Giovanni Boccaccio - "The Decameron, Volume I"

Virgil - "Vergil's Bucolics in Latin"

J. M. Barrie - "THE ADMIRABLE CRICHTON"

James Oliver Curwood - "The River's End"

To Have and To Hold:

M >> Mary Johnston >> To Have and To Hold:




The stillness was deadly. It was not silence, for the river murmured
in the stiff reeds, and far off in the midnight forest some beast of
the night uttered its cry, but a hush, a holding of the breath, an
expectant horror. The door, warped and shrunken, was drawn to,
but was not fastened, as I could tell by the unbroken line of red
light down one side from top to bottom. Making no sound, I laid
my hand upon it, pushed it open a little way, and looked within the
hut.

I had thought to find it empty or to find it crowded. It was neither.
A torch lit it, and on the hearth burned a fire. Drawn in front of the
blaze was an old rude chair, and in it sat a slight figure draped
from head to foot in a black cloak. The head was bowed and
hidden, the whole attitude one of listlessness and dejection. As I
looked, there came a long tremulous sigh, and the head drooped
lower and lower, as if in a growing hopelessness.

The revulsion of feeling was so great that for the moment I was
dazed as by a sudden blow. There had been time during the walk
from the gaol for enough of wild and whirling thoughts as to what
should greet me in that hut; and now the slight figure by the fire,
the exquisite melancholy of its posture, its bent head, the weeping
I could divine, - I had but one thought, to comfort her as quickly as
I might. Diccon's hand was upon my arm, but I shook it off, and
pushing the door open crossed the uneven and noisy floor to the
fire, and bent over the lonely figure beside it. "Jocelyn," I said, "I
have kept tryst."

As I spoke, I laid my hand upon the bowed and covered head. It
was raised, the cloak was drawn aside, and there looked me in the
eyes the Italian.

As if it had been the Gorgon's gaze, I was turned to stone. The
filmy eyes, the smile that would have been mocking had it not
been so very faint, the pallor, the malignance, - I stared and stared,
and my heart grew cold and sick.

It was but for a minute; then a warning cry from Diccon roused
me. I sprang backward until the width of the hearth was between
me and the Italian, then wheeled and found myself face to face
with the King's late favorite. Behind him was an open door, and
beyond it a small inner room, dimly lighted. He stood and looked
at me with an insolence and a triumph most intolerable. His drawn
sword was in his hand, the jeweled hilt blazing in the firelight, and
on his dark, superb face a taunting smile. I met it with one as bold,
at least, but I said no word, good or bad. In the cabin of the George
I had sworn to myself that thenceforward my sword should speak
for me to this gentleman.

"You came," he said. "I thought you would."

I glanced around the hut, seeking for a weapon. Seeing nothing
more promising than the thick, half-consumed torch, I sprang to it
and wrested it from the socket. Diccon caught up a piece of rusted
iron from the hearth, and together we faced my lord's drawn sword
and a small, sharp, and strangely shaped dagger that the Italian
drew from a velvet sheath.

My lord laughed, reading my thoughts. "You are mistaken," he
declared coolly. "I am content that Captain Percy knows I do not
fear to fight him. This time I play to win." Turning toward the
outer door, he raised his hand with a gesture of command.

In an instant the room was filled. The red-brown figures, naked
save for the loincloth and the headdress, the impassive faces
dashed with black, the ruthless eyes - I knew now why Master
Edward Sharpless had gone to the forest, and what service had
been bought with that silver cup. The Paspaheghs and I were old
enemies; doubtless they would find their task a pleasant one.

"My own knaves, unfortunately, were out of the way; sent home
on the Santa Teresa," said my lord, still smiling. "I am not yet so
poor that I cannot hire others. True, Nicolo might have done the
work just now, when you bent over him so lovingly and spoke so
softly; but the river might give up your body to tell strange tales. I
have heard that the Indians are more ingenious, and leave no such
witness anywhere."

Before the words were out of his mouth I had sprung upon him,
and had caught him by the sword wrist and the throat. He strove to
free his hand, to withdraw himself from my grasp. Locked
together, we struggled backward and forward in what seemed a
blaze of lights and a roaring as of mighty waters. Red hands caught
at me, sharp knives panted to drink my blood; but so fast we
turned and writhed, now he uppermost, now I, that for very fear of
striking the wrong man hands and knives could not be bold. I
heard Diccon fighting, and knew that there would be howling
tomorrow among the squaws of the Paspaheghs. With all his might
my lord strove to bend the sword against me, and at last did cut me
across the arm, causing the blood to flow freely. It made a pool
upon the floor, and once my foot slipped in it, and I stumbled and
almost fell.

