Jonathan Swift - "A Tale of a Tub"

Michael Fairless - "The Gathering of Brother Hilarius"

David Graham Phillips - "The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig"

Charles Kingsley - "Twenty Five Village Sermons"

To Have and To Hold:

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




I drew back from my loophole, and held out my hand to the
women for a freshly loaded musket. A quick murmur like the
drawing of a breath came from our line. The Governor, standing
near me, cast an anxious glance along the stretch of wooden stakes
that were neither so high nor so thick as they should have been. "I
am new to this warfare, Captain Percy," he said. "Do they think to
use those logs that they carry as battering rams?"

"As scaling ladders, your Honor," I replied. "It is on the cards that
we may have some sword play, after all."

"We'll take your advice, the next time we build a palisade, Ralph
Percy," muttered West on my other side. Mounting the breastwork
that we had thrown up to shelter the women who were to load the
muskets, he coolly looked over the pales at the oncoming savages.
"Wait until they pass the blasted pine, men!" he cried. "Then give
them a hail of lead that will beat them back to the Pamunkey!"

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

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

As I spoke I raised my gun to my shoulder; but he leaned across
Rolfe, who stood between us, and plucked me by the sleeve.
"You've not looked at him closely. Look again."

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

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

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

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

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

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

At last there was left but the leader, - unharmed, unwounded,
though time and again he had striven to close with some one of us,
to strike and to die striking with his fellows. Behind him was the
wall: of the half circle which he faced well-nigh all were old
soldiers and servants of the colony, gentlemen none of whom had
come in later than Dale, - Rolfe, West, Wynne, and others. We
were swordsmen all. When in his desperation he would have
thrown himself upon us, we contented ourselves with keeping him
at sword's length, and at last West sent the knife in the dark hand
whirling over the palisade. Some one had shouted to the
musketeers to spare him.

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

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

He opposed our gaze with his folded arms and his head held high
and his back against the wall. Many of us could remember him, a
proud, shy lad, coming for the first time from the forest with his
sister to see the English village and its wonders. For idleness we
had set him in our midst that summer day, long ago, on the green
by the fort, and had called him "your royal highness," laughing at
the quickness of our wit, and admiring the spirit and bearing of the
lad and the promise he gave of a splendid manhood. And all knew
the tale I had brought the night before.

Slowly, as one man, and with no spoken word, we fell back, the
half circle straightening into a line and leaving a clear pathway to
the open gates. The wind had ceased to blow, I remember, and a
sunny stillness lay upon the sand, and the rough-hewn wooden
stakes, and a little patch of tender grass across which stretched a
dead man's arm. The church bells began to ring.

The Indian out of whose path to life and freedom we had stepped
glanced from the line of lowered steel to the open gates and the
forest beyond, and understood. For a full minute he waited,
moving not a muscle, still and stately as some noble masterpiece
in bronze. Then he stepped from the shadow of the wall and
moved past us through the sunshine that turned the eagle feather in
his scalp lock to gold. His eyes were fixed upon the forest; there
was no change in the superb calm of his face. He went by the
huddled dead and the long line of the living that spoke no word,
and out of the gates and across the neck, walking slowly that we
might yet shoot him down if we saw fit to repent ourselves, and
proudly like a king's son. There was no sound save the church bells
ringing for our deliverance. He reached the shadow of the trees: a
moment, and the forest had back her own.

We sheathed our swords and listened to the Governor's few earnest
words of thankfulness and of recognition of this or that man's
service, and then we set to work to clear the ground of the dead, to
place sentinels, to bring the town into order, to determine what
policy we should pursue, to search for ways by which we might
reach and aid those who might be yet alive in the plantations above
and below us.

We could not go through the forest where every tree might hide a
foe, but there was the river. For the most part, the houses of the
English had been built, like mine at Weyanoke, very near to the
water. I volunteered to lead a party up river, and Wynne to go with
another toward the bay. But as the council at the Governor's was
breaking up, and as Wynne and I were hurrying off to make our
choice of the craft at the landing, there came a great noise from the
watchers upon the bank, and a cry that boats were coming down
the stream.

It was so, and there were in them white men, nearly all of whom
had their wounds to show, and cowering women and children. One
boat had come from the plantation at Paspahegh, and two from
Martin-Brandon; they held all that were left of the people. . . . A
woman had in her lap the body of a child, and would not let us
take it from her; another, with a half-severed arm, crouched above
a man who lay in his blood in the bottom of the boat.

