"By God! you are right!" cried the Colonel, suddenly struggling to his feet. "Hold out, men! Anthony Nash reached Rosemead, and has brought us aid!"
"The dog priest!" the mulatto cried fiercely to Trail. "Was he here? Then they have sent for help, and Mother of God! it is here!"
"And coming at the planter's pace," answered Trail. "They will be upon us before we reach the boats."
The mulatto glanced at the friend with whom he had fled the Indies with a sinister smile. "Ay," he muttered to himself. "They will be upon us indeed, before we reach the boats, wherefore Luiz Sebastian goes not to turn pirate this time. He throws in his lot with the Ricahecrians whose canoes are close at hand in the inlet that winds into the Pamunkey. They are very swift, and in the Blue Mountains there is safety. But one thing first."
He gave a shrill and peculiar whistle which brought to him half a dozen Indians. He pointed to the body of Grey Wolf and then to Landless. A yell burst from the lips of the savages, and they rushed upon the latter. He met them, ran his sword through the heart of the first, of the second: Sir Charles moaned, stirred, and struggled to his knees. A third raised his knife; it would have descended, but Landless darted between the savage and the half-dazed, utterly helpless man at whom the blow was aimed, struck up the arm, and plunged his sword into the dark breast. A broken oar, snatched from the floor by the mulatto, descended upon his head, and with a woman's scream sounding in his ear, he fell heavily to the floor, and lay as one dead.
When he came to himself, it was to find the great room still crowded with men, and filled with noise and confusion, but the thronging figures and the excited voices were those of friends—of servants from the neighboring plantations, of small planters and tenants of Colonels Ludwell and Fitzhugh, the Surveyor-General, and Dr. Anthony Nash. He saw the master, panting, bleeding, but exultant, seize Dr. Nash's hands in his own. He saw Sir Charles smile and extend his box of richly scented snuff to Colonel Ludwell, and the women leaving their corner of refuge with hysterical laughter and tears; saw Betty Carrington in her father's arms, and Mistress Lettice being helped across a heap of dead by Captain Laramore. Indians, negroes, mulatto, scoundrel whites, were gone.
"They got off clear—the d—d villains," said Dick Whittington, appearing beside him, "just before the horses came up. But Woodson has gone after the slaves and the convicts with a party of Carrington's men. He 'll catch them, I 'm thinking, and they 'll come to a pirate's end—that 's all the pirating they 'll get. The Indians will get clean away; they 're most to the Pamunkey by now, I reckon."
Landless staggered to his feet, and put his hand to his head, which was bleeding. "The women are all safe?" he demanded.
"All but poor Annis," said the boy. "When I saw the poor maid fall, I thanked the Lord that Joyce Whitbread was safe in her mother's cottage at Banbury. But none of the others were hurt. There is Mistress Lettice and Mistress Betty Carrington—I do not see Mistress Patricia."
The master of Verney Manor, pouring forth a rapid account of the late affair to the gentlemen who crowded around him, was brought to a dead stop by the appearance of a man who had burst through the throng, and now stood before him, half naked, bleeding, with white, drawn face and wild eyes.