“Come,” said Virginia, after she had taunted him sufficiently to please her whim, “you so nearly found me that I will grant reward for the tedious quest.”
She went to the base of the cliff, while he, enchanted by her every motion, and striving to guess the nature of the guerdon, followed her in silent wonder. Near the cliff she paused and took a shell, pink, shallow, and translucent, from an old wampum-pouch that, in their childhood, he had given her. Next, she plucked from a vine that rambled down the cliff-side a cluster of grapes, green as their own leaves, and almost bursting. “There,” she said, casting them on a strip of mossy ground; “now wait,” with which she trod upon the cluster with her bare feet; then, as their luscious juice ran freely, held them aloft, and the shell beneath, so that into it the sparkling drops fell one by one until they overflowed the brim.
And now, after touching the nepenthe to her lips, she held out the delicate chalice to him and bade him drink.
As though participating in some magic that would presently enchant them both, he tasted, and would have emptied the shell delightedly, but on a sudden he started and, letting fall the fairy cup, pointed to the sea. With a cry of astonishment, Virginia and her comrade ran to a winding path which led to a higher vantage-point, and in a moment they stood upon a headland, side by side, he transfixed, she trembling with excitement.
“’Tis a ship,” she said, breathlessly. “I can just remember the white wings. In one of these ships my grandfather sailed away, and they say that I saw him go. In another went Master Kyt, but I saw not the wings that bore him from us. I wonder if Master Kyt is returning? How many years have passed since he departed?” She held up her hand and counted them on her tapering fingers. “’Tis five—”
But for once the Indian was not heeding her. “Look,” he said, “there is not one ship only.”
Turning again to face the sea, she saw two distinct white clouds, one in the middle distance, one just surmounting the horizon.
“Come,” suggested Virginia, “let us give the signal to our people who fish in the sound.” So saying, she led him along the palisade until they reached Vytal’s deserted hut, near which the old culverin still remained on guard and ready-primed. “This is the way,” she commanded—“Captain Vytal showed me,” and, when he had obeyed her instructions, a deafening roar went seaward from the land. “Oh, ’tis a terrible sound,” cried Virginia, covering her ears with her hands; “but that is enough, and now let us go down to meet the townsmen as they land and tell them the tidings before they spy those wings themselves.” As she started away, first one, then another musket-shot, each fainter than the last, answered her signal from the south. With a long succession of alarums, the fishermen repeated the first startling report back and back even to Croatan.
By the time Virginia and the Indian reached the northern shore several barges were already within sight.
Vytal, leading in a canoe, was the first to land.