Two of the Paspaheghs were silent for evermore. Diccon had the
knife of the first to fall, and it ran red. The Italian, quick and
sinuous as a serpent, kept beside my lord and me, striving to bring
his dagger to his master's aid. We two panted hard; before our eyes
blood, within our ears the sea. The noise of the other combatants
suddenly fell. The hush could only mean that Diccon was dead or
taken. I could not look behind to see. With an access of fury I
drove my antagonist toward a corner of the hut, - the corner, so it
chanced, in which the panther had taken up its quarters. With his
heel he struck the beast out of his way, then made a last desperate
effort to throw me. I let him think he was about to succeed,
gathered my forces and brought him crashing to the ground. The
sword was in my hand and shortened, the point was at his throat,
when my arm was jerked backwards. A moment, and half a dozen
hands had dragged me from the man beneath me, and a supple
savage had passed a thong of deerskin around my arms and
pinioned them to my sides. The game was up; there remained only
to pay the forfeit without a grimace.

Diccon was not dead; pinioned, like myself, and breathing hard, he
leaned sullenly against the wall, they that he had slain at his feet.
My lord rose, and stood over against me. His rich doublet was torn
and dragged away at the neck, and my blood stained his hand and
arm. A smile was upon the face that had made him master of a
kingdom's master.

"The game was long," he said, "but I have won at last. A long
good-night to you, Captain Percy, and a dreamless sleep!"

There was a swift backward movement of the Indians, and a loud
"The panther, sir! Have a care!" from Diccon. I turned. The
panther, maddened by the noise and light, the shifting figures, the
blocked doors, the sight and smell of blood, the blow that had been
dealt it, was crouching for a spring. The red-brown hair was
bristling, the eyes were terrible. I was before it, but those glaring
eyes had marked me not. It passed me like a bar from a catapult,
and the man whose heel it had felt was full in its path. One of its
forefeet sank in the velvet of the doublet; the claws of the other
entered the flesh below the temple, and tore downwards and
across. With a cry as awful as the panther's scream the Italian
threw himself upon the beast and buried his poniard in its neck.
The panther and the man it had attacked went down together.

When the Indians had unlocked that dread embrace and had thrust
aside the dead brute, there emerged from the dimness of the inner
room Master Edward Sharpless, gray with fear, trembling in every
limb, to take the reins that had fallen from my lord's hands. The
King's minion lay in his blood, a ghastly spectacle; unconscious
now, but with life before him, - life through which to pass a
nightmare vision. The face out of which had looked that sullen,
proud, and wicked spirit had been one of great beauty; it had
brought him exceeding wealth and power beyond measure; the
King had loved to look upon it; and it had come to this. He lived,
and I was to die: better my death than his life. In every heart there
are dark depths, whence at times ugly things creep into the
daylight; but at least I could drive back that unmanly triumph, and
bid it never come again. I would have killed him, but I would not
have had him thus.

The Italian was upon his knees beside his master: even such a
creature could love. From his skeleton throat came a low,
prolonged, croaking sound, and his bony hands strove to wipe
away the blood. The Paspaheghs drew around us closer and closer,
and the werowance clutched me by the shoulder. I shook him off.
"Give the word, Sharpless," I said, "or nod, if thou art too
frightened to speak. Murder is too stern a stuff for such a base
kitchen knave as thou to deal in."

White and shaking, he would not meet my eyes, but beckoned the
werowance to him, and began to whisper vehemently; pointing
now to the man upon the floor, now to the town, now to the forest.
The Indian listened, nodded, and glided back to his fellows.

"The white men upon the Powhatan are many," he said in his own
tongue, "but they build not their wigwams upon the banks of the
Pamunkey. 1 The singing birds of the Pamunkey tell no tales. The
pine splinters will burn as brightly there, and the white men will
smell them not. We will build a fire at Uttamussac, between the
red hills, before the temple and the graves of the kings." There was
a murmur of assent from his braves.

Uttamussac! They would probably make a two days' journey of it.
We had that long, then, to live.

