresa rode no more forever in the James. The King's ship was gone home to the King without the freight he looked for. Three days, and the George would spread her white wings and go down the wide river, and I with her, and the King's ward, and the King's sometime favorite. I looked down the wind-ruffled stream, and saw the great bay into which it emptied, and beyond the bay the heaving ocean, dark and light, league on league, league on league; then green England, and London, and the Tower. The vision disturbed me less than once it would have done. Men that I knew and trusted were to be passengers on that ship, as well as one I knew and did not trust. And if, at the journey's end, I saw the Tower, I saw also his Grace of Buckingham. Where I hated he hated, and was now powerful enough to strike.

The wind blew from the west, from the unknown. I turned my head, and it beat against my forehead, cold and fragrant with the essence of the forest,—pine and cedar, dead leaves and black mould, fen and hollow and hill,—all the world of woods over which it had passed. The ghost of things long dead, which face or voice could never conjure up, will sometimes start across our path at the beckoning of an odor. A day in the Starving Time came back to me: how I had dragged myself from our broken palisade and crazy huts, and the groans of the famished and the plague-stricken, and the presence of the unburied dead, across the neck and into the woods, and had lain down there to die, being taken with a sick fear and horror of the place of cannibals behind me; and how weak I was!—too weak to care any more. I had been a strong man, and it had come to that, and I was content to let it be. The smell of the woods that day, the chill brown earth beneath me, the blowing wind, the long stretch of the river gleaming between the pines,... and fair in sight the white sails of the Patience and the Deliverance.

I had been too nigh gone then to greatly care that I was saved; now I cared, and thanked God for my life. Come what might in the future, the past was mine. Though I should never see my wife again, I had that hour in the state cabin of the George. I loved, and was loved again.

There was a noise outside the door, and Rolfe's voice speaking to the gaoler. Impatient for his entrance I started toward the door, but when it opened he made no move to cross the threshold. "I am not coming in," he said, with a face that he strove to keep grave. "I only came to bring some one else." With that he stepped back, and a second figure, coming forward out of the dimness behind him, crossed the threshold. It was a woman, cloaked and hooded. The door was drawn to behind her, and we were alone together.

Beside the cloak and hood she wore a riding mask. "Do you know who it is?" she asked, when she had stood, so shrouded, for a long minute, during which I had found no words with which to welcome her.

"Yea," I answered: "the princess in the fairy tale."

She freed her dark hair from its covering, and unclasping her cloak let it drop to the floor. "Shall I unmask?" she asked, with a sigh. "Faith! I should keep the bit of silk between your eyes, sir, and my blushes. Am I ever to be the forward one? Do you not think me too bold a lady?" As she spoke, her white hands were busy about the fastening of her mask. "The knot is too hard," she murmured, with a little tremulous laugh and a catch of her breath.

I untied the ribbons.

"May I not sit down?" she said plaintively, but with soft merriment in her eyes. "I am not quite strong yet. My heart—you do not know what pain I have in my heart sometimes. It makes me weep of nights and when none are by, indeed it does!"

There was a settle beneath the window. I led her to it, and she sat down.

"You must know that I am walking in the Governor's garden, that hath only a lane between it and the gaol." Her eyes were downcast, her cheeks pure rose.

"When did you first love me?" I demanded.

"Lady Wyatt must have guessed why Master Rolfe alone went not to the bear-baiting, but joined us in the garden. She said the air was keen, and fetched me her mask, and then herself went indoors to embroider Samson in the arms of Delilah.'

"Was it here at Jamestown, or was it when we were first wrecked, or on the island with the pink hill when you wrote my name in the sand, or"—

"The George will sail in three days, and we are to be taken back to England after all. It does not scare me now."

"In all my life I have kissed you only once," I said.

The rose deepened, and in her eyes there was laughter, with tears behind. "You are a gentleman of determination," she said. "If you are bent upon having your way, I do not know that I—that I—can help myself. I do not even know that I want to help myself."

