‘He says the matter is wholly forgot and the true culprit hath paid the price. Though my presence in London would embarrass the officers of the law there and annoy the King, there can be no reason for concealing my true name and station and so—’
‘Thou art not Jock Bridie. That testimonial then was counterfeit?’
‘Indeed no, sir. I took the false name of Bridie, and ’twas as Bridie I worked a passage from London to the Forth and earned that commendation by my own true performance.’
Captain Newport was amused by the young man’s indignation. But he did not wish to rouse the Scot’s temper further, so he merely said, in a quiet voice but with authority, ‘I would wish to use thy true name from now on. So give it to me, if you please.’
‘Alexander Nimmo,’ Alec told him. ‘My parents call me Alec and my friends Sandy.’
That last is self-evident,’ said Captain Newport. ‘I shall use it therefore, Master Sandy Nimmo, but will enter the formal one in my log. Make what explanation thou wilt to thy present companions. I will convey any letter you care to write to Master Leslie upon my return to England again.’
He nodded his dismissal and Alec went away to the deck feeling dazed, unreal, disturbed. His new-found happiness, that had grown with every league of increased distance from England, took on a fresh dimension. He felt he had not only regained his freedom, entering upon a new and exciting life, but had also renewed the old valued friendships he thought he had lost for ever. If there was a small cloud in the fair sky of Master Leslie’s present kind hopes for his future it lay in the lack of any mention of Francis. But he put this down to caution. How had Master Leslie written it? ‘We have lately been much gratified, Jock, to have tidings of thee through the good offices of Captain Olaf Henderson, who, having his ship in the Pool, was approached by a certain Captain Smithson of Leith, a conveyor of sea-coal in his brig Sunflower on which thou sailed north when thou left us. This captain in turn had been given a message to the effect thou wert alive and had come out of Scotland and were to take ship from a Channel port and would have thy friends to know of this. That ship it seems is under orders of the London Company and sails shortly for the New Lands. So God’s blessing on thy venture, my dear lad, and may thy past adventure, so hardly paid for, be now forgotten. Send to us again thy tidings and do not fear to use thine own name henceforward.’
Alec folded the letter. Captain Newport had fulfilled his promise to Master Leslie. He had not broken the seal, he had kept the missive until they were twenty-two days out from Plymouth. However, there were others on board who might not be so trustworthy. Better to have nothing private or valuable about him in those close quarters. Reluctantly he tore up the parchment into small fragments and going up into the bows gave them to the wind that was driving them along so bravely.
To change his name was no easy matter, he found. His companions had accepted him as Jock Bridie and since he had already given assistance to the crew now and then the seamen as well addressed him by that name. In the end he confided his full story to Mistress Sugden, swearing her to secrecy, except that he begged her to call him Sandy, since this could well be a nickname taken from his colouring. He decided, rightly, that she would not gossip, as she understood the word, but would feel impelled to confide in Mistress Forrest, who would tell her maid Anne Burrows, who would tell Polly, The girls would severally tell those lads with whom they exchanged guarded words during their daily exercise on deck and so by the end of the voyage the substitution would be complete.
Captain Newport took his ship by the same route he had used previously, only spending as little time as possible in the Islands to add to his provisions. The Spaniards were warned by now; they believed this new settlement that had been reported to them was a military venture to build forts on the north-eastern coast of the new lands, from which to attack Spanish possessions. They were prepared, though not in much strength nor at all efficiently, to prevent reinforcements and food arriving to the English.
So Captain Newport thought it wiser to stop only so long as he needed to take in fresh water, fruit and herbs to combat the illness he had on board by this time. To land his invalids would mean their certain murder though they begged to be put ashore to die of their diseases on dry land away from the filthy, foetid, crowded, tossing hell the ship had become. Newport knew that some of them would probably die in any case and would never make useful settlers, but he could not bring himself to abandon them. Moreover Alec had already exercised his liking and talent for treating the sick and maimed. With common sense and by an example of devoted nursing, he had already brought a few emaciated sufferers back to real health after their initial tortures and fears of sea-sickness. He now managed to improve a few more before Cape Henry appeared on the horizon and much complaining was forgotten in the excitement of that landfall.
