“There, in there!” cried Christopher, and would have rushed forward again had not the soldier restrained him.
“How long is it since he escaped you?”
“One minute. You heard the alarum. He fled immediately.”
Vytal turned to Manteo. “Will you follow him?”
“Yes.”
“Hasten, then,” and the chief, with noiseless tread and eyes keenly perceptive of every telltale twig and leaf, made his way into the forest. “He understands the stalking of game,” observed Vytal. “It is best so.”
Marlowe’s face clouded dismally. “Ay, ’tis best so, and ’tis best that I sail away. Twice this fellow hath outwitted me with the simplest trickery. I am not worthy to remain.”
“Ah,” said Vytal, with an even deeper note of self-conviction, “these things belong not to your calling. We do not require carpentry of vintners, nor a crop of wheat from fighting-men. But to mine they do belong, and, Christopher—” the voice sounded harsh and unreal—“I have now failed at mine own work—failed!”
He prodded the little sand-hills of Frazer’s inconsequent building with the point of his rapier. “Failed!” He seemed to be on the threshold of new knowledge. A word hitherto utterly unknown and unregarded was being cut deep into the granite of his character.