They did as she asked and then left her to the care of Mistress Forrest, who promised to stay with her until Polly was fit to take on the nursing. Alec suggested asking the physician, newly arrived, to prescribe for her, but she would have none of him.
The men went away to see how the guards were faring. They found that the attack had collapsed when the Indians lost their quarry. They had melted away into the forest taking their dead and wounded with them.
‘We owe you our thanks, sir,’ Will said to Captain Smith. ‘Without your help I think both Meg and Sandy here had been lost.’
‘I say amen to that,’ Alec added.
Captain Smith laughed.
‘We must all thank one another,’ he said, ‘for each played a soldier’s part and that goes for the gallant lady too. But my sortie was but an act of my profession, whereas you three rose grandly to your peril. So let us each give thanks to Our Lord who hath this day methinks saved more than our lives.’
He turned and stumped off, a sturdy, fearless, active figure, greying head erect, a springy step, careless of praise. But he was upset by this attack. The cotton plants were an experiment and a successful one. They should have been grown in the plantation behind the little town, guarded by it and the river. Not such good soil maybe, but hidden from the forest and safe from attack except by water.
Alec watched him go. The captain had said truth. He had hinted at the precarious state of their settlement where the leadership was so weak and the community so lacking in aim or achievement, except for the ceaseless expeditions to gather food or seek for precious metals. Surely it was time this man, a born leader, took over from the weak, self-important Captain Ratcliffe, whom all despised, and but a few flattered. Among these George Tucker took a forward place. An envious, sly schemer, Alec knew, one nursing his ambition secretly and therefore dangerous. Hating Smith.
‘While we have the captain there is hope for us,’ Alec said aloud, turning to Will. But the strange man was not listening.
They were not the Pamunkey braves,’ he said. They must be others, Paspahegh maybe, who claim this land as their own. Or seek revenge for some injury done them. They will come again.’
Chapter Twelve
Alec’s opinion of President Ratcliffe was shared by all thinking men of the settlement. Not only was he inadequate as any sort of leader, political or military, but he had over the last weeks developed a very strange, arrogant manner worse even than that of Master Wingfield, putting himself forward and demanding services more suitable to a king’s state than that of chief councillor to a ragamuffin community settled precariously on a hostile shore.
This behaviour had increased in wildness during Captain Smith’s absence. On his return, the day before Mistress Sugden’s wounding, matters had come to a head. Two days later the Council, with Smith again of their number, took heart and courage. Ratcliffe was deposed, the explorer promoted to the office of President in his place. But since Ratcliffe’s term of office had not yet quite run out, Matthew Scrivenor was elected to serve for the intervening two months.
All this Alec learned at a later date. He was fully occupied with his friends. Mistress Forrest continued to nurse Meg Sugden, since Polly was only shakily recovered from the shock of seeing her mother’s injury and Will seemed strangely indifferent to it, though willing enough to arrange the meals which Alec cooked on the new hearth he and the blacksmith had built. And it was Will who suggested giving his sister an infusion of sassafras, a shrub whose twigs cut into short lengths and steeped in boiling water were much used by the Indians.
On the fourth day, when Mistress Sugden’s initial weakness and fever had abated and her wounds, though discharging freely, had produced no alarming features, Alec was approached by Captain Smith who told him what had taken place in the Council Chamber and explained that young Scrivenor had undertaken to guide matters in the settlement during the next two months.
‘For I must complete my work,’ the captain explained. ‘The northern part of this great bay calls me, for it is an extraordinary awe-inspiring and stupendous work of nature. I must complete my maps, discover how further exploration can be planned in this vast country. Also,’ he added, smiling, ‘I would dispose of myself elsewhere for this interval of two months. I am elected to be President but may not take up my office until Captain Ratcliffe’s term be ended. So now I look for bold spirits and strong arms to join me in the enterprise. Not all who have just returned with me are willing to start out again so soon.’
‘When is this “soon”?’ asked Alec.
‘In two days. The barge we travelled in before is newly scoured, her bottom tarred, her seams caulked with cotton waste Mistress Forrest sent me for the purpose. ‘Twas she told me thou’st used it for the new pinnace.’
‘Aye, so. We have builded one pinnace and begun a second. ‘Tis madness to go hungry with the sea at hand so full of fish for the taking.’
Captain Smith nodded vigorously.
‘Thou shalt come with me in the barge,’ he said. ‘It was to ask thee I am here now.’
It was said in the form of a request, an offer. But Alec took it as the command he understood was intended.
But he hesitated, thinking of the Sugdens: Meg still in danger from her wound, Will unreliable, Polly too soft, too simple, too unfitted for the hazards of their stark existence.
‘I commend thy loyalty,’ Captain Smith said, ‘but I cannot linger. Master Scrivenor will see they come to no harm from neglect or any ill deed within the settlement. But we must sail in two days, going north at slack water on the ebb.’
‘I will be there,’ Alec promised.
When he gave the news to the Sugdens they made no objection. In fact Will seemed pleased and the two women were angry with his suggestion that they might suffer by his absence; especially Polly, who was already ashamed of her former weakness.