Alec stood with the women watching the land grow, gain colour, gain detail; Bleak cliffs, wide shallow pale beaches. Behind these a dense forest of tall trees in some places not far from the water’s edge.
Sounding as they went, Captain Newport took his ship into the wide bay and with her sails losing the wind moved up the first bend of the great river called James after the King.
‘Should we not soon have sight of the town?’ asked Polly. She had taken hold of Alec’s hand as the ship glided on. Sailors were aloft taking in the mains; the royals were already down; other men were laying out the anchor and attaching its great chain. There was much shouting of orders and now and then cheers from the eighty recruited settlers crowded along the bulwarks.
There are none to welcome us,’ Mistress Sugden declared, roundly. ‘Think you they be gone elsewhere?’
‘Or dead,’ Alec wondered, with an inward shudder of dread.
‘There! Look there!’ a passenger cried and others took up the cry.
Darting out from the land came a cluster of those light canoes Alec had seen at Bristol each manned by two kneeling red-brown figures, a rough blanket flung across a naked torso, round each blue-black sleek head a band with a feather or two sticking up from it, a bow and arrows across each back, thrust through a belt.
‘Naturals,’ Alec explained to his now silent, awed companions. ‘But friendly by the look of them.’
If Captain Newport had any doubt of this he did not show it, but continued calmly on with only a few scraps of sail driving his ship at a slow walking pace. The canoes paddled alongside, shouting unintelligible remarks in hoarse voices and getting no response, for Newport and his crew were busy and the recruits understood nothing and in any case had nothing to say.
They were now approaching a spit of land, a narrow, square peninsula, bare of trees, as of any kind of vegetation. Upon it lay a scattered collection of tents and huts, whose tops showed raggedly above a close-set palisade of wooden uprights, the bark facing outward, evidently bound together upon the inside with horizontal ties.
At sight of this an incredulous sigh, half gasp, half groan, went up from the watchers on the ship. As they continued to stare Captain Newport ordered the last of the canvas off the yards, put his vessel up into the wind and dropped his anchor.
As this manoeuvre took place all on board were turned with their backs to the huts and their faces to the opposite distant tree-clad shore to which the Indian canoes were fast retreating.
‘I think,’ said Alec gravely, ‘that we have arrived and this is James Town.’
‘’Tis no town!’ cried Polly in a shrill voice of fear and disgust. ‘’Tis farm buildings in a wilderness!’
‘God in His mercy come to our aid!’ prayed Mistress Sugden. ‘God help us in this our hour of peril!’
‘Amen to that!’ cried Alec.
Many of those near them sank to their knees to add their prayers to those of Mistress Sugden, while others began to murmur of their disappointment and even to threaten.
In a short time, however, while the sailors began to prepare the ship’s boats for lowering into the water, a few figures, moving slowly, hesitant
at first, then jubilant, began to come out through the gates of the palisade. They shouted, they waved, they were joined by a few more.
‘God’s life!’ Captain Newport muttered, pacing up and down his poop deck. ‘Where be the councillors? Master Wing-field? Captain Archer? Captain Smith? Hath there been trouble again? Mutiny?’
He called to his first mate and they consulted together. Afterwards the word went round that Master Mate would go ashore with some of the crew to inspect the landing stage, discover why the notables had not come forth to welcome them, find out if any epidemic illness accounted for their absence.
‘Take Master Sandy Nimmo with you,’ the captain ordered. ‘He may represent our new adventurers and help you deal with any untoward happening. Also encourage these laggards who have not yet welcomed us. I will make no further move till you signal me.’
But while the mate was preparing one of the long boats and choosing sailors to man it a party of those who had left the palisade came off in a small rowing boat and having been helped up a rope ladder demanded to see Captain Newport immediately.
