John Allen had risen from the coil of rope and stood against the slung boat. The throng swung its body that way, hung suspended one long moment, open-mouthed, wide-eyed, then with a roaring cry-flung itself across the space between. Aderhold reached her side, but the throng came, too, hurled him down and laid hands upon her. One clutched her shirt and jerkin and tore them across. She stood a woman revealed.
“The witch! The witch!” they roared and struck her to the deck.
The mate was not the man that was the captain, but he knew what the captain would do, and where he was able he copied. The few superior colonists were not superior to witch-fear, but they had a preference for orderly judgement and execution. Master Evans was of a timid and gentle nature and abhorred with his bodily eyes to see violence done. He believed devoutly that in the interests of holiness witches, infidels, and sorcerers must be put to death, but he would not willingly himself behold the act which his religion approved. There were others aboard amenable to discipline, and bold enough to escape panic over mere delay. The sorcerer and the witch were drawn from the hands of the more enraged. Their arms were bound across; they were thrust into the ship’s dungeon. With them went Humphrey Lantern, sober enough now—poor wry-mouthed man!... In the state cabin there was held a council. “Keep the wretches close under hatches until Virginia is reached,” said the cooler sense. “Then let the officers of the settlement hang them, on dry land and after solemn judgement. Or let them be prisoned in Jamestown until a ship is sailing home, taken back to England, and hanged there. If, as may well be the case, the Silver Queen hath been cursed for their sakes, surely now that they are ironed there below, and their doom certain in the end, the Almighty will lift the curse! At least, wait and see if the calm be not broken.” Within the cabin and without were malcontents, but the soberer counsel prevailed. The mate agreed to keep the crew from mutiny, the moderate-minded adventurers to tame the wilder, more frightened and impatient spirits.... That very night the calm vanished.
The calm vanished in a wild uprush of clouds and stir of the elements. The heat and savour of brass, the stillness of death, the amazing blue of the sky, the splashed red of sunrise and sunset went away. In their place came darkness and a roaring wind. At first they went under much canvas; it was a drunken delight to feel the spray, to see the crowned woman drink the foam, to hear the whistling and the creaking, to know motion again. But presently they took in canvas.... Twenty-four hours after the first hot puff of air, they were being pushed, bare-masted, as by a giant’s hand over a sea that ran in mountains. The sky was black-purple, torn by lightnings, the rain fell with a hissing fury, the wind howled now, howled too loudly!
As the calm would not break, so now the storm would not break. It roared and howled and the water curved and broke over the decks of the Silver Queen. A mast went, the ship listed, there arose a cry. The rain and lightning and thunder ceased, but never the wind and the furious sea and the darkened sky. The Silver Queen was beaten from wave to wave, now smothered in the hollow, now rising dizzily to the moving summit. The waves combed over her, they struck her as with hammers, her seamen cried out that there was sprung a leak, it came to be seen that she might not live. The panic of the calm gave way to that of the storm.
And now they cried out wildly that the voyage was cursed, and that God Almighty who had plagued Israel for Achan’s sin was plaguing them for that they kept aboard most vile offenders and rebels such as these! Those that were still for delay kept quarter yet a little longer, but while the wind somewhat lessened, the leak gained, and panic attacked them too. The captain lay ill and out of his head, the mate was no stronger than they who wished clearance made. In a black and wild morning, the livid sky dragging toward them, the sea running high, they lowered a boat and placed in it Aderhold and Joan and Humphrey Lantern. They might, perhaps, have held the last with them, carrying him in irons to Virginia, but when he found what was toward he cursed them so horribly that no wizard could have thought of worse imprecations. They shivered and thrust him into the boat, where he knelt and continued his raving. “Hush!” said Aderhold. “Let us die quietly.”
The sailors loosed the small boat and pushed it outward from the Silver Queen. It fell astern, the black water widened between. The ship, mad to get on, to put distance between her and the curse, flung out what sail the tempest would let her carry. It made but a slight pinion, but yet wing enough to take her from that speck upon the ocean, the boat she had set adrift.... Not she had set adrift, but Ignorance, Fear and Superstition, their compound, Cruelty, and their blind Prætorian, Brute Use of Brute Force. There had been one pale ray of something else. Master Evans had insisted that there be put in the boat a small cask of water and a portion of ship’s bread.
The Silver Queen hurried, hurried over the wild and heaving sea, beneath a low sky as grey as iron. The many gazing still lost at last all sight of the open boat. It faded into the moving air, or it was drawn into the sea, they knew not which. But it was gone, and they made bold to hope that now God would cease to plague them.