For a moment her eyes questioned him, but, finding no answer, she forbore to voice the query, and quickly dismissed the subject as he willed. Her eyes flashed. “We must, at all cost, defeat them, and assert our rights so strongly as to preclude the possibility of repeated threats.”
“We shall.”
“Oh, captain, I pray you give me work to do in our defence. Idleness palls upon me in times like these. Give me opportunity, if needs be, to suffer for the common good.”
He looked deep into her eyes. “You are one of the few,” he said, slowly, “who are worthy to suffer, and, therefore, ’tis for you I fear.”
To this she would have replied in all the bravery of her hopeful womanhood, but suddenly her expression changed. “Who is that?” she whispered, gazing at a near-by window; and then, as a head was thrust in at a casement, she laughed with evident relief, for the long nose of King Lud, who stood without on his hind-legs, was sniffing the air of the dining-hall.
In another second the animal had dropped to his natural posture, and was for shambling off to Roger’s cabin, but Vytal’s quick eyes had caught sight of a whitish object suspended from the animal’s neck. Uttering a short call by which Prat was wont to summon his pet, Vytal opened the door, and saw King Lud irresolutely awaiting him. With a warning gesture to Eleanor, bidding her remain in the house, he went out and stroked the bear’s head; then, bending down, untied a thong of deerskin and took from under the shaggy throat the object he had noticed. Returning, he held it in the light, while his brow, contracting, darkened. “It is the very horn,” he said, “of Frazer’s using. But there is more, too,” and he drew a crumpled scrap of paper from the muzzle of the instrument. Spreading it out on the table, he read the first words, whose letters, all small capitals, were formed by innumerable perforated dots pricked through the paper evidently by the sharp point of a weapon.
“To Mistress Dare—”
Vytal looked up at Eleanor. “It is probably unfit for your perusal; therefore, with your permission, I will read it first myself,” and, as she inclined her head, he did so.
“To Mistress Dare,—This promise writ with my poniard: I will return anon, my love. The king lives, waiting for his royal consort. It may be a day, it may be a year, or several years, but in the end, I swear to you, that I will come and claim mine own. Yet, if at any time our friend, Captain Vytal, seeks to capitulate and surrender the colony to my liege sovereignty, let him blow thrice upon this horn—which he will remember is an effective signal in time of need. Written, or rather perforated, in some haste, but no flurry, very near you at Croatan, by the Crown Prince of England, yet your humble slave,
“Arthur Dudley.”