“Two ships are coming!” cried Virginia. “Where is my mother?” But the soldier strode past her, making no reply, his eyes ablaze with a light that long ago had left them as though forever.
Hugh Rouse, stepping ashore from the next canoe, leaned forward from his great height and seized Virginia by the arm as though to crush her with a single grasp. “What were those words of thine?” he demanded, with unprecedented ferocity. “Speak them again!”
“A ship is coming,” she said, half fearfully; “nay, two.” But the last words were unheard, and the giant, turning to face the many approaching barges, roared out, “A sail!”
“A sail! A sail! A sail!” was the wild cry which, repeated again and again, with increasing frenzy, went ringing from the foremost craft to the very last. And, before long, the headland on the eastern coast was overrun by mad men and women who, with tears streaming from their eyes and kerchiefs frantically waving, gave free vent to their overwhelming joy. The floodgates of emotion, so long forced to withstand a mighty strain, had been shattered in an instant; and now the torrent, tempestuous, whirling, wild, upleaping, uncontrollable, burst from their very souls.
Salvation was at hand.
All believed so, and the belief possessed them utterly, from those who stood at the edge of the headland transfixedly gazing seaward, to those who shouted with gladness, and the others who, standing yet farther back, bowed their heads while the preacher voiced their thanksgiving to God. In the foremost line, silent and rigid, stood Vytal; in the last, Eleanor Dare, with her daughter, praying. But soon Virginia, slipping her hand from her mother’s, rejoined the Indian, to chide him laughingly for having let fall the shell, which now lay in fragments far below. For to these two alone the sails meant little, seeming no more than the wings to which they had likened them. To the White Doe and Dark Eye there was no far-distant home ever calling for its own. Unlike their English neighbors, these two were no foster-children, but inheritors of the land by right of birth. This was their country, this their home. Only here could their happiness mature, and seemingly only apart from the colony could they live as their hearts desired. For that uncertain, wavering shyness and sign of an uncomprehended fear, which long ago Marlowe had noticed, still softened Virginia’s eyes with a mystic veil. She was not beloved by the settlers save as a pet bird whose grace and beauty they admired. For she lacked the magnetism of her mother, yet received, perhaps, more frequent praise. There was still that difference between Eleanor and Virginia which Marlowe had defined as the difference between spirituality and mysticism. The one was in all ways a solace, the other pretty to look upon, but never restful, and this lack of restfulness, more than all else, explains her unpopularity in the settlement of laborers.
To-day, feeling more restless than ever, “Look,” she said, “Roger Prat shall pipe to us.” With which she led her companion by the hand through the babbling throng to Roger, who, arm-in-arm with his bear, was swaggering here and there, discoursing bombastically on the approaching ships, as though he himself deserved thanks for the benefit.
“How now, Goodman Prat,” inquired Virginia, as they joined him; “art going to leave thy flute silent at such a time?”
He turned and, with head on one side, surveyed her narrowly. “The pipe pipeth no more,” he said, “for the necessary wind hath gone out of my heart.”
“Lungs,” corrected Virginia, with a silvery laugh.