He took a piece of sail-cloth from the floor, and with it covered the dead man from sight. Next he turned to the hollow above the fireplace, and took from it the pistols, concealing them in his bosom. "I may need them," he said. "Come."
They left the hut and its dead guardian, and rowed back through the summer dawn. The sky was barred with crimson and gold, the fiery rim of the sun just lifting above the eastern waters, the mist, a bridal veil of silver and pearl drawn across the face of a virgin earth.
They rowed in silence until they neared the wharf, when Porringer said, "You are leader now."
The other raised his haggard eyes. "It is a trust. I will go through with it, God helping me. But I would I were lying dead beside him in yonder hut."
They left the boat at the wharf, and went towards the quarters. Meeting one of the blowzed and slatternly female servants, Landless asked where they might find the overseer. He had gone to the three-mile field half an hour ago, after bestowing upon the two dilatory servants a hearty cursing, and promising to reckon with them at dinner-time. "Where was the master?" He had gone to the mouth of the inlet with Sir Charles Carew, who had grown impatient, and had sailed away under the Nancy's patched sail. The under overseer was in the far corn-field, two miles off.
"Are all the men in the fields, Barb?" asked Landless.
Barb informed him that they were, "as he might very well know, seeing that the sun was half an hour high."
"Have you seen the man called Roach?"
No: Barb had not seen him; but she had heard the overseer tell Luiz Sebastian to take two men and go to the strip of Orenoko between the inlet and the third tobacco house, and Luiz Sebastian had been calling for Roach and Trail.
Landless thanked her, and moved away without offering to bestow upon her that which Barb probably thought her information merited.