The interview took some time, after which the Captain himself came out, gave orders to postpone the first shore party and had himself taken ashore in the mate’s longboat, followed by the messengers, for such the watching crowd on board took them to be.
All that day the new settlers watched and waited, not understanding the delay, their neglect, or the various movements between the rowing boats and a pinnace and shallop also moored in the anchorage. But the ship’s mate came back and set the crew to laying out stout warps fore and aft to the trees on the bank to prevent the ship swinging, for the river was tidal at James Town, being only a short distance from the wide reaches of Chesapeake Bay.
It was mid-afternoon when orders came from Captain Newport to send ashore an advance party of settlers, including Alec and the four women. Also to prepare to send the rest in parties of ten at hourly intervals.
In this way Alec became one of the first of the adventurers to enter the settlement, only to find there a state of affairs that threw them all into acute dismay.
Inside the palisade, that on closer inspection showed many deficiences in its construction, there was a collection of dwellings that compared unfavourably, in Alec’s eyes, with the worst of the hovels he had seen in the Scottish Highlands. Some were little better than shelters, made of the branches of trees and roofed with caked mud and leaves. Others were tents, roofed with tarpaulin, a few were more substantial huts, walled with planks sawn from tree trunks, the bark left on the outside. At the centre of the collection an attempt had been made to construct two public buildings, one a church with a cross standing above the door, beside it a second, barn-like structure, of very similar size, also with a double door at one end and windows down the sides, unglazed and closed by shutters.
These surroundings were poor and primitive enough to damp the hardiest spirits, but the acute dismay felt by the newcomers was chiefly caused by the emaciated, haggard souls who crept towards them on feeble legs as they moved into the space before the church.
The mate from the ship halted his party, looking about him for some person of authority to whom he might report their arrival. While they waited in a state of uncertainty they began to notice, what they had missed in their excitement, that the air was very cold and frosty and there was snow on the higher branches of the distant fir trees, though the ground beneath their feet was muddy from much trampling. Also that many of the huts had plumes of blue smoke rising straight up towards the chill grey sky.
Since those settlers who had come out to the river bank were still active on the water and so few had emerged within, standing silent in their doorways or just outside them, Alec turned to the mate and said, ‘Shall I ask where we may find those in authority? Surely they must have seen us as we sailed in across the bay?’
The mate said slowly, ‘They be in poor case. Mayhap they starve. It were safer to stay together.’ Then he raised his voice and shouted, ‘Ahoy! Ahoy! Captain Newport, the Gift of God, sir! Shore party arrived, Master President, sir!’
His cries produced such an instant response it was clear the notable had been preparing with speed and some care a ceremony of welcome, prompted by Captain Newport. The doors of the town hall as it proved to be, next to the church, were suddenly flung open. The captain emerged, followed by a group of men, gowned and capped, with fur capes about their shoulders, who looked about them, saw the small party quite near and hurried up to them with outstretched hands of welcome.
The mate they recognised, but greeted as a subordinate. Their anxious eyes swept the rest of the men with them, returning with approval to Alec’s tall figure, for he stood several inches above any there.
The mate saluted. He seemed bewildered, looking at Captain Newport for guidance. The latter paid no attention to him. Instead he pronounced in loud tones that Captain Ratcliffe was now President in place of Master Wingfield. The President welcomed them. The other councillors welcomed them.
Captain Ratcliffe, who looked pale and ill, spoke with difficulty, which was not surprising seeing his power had been so suddenly diminished and his plans overthrown by Newport’s arrival. But he managed to say, ‘We greet you with joy and gratitude. You will have thought it strange there were so few abroad to welcome you. It is not strange to us, seeing that of the hundred and more adventurers Captain Newport left in our—in our Council’s jurisdiction, there are but thirty-eight in all still living, counting ourselves.’
There was a gasp of horror from the newcomers.