Thus began that strange procession that lasted throughout the
afternoon and night and into the next day, when a sloop came
down from Henricus with the news that the English were in force
there to stand their ground, although their loss had been heavy.
Hour after hour they came as fast as sail and oar could bring them,
the panic-stricken folk, whose homes were burned, whose kindred
were slain, who had themselves escaped as by a miracle. Many
were sorely wounded, so that they died when we lifted them from
the boats; others had slighter hurts. Each boatload had the same
tale to tell of treachery, surprise, and fiendish butchery. Wherever
it had been possible the English had made a desperate defense, in
the face of which the savages gave way and finally retired to the
forest. Contrary to their wont, the Indians took few prisoners, but
for the most part slew outright those whom they seized, wreaking
their spite upon the senseless corpses. A man too good for this
world, George Thorpe, who would think no evil, was killed and his
body mutilated by those whom he had taught and loved. And
Nathaniel Powel was dead, and four others of the Council, besides
many more of name and note. There were many women slain and
little children.

From the stronger hundreds came tidings of the number lost, and
that the survivors would hold the homes that were left, for the time
at least. The Indians had withdrawn; it remained to be seen if they
were satisfied with the havoc they had wrought. Would his Honor
send by boat - there could be no traveling through the woods -
news of how others had fared, and also powder and shot?

Before the dawning we had heard from all save the remoter
settlements. The blow had been struck, and the hurt was deep. But
it was not beyond remedy, thank God! It is known what measures
we took for our protection, and how soon the wound to the colony
was healed, and what vengeance we meted out to those who had
set upon us in the dark, and had failed to reach the heart. These
things belong to history, and I am but telling my own story, - mine
and another's.

In the chill and darkness of the hour before dawn something like
quiet fell upon the distracted, breathless town. There was a pause
in the coming of the boats. The wounded and the dying had been
cared for, and the noise of the women and the children was stilled
at last. All was well at the palisade; the strong party encamped
upon the neck reported the forest beyond them as still as death.

In the Governor's house was held a short council, subdued and
quiet, for we were all of one mind and our words were few. It was
decided that the George should sail at once with the tidings, and
with an appeal for arms and powder and a supply of men. The
Esperance would still be with us, besides the Hope-in-God and the
Tiger; the Margaret and John would shortly come in, being already
overdue.

"My Lord Carnal goes upon the George, gentlemen," said Master
Pory. "He sent but now to demand if she sailed to-morrow. He is
ill, and would be at home."

One or two glanced at me, but I sat with a face like stone, and the
Governor, rising, broke up the council.

I left the house, and the street that was lit with torches and noisy
with going to and fro, and went down to the river. Rolfe had been
detained by the Governor, West commanded the party at the neck.
There were great fires burning along the river bank, and men
watching for the incoming boats; but I knew of a place where no
guard was set, and where one or two canoes were moored. There
was no firelight there, and no one saw me when I entered a canoe
and cut the rope and pushed off from the land.

Well-nigh a day and a night had passed since Lady Wyatt had told
me that which made for my heart a night-time indeed. I believed
my wife to be dead, - yea, I trusted that she was dead. I hoped that
it had been quickly over, - one blow. . . . Better that, oh, better that
a thousand times, than that she should have been carried off to
some village, saved to-day to die a thousand deaths to-morrow.

But I thought that there might have been left, lying on the dead
leaves of the forest, that fair shell from which the soul had flown. I
knew not where to go, - to the north, to the east, to the west, - but
go I must. I had no hope of finding that which I went to seek, and
no thought but to take up that quest. I was a soldier, and I had
stood to my post; but now the need was past, and I could go. In the
hall at the Governor's house, I had written a line of farewell to
Rolfe, and had given the paper into the hand of a trusty fellow,
charging him not to deliver it for two hours to come.

I rowed two miles downstream through the quiet darkness, - so
quiet after the hubbub of the town. When I turned my boat to the
shore the day was close at hand. The stars were gone, and a pale,
cold light, more desolate than the dark, streamed from the east
across which ran, like a faded blood stain, a smear of faint red.
Upon the forest the mist lay heavy. When I drove the boat in
amongst the sedge and reeds below the bank, I could see only the
trunks of the nearest trees, hear only the sullen cry of some river
bird that I had disturbed.

Why I was at some pains to fasten the boat to a sycamore that
dipped a pallid arm into the stream I do not know. I never thought
to come back to the sycamore; I never thought to bend to an oar
again, to behold again the river that the trees and the mist hid from
me before I had gone twenty yards into the forest.



CHAPTER XXXIX IN WHICH WE LISTEN TO A SONG


IT was like a May morning, so mild was the air, so gay the
sunshine, when the mist had risen. Wild flowers were blooming,
and here and there unfolding leaves made a delicate fretwork
against a deep blue sky. The wind did not blow; everywhere were
stillness soft and sweet, dewy freshness, careless peace.