Captors and captives, we presently left the hut. On the threshold I
looked back, past the poltroon whom I had flung into the river one
midsummer day, to that prone and bleeding figure. As I looked, it
groaned and moved. The Indians behind me forced me on; a
moment, and we were out beneath the stars. They shone so very
brightly; there was one - large, steadfast, golden - just over the
dark town behind us, over the Governor's house. Did she sleep or
did she wake? Sleeping or waking, I prayed God to keep her safe
and give her comfort. The stars now shone through naked
branches, black tree trunks hemmed us round, and under our feet
was the dreary rustling of dead leaves. The leafless trees gave way
to pines and cedars, and the closely woven, scented roof hid the
heavens, and made a darkness of the world beneath.

1. The modern York.



CHAPTER XXX IN WHICH WE START UPON A JOURNEY


WHEN the dawn broke, it found us traveling through a narrow
valley, beside a stream of some width. Upon its banks grew trees
of extraordinary height and girth; cypress and oak and walnut, they
towered into the air, their topmost branches stark and black against
the roseate heavens. Below that iron tracery glowed the firebrands
of the maples, and here and there a willow leaned a pale green
cloud above the stream. Mist closed the distances; we could hear,
but not see, the deer where they stood to drink in the shallow
places, or couched in the gray and dreamlike recesses of the forest.

Spectral, unreal, and hollow seems the world at dawn. Then, if
ever, the heart sickens and the will flags, and life becomes a
pageant that hath ceased to entertain. As I moved through the mist
and the silence, and felt the tug of the thong that bound me to the
wrist of the savage who stalked before me, I cared not how soon
they made an end, seeing how stale and unprofitable were all
things under the sun.

Diccon, walking behind me, stumbled over a root and fell upon his
knees, dragging down with him the Indian to whom he was tied. In
a sudden access of fury, aggravated by the jeers with which his
fellows greeted his mishap, the savage turned upon his prisoner
and would have stuck a knife into him, bound and helpless as he
was, had not the werowance interfered. The momentary altercation
over, and the knife restored to its owner's belt, the Indians relapsed
into their usual menacing silence, and the sullen march was
resumed. Presently the stream made a sharp bend across our path,
and we forded it as best we might. It ran dark and swift, and the
water was of icy coldness. Beyond, the woods had been burnt, the
trees rising from the red ground like charred and blackened stakes,
with the ghostlike mist between. We left this dismal tract behind,
and entered a wood of mighty oaks, standing well apart, and with
the earth below carpeted with moss and early wild flowers. The
sun rose, the mist vanished, and there set in the March day of keen
wind and brilliant sunshine.

Farther on, an Indian bent his bow against a bear shambling across
a little sunny glade. The arrow did its errand, and where the
creature fell, there we sat down and feasted beside a fire kindled
by rubbing two sticks together. According to their wont the Indians
ate ravenously, and when the meal was ended began to smoke,
each warrior first throwing into the air, as thankoffering to
Kiwassa, a pinch of tobacco. They all stared at the fire around
which we sat, and the silence was unbroken. One by one, as the
pipes were smoked, they laid themselves down upon the brown
leaves and went to sleep, only our two guardians and a third Indian
over against us remaining wide-eyed and watchful.

There was no hope of escape, and we entertained no thought of it.
Diccon sat, biting his nails, staring into the fire, and I stretched
myself out, and burying my head in my arms tried to sleep, but
could not.

With the midday we were afoot again, and we went steadily on
through the bright afternoon. We met with no harsh treatment
other than our bonds. Instead, when our captors spoke to us, it was
with words of amity and smiling lips. Who accounteth for Indian
fashions? It is a way they have, to flatter and caress the wretch for
whom have been provided the torments of the damned. If, when at
sunset we halted for supper and gathered around the fire, the
werowance began to tell of a foray I had led against the
Paspaheghs years before, and if he and his warriors, for all the
world like generous foes, loudly applauded some daring that had
accompanied that raid, none the less did the red stake wait for us;
none the less would they strive, as for heaven, to wring from us
groans and cries.

The sun sank, and the darkness entered the forest. In the distance
we heard the wolves, so the fire was kept up through the night.
Diccon and I were tied to trees, and all the savages save one lay
down and slept. I worked awhile at my bonds; but an Indian had
tied them, and after a time I desisted from the useless labor. We
two could have no speech together; the fire was between us, and
we saw each other but dimly through the flame and wreathing
smoke, - as each might see the other to-morrow. What Diccon's
thoughts were I know not; mine were not of the morrow.

