‘And these poor devils, the colonists,’ quoth Master Russe, ‘who will have to reap what we have sown.’
However, the mischief was done, and no talking could mend it. Its immediate effect, even, was to produce in the savages an increased show of deference and propitiation, of the sort wholly to deceive so poor a psychologist as the Admiral. He imagined them definitely cowed, and on that supposition acted with an arrogance which hitherto he had made shift to repress. The rest of the history of the expedition consisted of establishing the colonists in the land, with the stores and victuals brought for their accommodation; of cruisings and explorations up and down the coast; of interviews with the king’s brother, Grangino, and of one with Wingina himself, whom the Admiral, taking a strong escort with him, travelled to see in his own savage capital of Weapomeiok. Brion was not invited to this excursion; but he had plenty otherwise to engage and interest him in the way of divers sport on land and water, and of keenly observing and studying the habits and customs of the strange people among whom a curious fate had cast him.
So the time of their stay drew to an end, being from first to last two whole months while they lay and cruised off the coast; and on the 25th August the Tiger, much lightened, weighed anchor—the rest of the fleet having been sent on some twenty days ahead—and set her sails for home.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE TAKING OF THE CARACK
‘What ails thee, melancholy wight?’
Brion gazed, with that smiling question, into Clerivault’s eyes. The ship was six days out on the broad Atlantic, running before a westerly breeze in hazy weather, and they looked over the gray unpeopled waste of waters and thought of home.
Clerivault heaved up his lean shoulders with a sort of renunciatory sigh.
‘Nothing ails me, sweetheart—and yet nothing may be a sad complaint.’
‘I’faith you’re cryptic. How does this illness of nothing take you?’
‘In the heart, Sir. It is a void, a blankness, an unfulfilment. It is the word for wasted opportunities, for frustrate hopes, for the thing that should have been but was not. I have known it much infecting the Law; and it may be I carried the seed of it in me to curse our high emprise.’