Salute to Adventurers

by John Buchan

That evening we had a cold bed; but the storm blew out in the night, and the next day the sun was as hot as summer, and the wind a point to the east. Shalah once again was steersman, for we were inside some very ugly reefs, which I took to be the beginning of the Carolina keys. On shore forests straggled down to the sea, so that sometimes they almost had their feet in the surf; but now and then would come an open, grassy space running far inland. These were, the great savannahs where herds of wild cattle and deer roamed, and where the Free Companions came to fill their larders. It was a wilder land than the Tidewater, for only once did we see a human dwelling. Far remote on the savannahs I could pick out twirls of smoke rising into the blue weather, the signs of Indian hunting fires. Shalah began now to look for landmarks, and to take bearings of a sort. Among the maze of creeks and shallow bays which opened on the land side it needed an Indian to pick out a track.

The sun had all but set when, with a grunt of satisfaction, he swung round the tiller and headed shorewards. Before me in the twilight I saw only a wooded bluff which, as we approached, divided itself into two. Presently a channel appeared, a narrow thing about as broad as a cable's length, into which the wind carried us. Here it was very dark, the high sides with their gloomy trees showing at the top a thin line of reddening sky. Shalah hugged the starboard shore, and as the screen of the forest caught the wind it weakened and weakened till it died away, and we moved only with the ingoing tide. I had never been in so eery a place. It was full of the sharp smell of pine trees, and as I sniffed the air I caught the savour of wood smoke. Men were somewhere ahead of us in the gloom.

Shalah ran the sloop into a little creek so overgrown with vines that we had to lie flat on the thwarts to enter. Then, putting his mouth to my ear, he spoke for the first time since we had left James Town. "It is hard to approach the Master, and my brother must follow me close as the panther follows the deer. Where Shalah puts his foot let my brother put his also. Come."

He stepped from the boat to the hill-side, and with incredible speed and stillness began to ascend. His long, soft strides were made without noise or effort, whether the ground were moss, or a tangle of vines, or loose stones, or the trunks of fallen trees, I had prided myself on my hill-craft, but beside the Indian I was a blundering child, I might have made shift to travel as fast, but it was the silence of his progress that staggered me, I plunged, and slipped, and sprawled, and my heart was bursting before the ascent ceased, and we stole to the left along the hill shoulder.

Presently came a gap in the trees, and I looked down in the last greyness of dusk on a strange and beautiful sight. The channel led to a landlocked pool, maybe a mile around, and this was as full of shipping as a town's harbour. The water was but a pit of darkness, but I could make out the masts rising into the half light, and I counted more than twenty vessels in that port. No light was shown, and the whole place was quiet as a grave.

We entered a wood of small hemlocks, and I felt rather than saw the ground slope in front of us. About two hundred feet above the water the glen of a little stream shaped itself into a flat cup, which was invisible from below, and girdled on three sides by dark forest. Here we walked more freely, till we came to the lip of the cup, and there, not twenty paces below me, I saw a wonderful sight. The hollow was lit with the glow of a dozen fires, round which men clustered. Some were busy boucanning meat for ship's food, some were cooking supper, some sprawled in idleness, and smoked or diced. The night had now grown very black around us, and we were well protected, for the men in the glow had their eyes dazed, and could not spy into the darkness. We came very close above them, so that I could hear their talk. The smell of roasting meat pricked my hunger, and I realized that the salt air had given me a noble thirst. They were common seamen from the pirate vessels, and, as far as I could judge, they had no officer among them. I remarked their fierce, dark faces, and the long knives with which they slashed and trimmed the flesh for their boucanning.

Shalah touched my hand, and I followed him into the wood. We climbed again, and from the tinkle of the stream on my left I judged that we were ascending to a higher shelf in the glen. The Indian moved very carefully, as noiseless as the flight of an owl, and I marvelled at the gift. In after days I was to become something of a woodsman, and track as swiftly and silently as any man of my upbringing. But I never mastered the Indian art by which the foot descending in the darkness on something that will crackle checks before the noise is made. I could do it by day, when I could see what was on the ground, but in the dark the thing was beyond me. It is an instinct like a wild thing's, and possible only to those who have gone all their days light-shod in the forest.

Suddenly the slope and the trees ceased, and a new glare burst on our eyes. This second shelf was smaller than the first, and as I blinked at the light I saw that it held about a score of men. Torches made of pine boughs dipped in tar blazed at the four corners of the assembly, and in the middle on a boulder a man was sitting. He was speaking loudly, and with passion, but I could not make him out. Once more Shalah put his mouth to my ear, with a swift motion like a snake, and whispered, "The Master."

We crawled flat on our bellies round the edge of the cup. The trees had gone, and the only cover was the long grass and the low sumach bushes. We moved a foot at a time, and once the Indian turned in his tracks and crawled to the left almost into the open. My sense of smell, as sharp almost as a dog's, told me that horses were picketed in the grass in front of us. Our road took us within, hearing of the speaker, and though I dared not raise my head, I could hear the soft Highland voice of my friend. He seemed now to be speaking humorously, for a laugh came from the hearers.

Once at the crossing of a little brook, I pulled a stone into the water, and we instantly lay as still as death. But men preoccupied with their own concerns do not keep anxious watch, and our precautions were needless. Presently we had come to the far side of the shelf abreast of the boulder on which he sat who seemed to be the chief figure. Now I could raise my head, and what I saw made my eyes dazzle.