A high flush of crimson came to her cheeks and suffused itself quickly about her temples; then as suddenly died, leaving her wan and pallid.
Vytal, averting his face, while in silence she re-entered the fortress, went slowly to Dyonis Harvie. “Is the prisoner well guarded?”
“Ay, most carefully—in a cell below the fort.”
“Your main duties are to protect the women and keep him there;” with which Vytal turned quickly away toward the western palisade.
Save for the light of the stars and of a wavering flambeau here and there, the town was in darkness. And but for the occasional reports of muskets, as the inland pickets fired into the forest at an unseen foe, no unusual sound broke the silence of night.
Yet each minute of that night, winged or halt, slow or quick-fleeting, was to every man big with import and terrible endeavor. The very air that filled their lungs seemed impregnated with suspense.
Here was no camp-fire and lounging throng in the main square, but only gloom and solitude, for the colony, broken up into small commands, stood in alert attitudes, with straining eyes, at every entrance.
The armistice was apparently at an end, yet some few consoled themselves with the fond delusion that the Winginas’ intermittent attack had not been inspired by the Spaniards. One or two of these sought Manteo to question him concerning the numbers of his hereditary foemen, but Manteo was not in the town. And, furthermore, not one of his tribe could be found save a few of the women. The Hatteras Indians had disappeared, men and boys, mysteriously.
“They have deserted us,” said some of the colonists, despairingly; but the leaders knew that, by Vytal’s command, Manteo held his men in waiting far within the western forest. Thus at a signal the friendly tribesmen could be called upon to fall on the Winginas’ rear and decimate them from an ambush.
Yet Vytal rightly conjectured that this attack of the hostile savages was a Spanish feint to draw off his soldiers from the coast; and even now, as he concentrated the pickets in a body to meet a concerted onrush from the woods, a great clamor of arquebuses and heavy pieces arose from the shore.