With an effort I drew myself erect, and standing so, told my tidings, quietly and with circumstance, so as to leave no room for doubt as to their verity, or as to the sanity of him who brought them. They listened with shaking limbs and gasping breath; for it was the fall and wiping out of a people of which I brought warning.
When all was told I thought to ask a question myself; but before my tongue could frame it, the roaring of the sea became so loud that I could hear naught else, and the lights all ran together into a wheel of fire. Then in a moment all sounds ceased and to the lights succeeded the blackness of outer darkness.
When I awoke from the sleep into which I must have passed from that swoon, it was to find myself lying in a room flooded with sunshine. For a moment I lay still, wondering where I was and how I came there. A drum beat, a dog barked, and a man’s quick voice gave a command. The sounds stung me into remembrance.
There were many people in the street. Women hurried by to the fort with white, scared faces, their arms filled with household gear; children ran beside them; men went to and fro, the most grimly silent, but a few talking loudly.
I could not see the palisade across the neck, but I knew that it was there that the fight—if fight there were—would be made. Should the Indians take the palisade, there would yet be the houses of the town, and, last of all, the fort in which to make a stand. I believed not that they would take it, for Indian warfare ran more to ambuscade and surprise than to assault in the open field.
The drum beat again, and a messenger from the palisade came down the street at a run.
“They’re in the woods over against us, thicker than ants!” he cried to West, who was coming along the way. “A boat has just drifted ashore, with two men in it, dead and scalped!”
I looked again at the neck of land and the forest beyond, and now, as if by magic, from the forest and up and down the river as far as the eye could reach, rose here and there thin columns of smoke. Suddenly, as I stared, three or four white smoke puffs, like giant flowers, started out of the shadowy woods across the neck. Following the crack of the muskets—fired out of pure bravado by the Indians—came the yelling of the savages. The sound was prolonged and deep, as though issuing from many throats.
The street, when I went out into it, was very quiet. All windows and doors were closed and barred. The yelling from the forest had ceased for the moment, but I knew well that it would soon begin with doubled noise. I hurried along the street to the palisade, where all the men of Jamestown were gathered, armed and helmeted and breast-plated, waiting for the foe in grim silence.