There had been no rain for a long time, and the multitude of leaves
underfoot were crisp and dry. The wind was loud in them and in
the swaying trees. Off in the forest was a bog, and the
will-o'-the-wisps danced over it, - pale, cold flames, moving
aimlessly here and there like ghosts of those lost in the woods.
Toward the middle of the night some heavy animal crashed
through a thicket to the left of us, and tore away into the darkness
over the loud-rustling leaves; and later on wolves' eyes gleamed
from out the ring of darkness beyond the firelight. Far on in the
night the wind fell and the moon rose, changing the forest into
some dim, exquisite, far-off land, seen only in dreams. The Indians
awoke silently and all at once, as at an appointed hour. They spoke
for a while among themselves; then we were loosed from the trees,
and the walk toward death began anew.

On this march the werowance himself stalked beside me, the
moonlight whitening his dark limbs and relentless face. He spoke
no word, nor did I deign to question or reason or entreat. Alike in
the darkness of the deep woods, and in the silver of the glades, and
in the long twilight stretches of sassafras and sighing grass, there
was for me but one vision. Slender and still and white, she moved
before me, with her wide dark eyes upon my face. Jocelyn!
Jocelyn!

At sunrise the mist lifted from a low hill before us, and showed an
Indian boy, painted white, poised upon the summit, like a spirit
about to take its flight. He prayed to the One over All, and his
voice came down to us pure and earnest. At sight of us he bounded
down the hillside like a ball, and would have rushed away into the
forest had not a Paspahegh starting out of line seized him and set
him in our midst, where he stood, cool and undismayed, a warrior
in miniature. He was of the Pamunkeys, and his tribe and the
Paspaheghs were at peace; therefore, when he saw the totem burnt
upon the breast of the werowance, he became loquacious enough,
and offered to go before us to his village, upon the banks of a
stream, some bowshots away. He went, and the Paspaheghs rested
under the trees until the old men of the village came forth to lead
them through the brown fields and past the ring of leafless
mulberries to the strangers' lodge. Here on the green turf mats
were laid for the visitors, and water was brought for their hands.
Later on, the women spread a great breakfast of fish and turkey
and venison, maize bread, tuckahoe and pohickory. When it was
eaten, the Paspaheghs ranged themselves in a semicircle upon the
grass, the Pamunkeys faced them, and each warrior and old man
drew out his pipe and tobacco pouch. They smoked gravely, in a
silence broken only by an occasional slow and stately question or
compliment. The blue incense from the pipes mingled with the
sunshine falling freely through the bare branches; the stream
which ran by the lodge rippled and shone, and the wind rose and
fell in the pines upon its farther bank.

Diccon and I had been freed for the time from our bonds, and
placed in the centre of this ring, and when the Indians raised their
eyes from the ground it was to gaze steadfastly at us. I knew their
ways, and how they valued pride, indifference, and a bravado
disregard of the worst an enemy could do. They should not find the
white man less proud than the savage.

They gave us readily enough the pipes I asked for. Diccon lit one
and I the other, and sitting side by side we smoked in a
contentment as absolute as the Indians' own. With his eyes upon
the werowance, Diccon told an old story of a piece of Paspahegh
villainy and of the payment which the English exacted, and I
laughed as at the most amusing thing in the world. The story
ended, we smoked with serenity for a while; then I drew my dice
from my pocket, and, beginning to throw, we were at once as
much absorbed in the game as if there were no other stake in the
world beside the remnant of gold that I piled between us. The
strange people in whose power we found ourselves looked on with
grim approval, as at brave men who could laugh in Death's face.

The sun was high in the heavens when we bade the Pamunkeys
farewell. The cleared ground, the mulberry trees, and the grass
beneath, the few rude lodges with the curling smoke above them,
the warriors and women and brown naked children, - all vanished,
and the forest closed around us. A high wind was blowing, and the
branches far above beat at one another furiously, while the
pendent, leafless vines swayed against us, and the dead leaves
went past in the whirlwind. A monstrous flight of pigeons crossed
the heavens, flying from west to east, and darkening the land
beneath like a transient cloud. We came to a plain covered with
very tall trees that had one and all been ringed by the Indians. Long
dead, and partially stripped of the bark, with their branches, great
and small, squandered upon the ground, they stood, gaunt and
silver gray, ready for their fall. As we passed, the wind brought
two crashing to the earth. In the centre of the plain something -
deer or wolf or bear or man - lay dead, for to that point the
buzzards were sweeping from every quarter of the blue. Beyond
was a pine wood, silent and dim, with a high green roof and a
smooth and scented floor. We walked through it for an hour, and it
led us to the Pamunkey. A tiny village, counting no more than a
dozen warriors, stood among the pines that ran to the water's edge,
and tied to the trees that shadowed the slow-moving flood were its
canoes. When the people came forth to meet us, the Paspaheghs
bought from them, for a string of roanoke, two of these boats; and
we made no tarrying, but, embarking at once, rowed up river
toward Uttamussac and its three temples.