Outside the wind blew and the sun shone, and the laughter from below the fort was too far away and elfin to jar upon us. The world forgot us, and we were well content. There seemed not much to say: I suppose we were too happy for words. I knelt beside her, and she laid her hands in mine, and now and then we spoke. In her short and lonely life, and in my longer stern and crowded one, there had been little tenderness, little happiness. In her past, to those about her, she had seemed bright and gay; I had been a comrade whom men liked because I could jest as well as fight. Now we were happy, but we were not gay. Each felt for the other a great compassion; each knew that though we smiled to-day, the groan and the tear might be to-morrow's due; the sunshine around us was pure gold, but that the clouds were mounting we knew full well.

"I must soon be gone," she said at last. "It is a stolen meeting. I do not know when we shall meet again."

She rose from the settle, and I rose with her, and we stood together beside the barred window. There was no danger of her being seen; street and square were left to the wind and the sunshine. My arm was around her, and she leaned her head against my breast. "Perhaps we shall never meet again," she said.

"The winter is over," I answered. "Soon the trees will be green and the flowers in bloom. I will not believe that our spring can have no summer."

She took from her bosom a little flower that had been pinned there. It lay, a purple star, in the hollow of her hand. "It grew in the sun. It is the first flower of spring." She put it to her lips, then laid it upon the window ledge beside my hand. "I have brought you evil gifts,—foes and strife and peril. Will you take this little purple flower—and all my heart beside?"

I bent and kissed first the tiny blossom, and then the lips that had proffered it. "I am very rich," I said.

The sun was now low, and the pines in the square and the upright of the pillory cast long shadows. The wind had fallen and the sounds had died away. It seemed very still. Nothing moved but the creeping shadows until a flight of small white-breasted birds went past the window. "The snow is gone," I said. "The snowbirds are flying north."

"The woods will soon be green," she murmured wistfully. "Ah, if we could ride through them once more, back to Weyanoke"—

"To home," I said.

"Home," she echoed softly.

There was a low knocking at the door behind us. "It is Master Rolfe's signal," she said. "I must not stay. Tell me that you love me, and let me go."

I drew her closer to me and pressed my lips upon her bowed head. "Do you not know that I love you?" I asked.

"Yea," she answered. "I have been taught it. Tell me that you believe that God will be good to us. Tell me that we shall be happy yet; for oh, I have a boding heart this day!"

Her voice broke, and she lay trembling in my arms, her face hidden. "If the summer never comes for us"—she whispered. "Good-by, my lover and my husband. If I have brought you ruin and death, I have brought you, too, a love that is very great. Forgive me and kiss me, and let me go."

"Thou art my dearly loved and honored wife," I said. "My heart forebodes summer, and joy, and peace, and home."

We kissed each other solemnly, as those who part for a journey and a warfare. I spoke no word to Rolfe when the door was opened and she had passed out with her cloak drawn about her face, but we clasped hands, and each knew the other for his friend indeed. They were gone, the gaoler closing and locking the door behind them. As for me, I went back to the settle beneath the window, and, falling on my knees beside it, buried my face in my arms.



CHAPTER XXIX IN WHICH I KEEP TRYST

THE sun dropped below the forest, blood red, dyeing the river its own color. There were no clouds in the sky,—only a great suffusion of crimson climbing to the zenith; against it the woods were as black as war paint. The color faded and the night set in, a night of no wind and of numberless stars. On the hearth burned a fire. I left the window and sat beside it, and in the hollows between the red embers made pictures, as I used to make them when I was a boy.

I sat there long. It grew late, and all sounds in the town were hushed; only now and then the "All's well!" of the watch came faintly to my ears. Diccon lodged with me; he lay in his clothes upon a pallet in the far corner of the room, but whether he slept or not I did not ask. He and I had never wasted words; since chance had thrown us together again we spoke only when occasion required.

The fire was nigh out, and it must have been ten of the clock when, with somewhat more of caution and less of noise than usual, the key grated in the lock; the door opened, and the gaoler entered, closing it noiselessly behind him. There was no reason why he should intrude himself upon me after nightfall, and I regarded him with a frown and an impatience that presently turned to curiosity.

