CHAPTER VIII
“Triumph, my mates, our travels are at end.”
—Marlowe, in Dido, Queen of Carthage.
The landing and unlading of the fly-boat was a task requiring much exertion. But now that the dangers of the ocean were past, every man, woman, and child of the little colony lent aid with a hearty will. They were in high spirits. The mid-day sun shone down in summer warmth, the skies were blue and cloudless. The island of Roanoke, emerald green in all its summer verdure, seemed a veritable land of promise. A number of the most youthful colonists ran along the shore to prove their freedom from the confines of the deck—ran, calling to one another, and sang for sheer happiness. Others, more devout, gathered about the preacher, who offered a prayer of thanksgiving. Some, with whom labor was at all times paramount, went busily to and fro in the small boats and the pinnace, which had again been manned, conveying the cargo from ship to shore. The main body, who had arrived earlier on the Admiral, came down with tears of joy in welcome, and a babble of questions concerning the fly-boat’s voyage. The scene was varied. Here stood Hugh Rouse with a great bag of salt on his broad shoulders; here Roger Prat, arm-in-arm with his newly regained friend, the bear, and pointing at Rouse with some remark to King Lud of raillery; here Marlowe, the poet, surveying with eager eyes the luxuriant foliage farther inland and listening with enthralment to the songs of forest birds; there Gyll Croyden running toward him joyously, with a fresh-plucked nosegay of unknown, fragrant flowers in her hand; here Ananias Dare overlooking a couple of sailors who rolled a cask of wine across the beach; there Simon Ferdinando, important with a hundred directions, and furtive as he glanced toward Vytal; here Governor White, for a moment leaving the management to his assistants, and here, too, beside him, his daughter Eleanor, her face pale as if with illness, her long cloak still about her. She was clasping his arm with both hands, as though to make sure of no renewed separation. “Father, I thank God we are once more together. The days were very long, and almost unendurable.”
But there was no rejoinder, for John Vytal stood before them, with a question of evident importance on his lips. “Where is Sir Walter St. Magil?”
“In truth I know not,” and the governor’s kindly face turned to the men at work near by. “He hath gone out to the Admiral, perhaps.”
Vytal left them with a grave, almost indifferent bow to Eleanor, and, boarding the pinnace, was about to return to Ferdinando’s ship in quest of St. Magil; but he felt a hand on his arm drawing him gently backward, and, turning, he saw Manteo, the Indian, who drew him aside beyond a bend in the shore. “My brother, he hath gone.”