Diccon and I were placed in the same canoe. We were not bound:
what need of bonds, when we had no friend nearer than the
Powhatan, and when Uttamussac was so near? After a time the
paddles were put into our hands, and we were required to row
while our captors rested. There was no use in sulkiness; we
laughed as at some huge jest, and bent to the task with a will that
sent our canoe well in advance of its mate. Diccon burst into an
old song that we had sung in the Low Countries, by camp fires, on
the march, before the battle. The forest echoed to the loud and
warlike tune, and a multitude of birds rose startled from the trees
upon the bank. The Indians frowned, and one in the boat behind
called out to strike the singer upon the mouth; but the werowance
shook his head. There were none upon that river who might not
know that the Paspaheghs journeyed to Uttamussac with prisoners
in their midst. Diccon sang on, his head thrown back, the old bold
laugh in his eyes. When he came to the chorus I joined my voice to
his, and the woodland rang to the song. A psalm had better befitted
our lips than those rude and vaunting words, seeing that we should
never sing again upon this earth; but at least we sang bravely and
gayly, with minds that were reasonably quiet.

The sun dropped low in the heavens, and the trees cast shadows
across the water. The Paspaheghs now began to recount the
entertainment they meant to offer us in the morning. All those
tortures that they were wont to practice with hellish ingenuity they
told over, slowly and tauntingly, watching to see a lip whiten or an
eyelid quiver. They boasted that they would make women of us at
the stake. At all events, they made not women of us beforehand.
We laughed as we rowed, and Diccon whistled to the leaping fish,
and the fish-hawk, and the otter lying along a fallen tree beneath
the bank.

The sunset came, and the river lay beneath the colored clouds like
molten gold, with the gaunt forest black upon either hand. From
the lifted paddles the water showered in golden drops. The wind
died away, and with it all noises, and a dank stillness settled upon
the flood and upon the endless forest. We were nearing
Uttamussac, and the Indians rowed quietly, with bent heads and
fearful glances; for Okee brooded over this place, and he might be
angry. It grew colder and stiller, but the light dwelt in the heavens,
and was reflected in the bosom of the river. The trees upon the
southern bank were all pines; as if they had been carved from
black stone they stood rigid against the saffron sky. Presently, back
from the shore, there rose before us a few small hills, treeless, but
covered with some low, dark growth. The one that stood the
highest bore upon its crest three black houses shaped like coffins.
Behind them was the deep yellow of the sunset.

An Indian rowing in the second canoe commenced a chant or
prayer to Okee. The notes were low and broken, unutterably wild
and melancholy. One by one his fellows took up the strain; it
swelled higher, louder, and sterner, became a deafening cry, then
ceased abruptly, making the stillness that followed like death
itself. Both canoes swung round from the middle stream and made
for the bank. When the boats had slipped from the stripe of gold
into the inky shadow of the pines, the Paspaheghs began to divest
themselves of this or that which they conceived Okee might desire
to possess. One flung into the stream a handful of copper links,
another the chaplet of feathers from his head, a third a bracelet of
blue beads. The werowance drew out the arrows from a gaudily
painted and beaded quiver, stuck them into his belt, and dropped
the quiver into the water.

We landed, dragging the canoes into a covert of overhanging
bushes and fastening them there; then struck through the pines
toward the rising ground, and presently came to a large village,
with many long huts, and a great central lodge where dwelt the
emperors when they came to Uttamussac. It was vacant now,
Opechancanough being no man knew where.

When the usual stately welcome had been extended to the
Paspaheghs, and when they had returned as stately thanks, the
werowance began a harangue for which I furnished the matter.
When he ceased to speak a great acclamation and tumult arose,
and I thought they would scarce wait for the morrow. But it was
late, and their werowance and conjurer restrained them. In the end
the men drew off, aud the yelling of the children and the
passionate cries of the women, importunate for vengeance, were
stilled. A guard was placed around the vacant lodge, and we two
Englishmen were taken within and bound down to great logs, such
as the Indians use to roll against their doors when they go from
home.

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