“It shall be delivered,” said the governor. “I am, indeed, happy thus to be made a humble sharer in the building of your fame.”
The poet smiled. “Fame!” he said. “’Tis not for that I sing.”
And now Governor White made his way to the water, while many gathered sorrowfully around him to place letters in his charge.
Eleanor went down to the sea hand-in-hand with her father. Those who were to leave had already boarded the two vessels, with the exception of a sailor and Captain Pomp, who stood, befeathered hat in hand, beside the governor’s small-boat.
As John White was about to step over the gunwale of this craft, Vytal approached him. “Since it must be,” said the soldier, “I have sought at least to exonerate you from all slander in England and charges of desertion. The Oxford preacher hath writ this,” and he handed a scroll of paper to the governor. It read as follows:
“May it please you, her Majesty’s subjects of England, we, your friends and countrymen, the planters in Virginia, do by these let you and every [one] of you to understand that for the present and speedy supply of certain our known and apparent lacks and needs, most requisite and necessary for the good and happy planting of us, or any other in this land of Virginia, we all of one mind and consent have most earnestly entreated and incessantly requested John White, Governor of the planters in Virginia, to pass into England for the better and more assured help, and setting forward of the foresaid supplies, and knowing assuredly that he both can best and will labor and take pains in that behalf for us all, and he not once but often refusing it for our sakes, and for the honor and maintenance of the action hath at last, though much against his will, through our importunacy yielded to leave his government and all his goods among us, and himself in all our behalfs to pass into England, of whose knowledge and fidelity in handling this matter, as all others, we do assure ourselves by these presents, and will you to give all credit thereunto, the 25 of August, 1587.”[7]
Eleanor had already said good-bye in private, but once more she kissed her father, pressed his hand, whispered in his ear, and then, as he stepped into the cock-boat which awaited him, returned to her baby, that lay crowing in its nurse’s arms.
“Body o’ me,” said a voice near by. “The prow hangs a-land. Dame Cock-boat refuses to be gone. Hi, little Rouse, come help them.”
The two joined their fellow, who, under Captain Pomp’s directions, was striving to launch the craft, which had been nearly deserted by an ebb-tide.
“Whist!” said Roger in Hugh’s ear, “we’ll make Master Dare give aid.”