“O dear heart, my soul is filled with anguish when I think of leaving you and the child,” he moaned. “Who will protect my defenceless ones? Look again from the window. Is there no sail in sight? Nothing? And my strength is ebbing fast. Put the little one beside me that I may kiss her.”
“My husband, let us put our trust in God, and help me say, ‘Though He slay me, yet I will trust him.’ It will be but a little while before Virginia and I will join you. There is no ending to our love. Can you hear me, dear one?” Then came a cry:
“O my Father, the light has gone out of his eyes and his lips are dumb!”
Sinking beside his body, she swooned away, while the wonder-filled eyes of baby Virginia gazed long and gravely on the pallid face of her dead father.
Regaining consciousness, Eleanor feebly raised herself and tried to perform the last duties for her dead. Through the long night that followed she watched by his side. Lovingly and gently she talked to him of the happy past, caressed his cold face, and smoothed back the hair lying upon his brow.
“No priest is left, dear, to bless you as you go on your long journey, but you shall not lack. Faithful in life, I shall be faithful in death. The pitying Father will give me strength for this last duty. Soon we shall be together again, even as we now are in spirit.”
On the following day the body of her husband was laid to rest and Eleanor, with unearthly calm, read the burial service.
Day after day passed and few were left to answer the roll call. Only one hope lay between the colonists and starvation. Perhaps the Croatans, their faithful friends, had some corn left and would share it with them. Manteo would go and ask for food.
As the sickly sun sank to rest on the fourth day after Manteo’s departure, the colonists crawled to the beach and turned their faces to the south to watch for his coming.