Hour after hour I walked slowly through the woodland, pausing
now and then to look from side to side. It was idle going,
wandering in a desert with no guiding star. The place where I
would be might lie to the east, to the west. In the wide enshrouding
forest I might have passed it by. I believed not that I had done so.
Surely, surely I should have known; surely the voice that lived only
in my heart would have called to me to stay.

Beside a newly felled tree, in a glade starred with small white
flowers, I came upon the bodies of a man and a boy, so hacked, so
hewn, so robbed of all comeliness, that at the sight the heart stood
still and the brain grew sick. Farther on was a clearing, and in its
midst the charred and blackened walls of what had been a home. I
crossed the freshly turned earth, and looked in at the cabin door
with the stillness and the sunshine. A woman lay dead upon the
floor, her outstretched hand clenched upon the foot of a cradle. I
entered the room, and, looking within the cradle, found that the
babe had not been spared. Taking up the little waxen body with the
blood upon its innocent breast, I laid it within the mother's arms,
and went my way over the sunny doorstep and the earth that had
been made ready for planting. A white butterfly - the first of the
year - fluttered before me; then rose through a mist of green and
passed from my sight.

The sun climbed higher into the deep blue sky. Save where grew
pines or cedars there were no shadowy places in the forest. The
slight green of uncurling leaves, the airy scarlet of the maples, the
bare branches of the tardier trees, opposed no barrier to the
sunlight. It streamed into the world below the treetops, and lay
warm upon the dead leaves and the green moss and the fragile wild
flowers. There was a noise of birds, and a fox barked. All was
lightness, gayety, and warmth; the sap was running, the heyday of
the spring at hand. Ah! to be riding with her, to be going home
through the fairy forest, the sunshine, and the singing! . . . The
happy miles to Weyanoke, the smell of the sassafras in its woods,
the house all lit and trimmed. The fire kindled, the wine upon the
table . . . Diccon's welcoming face, and his hand upon Black
Lamoral's bridle; the minister, too, maybe, with his great heart and
his kindly eyes; her hand in mine, her head upon my breast -

The vision faded. Never, never, never for me a home-coming such
as that, so deep, so dear, so sweet. The men who were my friends,
the woman whom I loved, had gone into a far country. This world
was not their home. They had crossed the threshold while I lagged
behind. The door was shut, and without were the night and I.

With the fading of the vision came a sudden consciousness of a
presence in the forest other than my own. I turned sharply, and saw
an Indian walking with me, step for step, but with a space between
us of earth and brown tree trunks and drooping branches. For a
moment I thought that he was a shadow, not substance; then I
stood still, waiting for him to speak or to draw nearer. At the first
glimpse of the bronze figure I had touched my sword, but when I
saw who it was I let my hand fall. He too paused, but he did not
offer to speak. With his hand upon a great bow, he waited,
motionless in the sunlight. A minute or more thus; then I walked
on with my eyes upon him.

At once he addressed himself to motion, not speaking or making
any sign or lessening the distance between us, but moving as I
moved through the light and shade, the warmth and stillness, of the
forest. For a time I kept my eyes upon him, but soon I was back
with my dreams again. It seemed not worth while to wonder why
he walked with me, who was now the mortal foe of the people to
whom he had returned.

From the river bank, the sycamore, and the boat that I had fastened
there, I had gone northward toward the Pamunkey; from the
clearing and the ruined cabin with the dead within it, I had turned
to the eastward. Now, in that hopeless wandering, I would have
faced the north again. But the Indian who had made himself my
traveling companion stopped short, and pointed to the east. I
looked at him, and thought that he knew, maybe, of some war
party between us and the Pamunkey, and would save me from it. A
listlessness had come upon me, and I obeyed the pointing finger.

So, estranged and silent, with two spears' length of earth between
us, we went on until we came to a quiet stream flowing between
low, dark banks. Again I would have turned to the northward, but
the son of Powhatan, gliding before me, set his face down the
stream, toward the river I had left. A minute in which I tried to
think and could not, because in my ears was the singing of the
birds at Weyanoke; then I followed him.

How long I walked in a dream, hand in hand with the sweetness of
the past, I do not know; but when the present and its anguish
weighed again upon my heart it was darker, colder, stiller, in the
forest. The soundless stream was bright no longer; the golden
sunshine that had lain upon the earth was all gathered up; the earth
was dark and smooth and bare, with not a flower; the tree trunks
were many and straight and tall. Above were no longer brown
branch and blue sky, but a deep and sombre green, thick woven,
keeping out the sunlight like a pall. I stood still and gazed around
me, and knew the place.