‘Take not so much pride in thy strength,’ she said sharply. ‘Twas God’s doing to give it thee, not thine.’
He laughed, pleased with this unusual display of spirit; that made Polly angrier still so that she refused to say goodbye to him which Alec in his turn resented bitterly, when he believed he should have been indifferent.
The expedition set off at the beginning of the last week in July, in sweltering heat, Captain Smith and six of the new gentlemen adventurers in their short cloaks over their doublets, their pork-pie hats on their heads and carrying with them their body armour, brightly scoured. Smith had found the armour very effective on the recent voyage, both in repelling arrows and in terrifying the hostile natives they met as they penetrated the Potomac River. Alec, too, had borrowed armour to take with him and carried his own sword, the first time he had worn it, except for show, since he bought it in Plymouth before he sailed.
The barge had a couple of short masts with lug sails and six rowers upon each side. She was an open vessel, covered over at night by a long tarpaulin, under which the whole party slept in discomfort or hid during a threatened attack, when they held their fire until the enemy was near enough to make it deadly.
They cruised for a full six weeks, both to the head of the bay and up the rivers they found there, always seeking a clear way into the interior of the country and a change of scene from the forest, the broad expanse of water upon which they moved and the inevitable mountain and waterfall that always turned them back from their westward thrusts. As they moved north up the bay the population on the shores and near the banks of the river grew sparse, until for more than a week they found themselves alone in a wilderness of rock, forest and falling water that seemed to the lowly rowers to be leading them to their doom and to the gentlemen adventurers to be fallen into a profitless exertion.
For they still sought treasure, in precious metals or precious stones. Captain Smith had seen articles of silverware at the court of Powhatan, so there must be silver in these hills if they could come by it. From time to time some of them left the barge to dig, but they had little knowledge to guide them and this ente
rprise came to nothing. Except to show their presence to the Indians and provoke a few fierce attacks which they were able to repulse, though not altogether without loss.
It was after one such skirmish, successfully won by Captain Smith’s tactical skill, boldness and great severity in his punishment of the attackers, that Alec learned more of his former exploits. The settlement had already adopted as a legend the tale of his capture by Powhatan, his great danger of execution at the hands of the high chief and his narrow escape from death when Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas pleaded for his life with such passion that her father was moved to release him.
‘She was but a child at the time,’ Alec was told. ‘About twelve summers. But beautiful, or so he says, and who would not, being beholden to her in such manner.’
Certainly not John Smith, Alec thought. He still had a great admiration for the captain, but he saw that the present expedition, though valuable as a map-making enterprise, served little purpose in promoting the new settlement. In their small way they were repeating the pattern that had been followed from the beginning. They had not altered the aims laid down by the London Company and they had consumed their stores without making any effort, beyond some barter of valueless beads for corn, to supply their increasing need.
Alec approached Captain Smith.
‘They tell me our food store is near finished, sir,’ he began. ‘I know the men be hungry and have begun to eat roots and such like that make them sick and give them colic. Yet there is an abundance of fish we can take with no difficulty at all.’
‘Which may also destroy us by the poison they carry,’ answered the captain. ‘Know you not I took a great flat fish that reared at me from the water as I hooked him and plunged his sharp tail in my arm. I swelled from fingers to shoulder and half my side. I felt my hour had come and ‘twas time to make my peace with God before I sank into the coma that precedes death. I even gave orders for my burial. But the good Dr Bagnall who was with us found a healing oil that cured the dreadful inflammation and a draught that gave me merciful relief from the pain that was driving me from my senses. So look to it you do not catch us another creature wrought by the Devil out of hell as I fully believe.’
‘I’ll not bring such a one aboard us,’ Alec promised. But he took Captain Smith’s words as permission to provide the much needed sea food. He sampled each new kind he caught before letting the others eat it. There were many they were all familiar with at the settlement, where more would have been used as food if it had been dried properly or salted down to keep it. But again the ignorance and laziness of so many of the settlers had prevented the proper use of fish as of so many easily-won and abundant sources of native food.
The barge arrived back at James Town in the first week of September. Master Scrivenor had governed well during Smith’s absence, though he had not had an easy time of it. Deaths by disease or accident had continued to be heavy. Scarcely had a new settler become accustomed to the conditions in the little town than he fell into a fever, from which he recovered with difficulty. Besides this some of the stores had been spoiled by rain and there had been some grumbling and threats at the reduction of the daily rations that had been the natural consequence of the neglect and carelessness. But no more effort was put into production in the plantation, where a meagre harvest did little credit to those who had planted it.
More dangerous even than these disasters and irritating disappointments was the behaviour of the deposed President. Scrivenor had uncovered a plot promoted by Ratcliffe to restore him to the power he still believed due to him as of right. His few followers disliked Matthew Scrivenor for his youth and energy and also feared the return of Captain Smith whose arrival would bring an end to their indolence.
It brought an end to more than that, for with his customary rough, uncompromising decision Smith clapped the rebellious souls in irons and unravelled the whole disreputable fabric of the plot under threat of instant hanging. The plotters were not inclined to risk their necks for so weak and arrogant a leader as Ratcliffe. They were released and set to preparing tar and pitch for a cargo for England. Deposits of these valuable commodities had been discovered in a marshy patch near the plantation.
