Marlowe stood for a moment watching him, and then, turning, caught sight of another figure even more of interest than his friend’s. Eleanor Dare was walking alone on the shore. He started forward impulsively to join her, but, remembering Ralph Contempt, whom he had left at the entrance of the fortress, he returned to enforce the rule. Ralph, however, no longer awaited him. Having stood idly, first on one foot, then on the other, looking plaintively into the stolid eyes of an armed sentinel, the youth, his patience exhausted, had wandered, with an apparent aimlessness, down to the sea. At the water’s edge he stepped into a barge, and, with a long pole pushing the cumbrous craft out to the Admiral, once more accosted Dyonis Harvie. But, as the mate proved obdurate, he returned again, looking off now and then to the southward as he went back leisurely to land.
Then an unexpected circumstance favored him. He left the barge and struck inland behind the town. Once within shelter of the forest, he hastened by a circuitous route through almost impenetrable undergrowth to a point directly behind but about a mile to the south of the fortress. Here a stream, secluded from the sight of any one not on its immediate margin, met his view. It was the continuation of the inlet in which Mistress Croyden had been crabbing.
To his surprise, a canoe of birch-bark, a single paddle in the bottom, floated idly, nosing the bank, and farther on, to his yet greater astonishment, a small heap of clothing lay on the sprawling roots of an oak-tree. He examined the apparel, and found a woman’s linen undergarments, a long frock, kirtle, and richly garnished stomacher. Fearing that some foul play had befallen the wearer, he glanced about him, not without alarm. The spot, utterly sequestered, and only approached by the inlet, or with much difficulty, as he had approached it, by the woods, offered adequate concealment for deeds of violence.
But suddenly he heard a splashing sound from the near distance, and the expression of his eyes as they looked through the foliage to a bend in the stream, some fifty yards farther inland, changed instantly. For there was Mistress Croyden, all unheedful of his proximity, disporting herself to her heart’s content, the silver ripples of the water forming an adequate covering for all save her head, which glistened in the sunlight, a pond-lily of white and gold.
Ralph hurried forward along the border of the woods until he came within easy speaking distance of the bather. A curtain of leaves hung before him, but through the interstices he could see her plainly as she melted like a water-nymph into the bosom of the stream. His eyes shone; his lips parted as though he would have called to her, but hesitating, with a new consideration in which she was evidently not the foremost subject, he returned silently to the oak about which the clothes were scattered. Stooping, he picked up all the garments, and, re-entering the forest, hid them beneath the underbrush far within its shade. Then, with a smile almost mischievous in his boyish enjoyment of the proceeding, he made his way hastily to the town. On coming to the fortress he hallooed loudly and called to Marlowe as if in impatience and alarm.
The poet, who had relieved the sentinel, and was seated, reading, near the door, came out hurriedly. But before he could inquire concerning the other’s clamor, Ralph, trembling with a well-assumed excitement, pointed wildly in quite the opposite direction from which he had come, and seemed to strive the while vainly for utterance. Marlowe, catching much of his excitement, nevertheless bade him compose himself and speak. In this the youth finally succeeded.
“They have taken her,” he said, lowering his voice that no chance passer-by might hear; “they have taken her as they took me, by the hair of the head. Oh, she will be a plaything—it is very sad.”
The vagueness of the announcement only added to Marlowe’s disquiet. “Who? Where?”
“Oh, they have dragged her off. I saw them, the red devils, at the northeast end of the island. The game is to be played again.” The words seemed fraught with an under-meaning, but to the excited listener there was no change. “The game is to be played,” repeated Ralph, now in a dreary monotone, “with Gyll Croyden.”
“Gyll Croyden—Gyll!” And the impetuous poet, beside himself with alarm, not stopping to hear another word, rushed away. When he had passed through the north gate of the palisade, Ralph Contempt, who had watched his headlong pursuit, turned, with an amused look, and entered the fortress. In its main apartment, a long mess-room that served also as an armory, he found a small company of soldiers, who sat about in groups playing at cards and “tables.”[5] Believing that Marlowe had admitted him, they made no remonstrance, and soon he was throwing dice and jesting with the merriest, his eyes roving now and then over the massive oaken walls and stacked muskets.