Night had put on her robe of black velvet and the stars had embroidered it in arabesques of silver, when Eleanor Dare laid her head on her pillow and drew Virginia to her breast.
Soon the hamlet was hushed in sleep; only the booming waves and the step of the starving sentinel broke the stillness. Exhausted, he finally sank to the ground and sleep overpowered him.
Then long shadows flitted from tree to tree, and on the breath of the night rose the death-cry of the Catawbas. Bearded men fell like corn before the sickle and the agonized cry of the women was crushed in their throats. Flames from the burning cabins threw the ghastly scene into bold relief.
Eleanor’s cabin was untouched as yet by the flames. In its door stood Manteo, fighting for her life and that of the child, when swift as a swallow came the arrow of Winginia and sucked the lifeblood from his loyal heart.
“Spare the squaw and her papoose,” said Winginia. “They shall be slaves in memory of the wrong done us in the past. We will take them to Croatan, our conquered island. Bind the squaw to the live oak yonder and place the papoose upon her lap. We will sleep until the daylight comes.”
Through the rest of the night Eleanor Dare worked desperately, and succeeded finally in loosening the thongs enough to free one hand and slightly twist her body.
In the cold gray of the morning she took a knife from her pocket, and low down on the trunk of the oak carved the word “Croatoan” in Roman letters. Just as she raised her hand to add the cross, Winginia stood over her.
“Hold thy hand, thou pale-face squaw! Darest thou call down the anger of Okee upon us?” and he sank his tomahawk into her brain.
Then rose the wail of the only English being upon American soil, the cry of the little Virginia. The echoes took up the sound and sent it reverberating from the flowery banks of Roanoke to the ice-bound shores of Nova Scotia, and from the rounded tops of the Appalachians to the beetling crags of the Rockies.