He began to move about the room, making pretense of seeing that there was water in the pitcher beside my pallet, that the straw beneath the coverlet was fresh, that the bars of the window were firm, and ended by approaching the fire and heaping pine upon it. It flamed up brilliantly, and in the strong red light he half opened a clenched hand and showed me two gold pieces, and beneath them a folded paper. I looked at his furtive eyes and brutal, doltish face, but he kept them blank as a wall. The hand closed again over the treasure within it, and he turned away as if to leave the room. I drew a noble—one of a small store of gold pieces conveyed to me by Rolfe—from my pocket, and stooping made it spin upon the hearth in the red firelight. The gaoler looked at it askance, but continued his progress toward the door. I drew out its fellow, set it too to spinning, then leaned back against the table. "They hunt in couples," I said. "There will be no third one."

He had his foot upon them before they had done spinning. The next moment they had kissed the two pieces already in his possession, and he had transferred all four to his pocket. I held out my hand for the paper, and he gave it to me grudgingly, with a spiteful slowness of movement. He would have stayed beside me as I read it, but I sternly bade him keep his distance; then kneeling before the fire to get the light, I opened the paper. It was written upon in a delicate, woman's hand, and it ran thus:—

An you hold me dear, come to me at once. Come without tarrying to the deserted hut on the neck of land, nearest to the forest. As you love me, as you are my knight, keep this tryst.

In distress and peril, THY WIFE.

Folded with it was a line in the commander's hand and with his signature: "The bearer may pass without the palisade at his pleasure."

I read the first paper again, refolded it, and rose to my feet. "Who brought this, sirrah?" I demanded.

His answer was glib enough: "One of the governor's servants. He said as how there was no harm in the letter, and the gold was good."

"When was this?"

"Just now. No, I did n't know the man."

I saw no way to discover whether or not he lied. Drawing out another gold piece, I laid it upon the table. He eyed it greedily, edging nearer and nearer.

"For leaving this door unlocked," I said.

His eyes narrowed and he moistened his lips, shifting from one foot to the other.

I put down a second piece. "For opening the outer door," I said.

He wet his lips again, made an inarticulate sound in his throat, and finally broke out with, "The commander will nail my ears to the pillory."

"You can lock the doors after me, and know as little as you choose in the morning. No gain without some risk."

"That's so," he agreed, and made a clutch at the gold.

I swept it out of his reach. "First earn it," I said dryly. "Look at the foot of the pillory an hour from now and you'll find it. I'll not pay you this side of the doors."

He bit his lips and studied the floor. "You're a gentleman," he growled at last. "I suppose I can trust ye."

"I suppose you can."

Taking up his lantern he turned toward the door. "It 's growing late," he said, with a most uncouth attempt to feign a guileless drowsiness. "I'll to bed, captain, when I've locked up. Good-night to ye!"

He was gone, and the door was left unlocked. I could walk out of that gaol as I could have walked out of my house at Weyanoke. I was free, but should I take my freedom? Going back to the light of the fire I unfolded the paper and stared at it, turning its contents this way and that in my mind. The hand—but once had I seen her writing, and then it had been wrought with a shell upon firm sand. I could not judge if this were the same. Had the paper indeed come from her? Had it not? If in truth it was a message from my wife, what had befallen in a few hours since our parting? If it was a forger's lie, what trap was set, what toils were laid? I walked up and down, and tried to think it out. The strangeness of it all, the choice of a lonely and distant hut for trysting place, that pass coming from a sworn officer of the Company, certain things I had heard that day... A trap... and to walk into it with my eyes open.... An you hold me dear. As you are my knight, keep this tryst. In distress and peril.... Come what might, there was a risk I could not run.

I had no weapons to assume, no preparations to make. Gathering up the gaoler's gold I started toward the door, opened it, and going out would have closed it softly behind me but that a booted leg thrust across the jamb prevented me. "I am going with you," said Diccon in a guarded voice. "If you try to prevent me, I will rouse the house." His head was thrown back in the old way; the old daredevil look was upon his face. "I don't know why you are going," he declared, "but there'll be danger, anyhow."

"To the best of my belief I am walking into a trap," I said.

"Then it will shut on two instead of one," he answered doggedly.

By this he was through the door, and there was no shadow of turning on his dark, determined face. I knew my man, and wasted no more words. Long ago it had grown to seem the thing most in nature that the hour of danger should find us side by side.

