We slept that night, Dame Barbara and I, upon a soft and springy couch of moss piled in the little inner room. That is to say, we lay there silently; but I think I scarce closed my eyes.
The wind, drifting through the gaping thatch, caught the loose corner of a shrivelled strip of hide dangling on the rude partition wall, and kept it swinging back and forth, with a faint tap-tap, tap-tap, the whole night long. As it swung outward I could catch fleeting glimpses of the little group huddled about the dying fire; and for hours I lay and listened to the low murmur of their voices and the heavy clank and rattle of their chains.
Old Captain Baulk was in a garrulous mood, and he poured into the sailors' ears a horrid tale of how the Spaniards had massacred the first French settlers on this coast.
"'Twas just about one hundred years ago," he droned in a gruesome whisper. "Ribault's settlement was on the River May, somewhere in these latitudes. There were about nine hundred of them in all, 'tis said, counting the women and children; and not one of them escaped. The bodies of dead and wounded were alike hung upon a tree for the crows——"
"In God's name, hold your croaking tongue!" Mr. Rivers broke in angrily. "'Tis bad enough for the women as things are, and if they overhear these old wives' tales, think you it will make them rest easier?"
"Not old wives' tales, Mr. Rivers, but the fact, sir,—the bloody fact."
"Silence!" whispered my betrothed, in a voice that made me tremble,—for he hath a hot temper when it is roused. "Unless thou canst hold that ill-omened tongue of thine, there presently will be another bloody fact between thy teeth!"
A sudden silence fell. 'Twas broken finally by my dear love, whose generous nature soon repented of a harshly spoken word.
"I was over-hasty, my good Baulk; but I would not for the world have Mistress Tudor hear aught of those horrors. And times have changed greatly in an hundred years. But this inaction, this inaction! 'Tis terrible upon a man!"
A suppressed groan accompanied the exclamation, and my heart ached for him. It must indeed be hard for men—who are used to carving their own fates and wresting from fortune their desires—suddenly to be forced to play the woman's part of patient waiting.