Ratcliffe was kept in captivity. His term of office being now legally run out, Captain Smith was made President on September 10th, 1608.
Alec took no part in these high politics. On landing from the barge he hurried to the Sugdens’ house in a sudden access of guilty feeling for having deserted his friends while Mistress Sugden’s life was in danger.
But he found her well and cheerful, fully convalescent from her wound, though the scars were still tender, with that in her back not quite fully healed.
‘Did not Dr Bagnall see to it?’ Alec asked. The President was attended by him for a poison sting and saved from death, he swears.’
‘Nay, he swore he could do nothing, but Will procured lotions and salves from that Pamunkey chief who favours him,’ she explained with a laugh. ‘I’d had nowt to do wi’ them had I not thought to be at death’s door and craving aid more to go hence to God than stay in this world and suffer.’
Alec was too moved to speak, so he put both arms round her and hugged her close until she cried out that he would re-open her wound or suffocate her.
‘The path of the arrow is fixed now to the ribs,’ Will said gravely. ‘She cannot well lift that arm nor ever will.’
Alec, all his surgical interest roused, begged to examine it, but Mistress Sugden rated him for his indecent thought, so he turned his attention to Polly and gave her a hearty kiss that sent her running, her cheeks scarlet, to her friend Anne, with news of his return.
From that day Alec turned his full attention to setting up a real fishing industry for the settlement. In this he was joined by Matthew Scrivenor, released from his irksome post as deputy President. Smith had told him a good deal about Alec’s abilities; he had already a fair knowledge of ships, though more of fishing. He had tried to get the settlers to finish the second pinnace before Smith’s return, so now he and Alec forced on the work and set up the vessel for the express purpose of gathering food from the sea. There was standing rigging to be made and a stout mast. Sailcloth they had in the store, waiting to be shaped and stitched. Nets were scarce and among the settlers those who understood tatting scarcer still. But reels of thread, like the sailcloth, waited to be used and under the new direction workers were found willing to make nets, were taught and urged to continue under threat of punishment. Most were willing when given encouragement and a lead. They had gone short of victuals long enough to look forwards to fish on their platters, not only on Friday, but any other day of the week.
‘But ‘twill not keep,’ Alec explained, ‘except it be dried or salted down. Drying will be no’ so easy in this humid air and frequent mist off the sea, so we must salt it.’
‘How so?’ Matthew asked. ‘Our store is low. We can spare none for the purpose.’
Then we must make it; on the spur of our land against the sea, in shallow pans of salt water, drying in the sun as they make it at home on our east coast.’
Matthew nodded. Why had no one in this settlement thought to set up this industry before? He left Alec to continue fitting out the pinnace with six men at his command while be engaged more workers with spades and rakes to find and dig a place for the salt pans.
‘We must salt more than our fish,’ President Smith said when they described their activities to him. ‘Venison too. Some of these thieving Indians that have been creeping into the town to steal our swords have offered in exchange to teach our men to hunt the deer. They must use the bow, I have ordered. We must not give away the secrets of pistol musket or culverin. Let them return to the bow and relearn that skill our countrymen used so well in times past.’
‘Master William Trent knows it all’ Alec told him. ‘There is no need to employ the naturals. Master Trent hath a friend, a werowance. Order Will to teach our folk how to trap for meat and furs. Let him buy turkeys, live couple
s, so we may breed from them. Will could persuade this small chief, if we offer enough beads and trinkets in exchange.’
‘I have been told the man Trent is out of his mind,’ the President objected.
‘Nay,’ Alec assured him. ‘Changed maybe from what he was before, but not mad.’
‘Oh well,’ President Smith laughed. ‘Sane or insane, if the fellow brings us food or means to obtain it we must employ him. Send him to me, Sandy. Tell him he will be rewarded.’
Alec did so, but Will was strangely obstinate, refusing the role the President offered him, though he promised to get the turkeys and to continue his private trapping operations without disclosing their secrets.
Alec was astonished to hear how much the man had done during the six weeks the barge was away. When they left Captain Smith, Will showed Alec a great pile of valuable skins he had taken, cured, and stored in his room at the Sugdens’ house.
‘What in God’s name did’st use for curing?’ Alec asked, wondering if the settlement’s salt store had been raided by Will while he himself was ordered to make salt for his fish.
But Will smiled and shook his head.
‘The werowance gave me the way of it’ he said. ‘Tis best we keep it so. I would not lose the respect he feels for me and all his tribe too.’
Alec paid little attention to this at the time but later he discovered from the werowance himself that Will was indeed admired and reverenced for surviving the torture he had been put to. They believed he had been helped to escape death and recover and support himself alone in the forest by foreign spirits he had brought with him from his own country. These spirits must be very strong, very cunning, to defeat the spells and charms of the wise men of the tribe that had held and tortured him. Alec agreed that Will’s God was indeed the same he himself worshipped, who was all powerful and all-guiding, but he did not pursue a missionary course that was so much out of keeping with his way of life, so the werowance took it for mere boasting.
Over the Seas Page 15