‘Captain Smith,’ said the President, turning to a short stocky bearded man beside him. ‘Will you dispose of this advance party in such of the dwellings as have been cleansed and prepared to receive them. Captain Archer and Master Martin will assist you. I, with the rest of the Council, will go out with Captain Newport to welcome your companions,’ he added, turning to the mate. ‘A very speedy unloading must be set in motion. You understand,’ he repeated speaking more directly still to the newcomers, ‘’Tis most urgent. From Christmas we have begun to starve, our provisions quite gone. The savages have brought corn for which we give them beads, but their price rises and our gift-coffers too are now almost empty.’
He spoke with a nervous energy that conveyed to the adventurers more even than their sight of the miserable dwellings what sort of existence the settlers had suffered during the time Captain Newport had been away from James Town. Their condition had clearly become desperate in the interval.
But after so short a time? How then would the newcomers fare? They had brought fresh stores with them and Captain Newport, when he had made up a new cargo to export, would return to England and bring yet more settlers and more provisions to this land of promise, as it had been described to them. Promise of what?
A new life? When for so many it had been already but an old death, from privation, disease or wounds in battle.
Seeing the glum looks and grim asides his new charges were exchanging Captain Smith went up to Alec and said, ‘Be you an adventurer, a seaman, or what else?’
‘Both and more besides,’ Alec answered boldly. He was cold and hungry and very tired of standing in the mud doing nothing. ‘If there be houses for us to occupy I ask thy favour to lead us to them. I have a particular interest, sir, in that I act on behalf of this good-wife and her daughter who have made a long and perilous voyage to find Mistress Sugden’s brother, known or rather thought to be, a citizen here.’
Those about him began to murmur at this declaration. They were well aware of the special treatment accorded to the four women travellers and though they had not resented it in deference to their sex, they saw no reason why Alec, no relative even, should gain a comparative advantage. And for two of them only. Mistress Forrest protested in a shrill voice, demanding precedence for herself to be taken to her kinsman.
Captain Smith ignored the complaints and though he did not fully understand the situation yet saw that discontent was growing fast and decl
ared roughly to Alec, ‘Do not put me off with long stories, fellow. Art thou a settler or no?’
‘I am,’ Alec answered. ‘And a sailor, too. A shipwright if need be. Mistress Sugden owned a farm till she set out to find William Trent.’
Captain Smith stared at this, began to speak, then breaking off turned and giving a crisp command to follow him led the way to that part of the settlement beyond the public buildings and nearest to the river on the side of the peninsula away from the anchorage. When he reached some empty huts, he began to distribute them to the eight adventurers who had come ashore in Alec’s company. He placed four to a hut, warning them they might have to admit more until enough of the abandoned dwellings had been properly prepared for the others and if necessary fresh ones built.
This done he turned to Alec whom he had ignored so far in the distribution. Mistress Sugden and Polly had been taken into the Town Hall to await the allocation of the billets.
‘Can we not place those four women together?’ he asked. He seemed uncertain about them, which puzzled Alec.
‘They were not known to one another in Plymouth,’ he answered. ‘But now are become close friends. Mistress Forrest is a lady of some quality, as ye may have noted. Anne Burrows is her maid. I believe she hath a connection with the family of Master Wingfield.’
Captain Smith nodded absently.
‘But those two thou hast befriended, I think? They seek poor Will Trent? They have a sad ending to their quest.’
‘He is dead?’
‘Nay. ‘T’were better he had died.’
‘Tell me, sir, I beg ye, that I may prepare them.’
Alec’s anxiety and concern were so genuine and so deeply felt that Captain Smith was moved to put a hand on his shoulder in approval.
‘He came to us out of the forest not three months after we settled,’ he said slowly. ‘The naturals of this part, Pamunkeys, were of doubtful temper at that time. We kept a lookout by day and by night. He came at dusk in an uncertain light, just as these Indians creep in to make a raid, looking like shadows among the trees. One of our guards fired at him, but he came on, was seen to be white and was admitted. He told us his name was Trent, Will Trent, he said. He had travelled many moons. He spoke a strange mixture of Indian dialect and English and the dialect was none we understood, none spoken in all the tribes of the Algonquin nation under Powhatan.’
Over the Seas Page 11