To me, whose heart was haunted, the dismal wood, the charmed
silence, the withdrawal of the light, were less than nothing. All day
I had looked for one sight of horror; yea, had longed to come at
last upon it, to fall beside it, to embrace it with my arms. There,
there, though it should be some fair and sunny spot, there would be
my haunted wood. As for this place of gloom and stillness, it fell
in with my mood. More welcome than the mocking sunshine were
this cold and solemn light, this deathlike silence, these ranged
pines. It was a place in which to think of life as a slight thing and
scarcely worth the while, given without the asking, spent in
turmoil, strife, suffering, and longings all in vain. Easily laid
down, too, - so easily laid down that the wonder was -

I looked at the ghostly wood, and at the dull stream, and at my
hand upon the hilt of the sword that I had drawn halfway from the
scabbard. The life within that hand I had not asked for. Why
should I stand like a soldier left to guard a thing not worth the
guarding; seeing his comrades march homeward, hearing a cry to
him from his distant hearthstone?

I drew my sword well-nigh from its sheath; and then of a sudden I
saw the matter in a truer light; knew that I was indeed the soldier,
and willed to be neither coward nor deserter. The blade dropped
back into the scabbard with a clang, and, straightening myself, I
walked on beside the sluggish stream deep into the haunted wood.

Presently it occurred to me to glance aside at the Indian who had
kept pace with me through the forest. He was not there; he walked
with me no longer; save for myself there seemed no breathing
creature in the dim wood. I looked to right and left, and saw only
the tall, straight pines and the needle-strewn ground. How long he
had been gone I could not tell. He might have left me when first
we came to the pines, for my dreams had held me, and I had not
looked his way.

There was that in the twilight place, or in the strangeness, the
horror, and the yearning that had kept company with me that day,
or in the dull weariness of a mind and body overwrought of late,
which made thought impossible. I went on down the stream toward
the river, because it chanced that my face was set in that direction.

How dark was the shadow of the pines, how lifeless the earth
beneath, how faint and far away the blue that showed here and
there through rifts in the heavy roof of foliage! The stream
bending to one side I turned with it, and there before me stood the
minister!

I do not know what strangled cry burst from me. The earth was
rocking, all the wood a glare of light. As for him, at the sight of me
and the sound of my voice he had staggered back against a tree;
but now, recovering himself, he ran to me and put his great arms
about me. "From the power of the dog, from the lion's mouth," he
cried brokenly. "And they slew thee not, Ralph, the heathen who
took thee away! Yesternight I learned that you lived, but I looked
not for you here."

I scarce heard or marked what he was saying, and found no time in
which to wonder at his knowledge that I had not perished. I only
saw that he was alone, and that in the evening wood there was no
sign of other living creature.

"Yea, they slew me not, Jeremy," I said. "I would that they had
done so. And you are alone? I am glad that you died not, my
friend; yes, faith, I am very glad that one escaped. Tell me about it,
and I will sit here upon the bank and listen. Was it done in this
wood? A gloomy deathbed, friend, for one so young and fair. She
should have died to soft music, in the sunshine, with flowers about
her."

With an exclamation he put me from him, but kept his hand upon
my arm and his steady eyes upon my face.

"She loved laughter and sunshine and sweet songs," I continued.
"She can never know them in this wood. They are outside; they are
outside the world, I think. It is sad, is it not? Faith, I think it is the
saddest thing I have ever known."

He clapped his other hand upon my shoulder. "Wake, man!" he
commanded. "If thou shouldst go mad now - Wake! thy brain is
turning. Hold to thyself. Stand fast, as thou art soldier and
Christian! Ralph, she is not dead. She will wear flowers, - thy
flowers, - sing, laugh, move through the sunshine of earth for many
and many a year, please God! Art listening, Ralph? Canst hear
what I am saying?"

"I hear," I said at last, "but I do not well understand."

He pushed me back against a pine, and held me there with his
hands upon my shoulders. "Listen," he said, speaking rapidly and
keeping his eyes upon mine. "All those days that you were gone,
when all the world declared you dead, she believed you living. She
saw party after party come back without you, and she believed that
you were left behind in the forest. Also she knew that the George
waited but for the search to be quite given over, and for my Lord
Carnal's recovery. She had been told that the King's command
might not be defied, that the Governor had no choice but to send
her from Virginia. Ralph, I watched her, and I knew that she meant
not to go upon that ship. Three nights agone she stole from the
Governor's house, and, passing through the gates that the sleeping
warder had left unfastened, went toward the forest. I saw her and
followed her, and at the edge of the forest I spoke to her. I stayed
her not, I brought her not back, Ralph, because I was convinced
that an I did so she would die. I knew of no great danger, and I
trusted in the Lord to show me what to do, step by step, and how to
guide her gently back when she was weary of wandering, - when,
worn out, she was willing to give up the quest for the dead. Art
following me, Ralph?"

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