But no pleadings of her suitor had had any effect on the pretty maiden, and, sore at heart, he had left her to seek his fortune in the New World. What was his surprise to see Wingfield among the passengers when he went on board the ship.
“Ha, it is you, Laydon. Pity you could not bring the pretty Anne along,” said Wingfield with a sneer.
With a fierce scowl, Laydon flung a hot reply.
“Leave her alone. Honest men do not trifle with simple maidens, and if you ever do her a wrong, I will throttle you even if I hang for it!”
Wingfield retorted with a contemptuous laugh.
Finally the storm lulled, and the voyagers, pursuing the old track over which Eleanor Dare had sailed, came to the West Indies. There they landed in the bright and fickle month of April, to rest their sea-worn bodies and soothe their distraught tempers.
Down in the hold of the God-speed lay a young prisoner manacled in irons. Curly brown hair waved over his forehead, long mustachios adorned his upper lip and eyes full of intelligence, together with firmly closed lips, in the corners of which lurked a smile, marked him as a man of strong character.
He had been miraculously preserved by Providence to be the connecting link between the lost “City of Raleigh” and the future settlement at Jamestown.
A coat of mail covered his body, fitting down snugly over his Turk-like trousers which were met by huge French boots, with wide overturning tops, settling in deep wrinkles around his ankles. No premonition of the part he was to play in the coming drama of Virginia came to him as he lay and listened to the men going backward and forward to the tropical island.
Presently John Laydon came, bringing the prisoner a luscious orange and soft yellow banana gathered on shore. Sitting down beside Captain Smith, he peeled the tempting fruit and offered it to him.