When the door of the firelit room was shut, the gaol was in darkness that might be felt. It was very still: the few other inmates were fast asleep; the gaoler was somewhere out of sight, dreaming with open eyes. We groped our way through the passage to the stairs, noiselessly descended them, and found the outer door unchained, unbarred, and slightly ajar.

When I had laid the gold beneath the pillory, we struck swiftly across the square, being in fear lest the watch should come upon us, and took the first lane that led toward the palisade. Beneath the burning stars the town lay stark in sleep. So bright in the wintry air were those far-away lights that the darkness below them was not great. We could see the low houses, the shadowy pines, the naked oaks, the sandy lane glimmering away to the river, star-strewn to match the heavens. The air was cold, but exceedingly clear and still. Now and then a dog barked, or wolves howled in the forest across the river. We kept in the shadow of the houses and the trees, and went with the swiftness, silence, and caution of Indians.

The last house we must pass before reaching the palisade was one that Rolfe owned, and in which he lodged when business brought him to Jamestown. It and some low outbuildings beyond it were as dark as the cedars in which they were set, and as silent as the grave. Rolfe and his Indian brother were sleeping there now, while I stood without. Or did they sleep? Were they there at all? Might it not have been Rolfe who had bribed the gaoler and procured the pass from West? Might I not find him at that strange trysting place? Might not all be well, after all? I was sorely tempted to rouse that silent house and demand if its master were within. I did it not. Servants were there, and noise would be made, and time that might be more precious than life-blood was flying fast. I went on, and Diccon with me.

There was a cabin built almost against the palisade, and here one man was supposed to watch, whilst another slept. To-night we found both asleep. I shook the younger to his feet, and heartily cursed him for his negligence. He listened stupidly, and read as stupidly, by the light of his lantern, the pass which I thrust beneath his nose. Staggering to his feet, and drunk with his unlawful slumber, he fumbled at the fastenings of the gate for full three minutes before the ponderous wood finally swung open and showed the road beyond. "It's all right," he muttered thickly. "The commander's pass. Good-night, the three of ye!"

"Are you drunk or drugged?" I demanded. "There are only two. It's not sleep that is the matter with you. What is it?"

He made no answer, but stood holding the gate open and blinking at us with dull, unseeing eyes. Something ailed him besides sleep; he may have been drugged, for aught I know. When we had gone some yards from the gate, we heard him say again, in precisely the same tone, "Good-night, the three of ye!" Then the gate creaked to, and we heard the bars drawn across it.

Without the palisade was a space of waste land, marsh and thicket, tapering to the narrow strip of sand and scrub joining the peninsula to the forest, and here and there upon this waste ground rose a mean house, dwelt in by the poorer sort. All were dark. We left them behind, and found ourselves upon the neck, with the desolate murmur of the river on either hand, and before us the deep blackness of the forest. Suddenly Diccon stopped in his tracks and turned his head. "I did hear something then," he muttered. "Look, sir!"

The stars faintly lit the road that had been trodden hard and bare by the feet of all who came and went. Down this road something was coming toward us, something low and dark, that moved not fast, and not slow, but with a measured and relentless pace. "A panther!" said Diccon.

We watched the creature with more of curiosity than alarm. Unless brought to bay, or hungry, or wantonly irritated, these great cats were cowardly enough. It would hardly attack the two of us. Nearer and nearer it came, showing no signs of anger and none of fear, and paying no attention to the withered branch with which Diccon tried to scare it off. When it was so close that we could see the white of its breast it stopped, looking at us with large unfaltering eyes, and slightly moving its tail to and fro.

"A tame panther!" ejaculated Diccon. "It must be the one Nantauquas tamed, sir. He would have kept it somewhere near Master Rolfe's house."

"And it heard us, and followed us through the gate," I said. "It was the third the warder talked of."

We walked on, and the beast, addressing itself to motion, followed at our heels. Now and then we looked back at it, but we feared it not.

As for me, I had begun to think that a panther might be the least formidable thing I should meet that night. By this I had scarcely any hope—or fear—that I should find her at our journey's end. The lonesome path that led only to the night-time forest, the deep and dark river with its mournful voice, the hard, bright, pitiless stars, the cold, the loneliness, the distance,—how should she be there? And if not she, who then?