The Indian’s brow clouded. “Nay, I grieve that he went with Towaye, my kinsman, who came from England on the Admiral. I await thy word to follow the trail by which Towaye, for some unknown purpose, guides thine enemy.”
“I thank you, but I am glad that he is gone. He has no knowledge of the fly-boat’s arrival, and thus will miscalculate our strength. He is bound, an I mistake not, for the Spanish city of St. Augustine. Is it not accessible from here by land?”
“It is,” replied Manteo, “for men of a kindred race came hither that way at the beginning of the world, and were slain as foes. But the trail hides itself as the trail a dead man follows. It runs through an endless forest, our forefathers have said, and over the face of angry waters. The white man must be brave, though evil, and my kinsman but one of many guides. For passing through Secotan, five-and-twenty leagues to the southward, they must go, with many windings, as serpents go, to the land of Casicola, lord of ten thousand. Also they must pass the Weroances, Dicassa, and Toupee Kyn, of whom our men know nothing save the sound of their names, which comes like an echo without meaning. And they will come to La Grande Copal, where there are stars in the earth your people call jewels, and buy with cloth.”
Vytal’s face grew more troubled as the Indian proceeded. “It is impossible that he has gone so far.”
“Yes, but there may be yet another way. The river called Waterin[4] is a trail itself, leading perhaps to the Spanish towns.”
Vytal seemed but half satisfied. “Are you sure he has left the island?”
“No, but I will see.”
“Go, then, Manteo.”
“I return not,” said the Indian, “until I know,” and in a minute he was lost in the adjacent woods.
For a week the foremost consideration in Vytal’s mind, after the cargo had been landed, was to ascertain, if possible, the whereabouts of the fifteen men who, being the stoutest spirits of an earlier colony, had been left the year before to hold the territory for England. The inadequacy of this arrangement, by which a garrison that would not have sufficed to defend a small fortress was left to guard a boundless acquisition, is perhaps unparalleled in history. But to many of the newly arrived colonists the utter futility of the plan was not apparent. They had not yet experienced the desperate hardships of an infant settlement, nor realized the extent and latent ferocity of the savage hordes that overran the continent. Furthermore, the magnitude and nature of the territory which fifteen men had been appointed to hold was by no means appreciated. Nevertheless, in the minds of men who had played their games of life against odds and could justly estimate the hazards of existence, the likelihood of finding the little company seemed very small. Vytal, for one, felt far from sanguine, but the kindly, impractical governor, although he had already searched the whole Island of Roanoke in vain, still held out hope of ultimate success.