CHAPTER XXVII
MORNING
The women crouched in a far corner of the room behind a barricade ofchairs and tables; the men stood between them and the thirsters forblood, and fought coolly, desperately, with such effect that, fearful aswere the odds, a glimmering of hope came to them. The ammunition on bothsides was exhausted, and it had become a hand to hand struggle in whichthe advantage of position and weapons was with the assailed.
"Damme, but we will beat them yet!" cried Laramore, panting, and leaningheavily upon his rapier. "They're drawing off; we've tired them out!"
"They'll never tire while that hellhound of an Indian whoops them on andthat yellow devil, Luiz Sebastian, backs him up," said the overseer.
"They are gathering for a rush," said Landless.
The assailants had fallen back to the opposite wall, leaving a space,cumbered with the dead and slippery with blood, between them and thedefenders of the house. In this space now appeared the lithe figure, andthe watchful, large-eyed, amber countenance of Luiz Sebastian.
"Ohe!" he cried, "slaves, all of you! Ashantees, Popoes, Angolans,Fidas, Malimbe, Ambrice! you who are all black! think of the jungle andthe village; think of the wives and the children! think of the slaverand the slave ship! You from the Indies, you who are like me, LuizSebastian, think of the blood which is the white man's blood and yet theblood of a slave--and hate the white man as I, Luiz Sebastian, hate him!Kill them and take the women!"
The swollen figure and dreadful face of Roach appeared at his side."Ay!" cried the murderer, with a tremendous oath. "Kill them! Smashthem, batter them, hear them scream! In the old man's pocket is the keyof his money chest. It is filled with bright yellow gold. Kill him andget the money, and away to turn pirate and get more!"
"It grows late!" cried Trail. "We must up sail, and away before thedawn!"
The gigantic, horribly painted form of the Ricahecrian chief stalkedinto the open space and commenced a harangue in his own tongue. It wasshort, but effective.
"God!" said the Colonel, under his breath, and grasped his bloodstainedsword more closely.
With one shrill and horrible cry Indians, negroes, mulattoes, andvillainous whites were upon them, breaking their line, forcing themapart into knots of two and three away from the frail barrier, behindwhich cowered the screaming women, striking with knife and tomahawk, axeand club. Two of the Colonel's men fell, one under the knife of theseven-year-captive Ricahecrian, the other beaten down by the jagged andknotted club with which Roach, foaming at the mouth, and swearinghorribly, struck madly to left and right. The Ricahecrian, drawing theknife from the heart of his victim, rushed on to where Landless and SirCharles still maintained, by dint of desperate fighting, their positionbefore the women, but Luiz Sebastian with Roach and half a dozen negroesswept between him and his prey. He swerved aside, and, bounding into themidst of the women, seized the one who chanced to be in his path,--ayoung and beautiful girl, newly come over from Plymouth, and a favoritewith the ladies of Verney Manor. The despairing scream which the poorchild uttered rang out above all the tumult. Landless turned, saw, anddarted to her aid--but too late. With one hand the savage gathered upthe loosened hair, with the other he passed the scalping knife aroundthe young head--when Landless reached them, she who so short time beforehad been so fair to see, lay a shocking spectacle, writhing in her deathagony. With white lips and burning eyes Landless swung his gun above hishead, and brought it down upon the shaven crown of Grey Wolf. It crackedlike an egg shell, and the Indian dropped across the body of his victim.
Landless, springing back to the post he had quitted, found Sir Charlesin desperate case, but as coolly composed as ever, and with the air ofthe Court still about him despite his bared head and torn andbloodstained clothing, treating those who came against him to anexhibition of swordsmanship such as the New World had probably rarelywitnessed. Landless, striking down a cutpurse from Tyburn, saw him runthe Turk through, and saw behind him the nightmare visage and the raisedclub of Roach. He uttered a warning cry, but the club descended, and thehandsome, careless face fell backwards, and the slender debonair figureswayed and fell. Landless caught him, saw that he was but stunned, andletting him drop to the floor at his feet, wrenched the sword from hishand, and stood over him, facing Roach with a stern smile.
The murderer raised his club again.
"We've met at last!" he cried with a taunting laugh. "Do you rememberthe tobacco house, and what I said? I says: 'Every dog has its day, andI'll have mine.' It's my day now!"
"And I said," rejoined Landless, "'I let you go now, but one day I willkill you.' And _that_ day has come."
With an oath Roach brought down the club. Landless swerved, and the blowfell harmlessly; before the arm could be again raised, he caught it,held it with a grasp of steel, and shortened his sword. The miscreantsaw his death, and screamed for mercy. "Remember Robert Godwyn!" saidLandless, and drove the blade home.
The sword was a more effective weapon than the gun, and with it he keptthe enemy at bay, while he glanced despairingly around. There were asmany dead as living within the room by this. The floor was piled withthe slain; they made traps for the living who in the wild surging to andfro stumbled over them, and fell, and were slain before they could rise.Three fourths of the dead belonged to the insurgents, but the attackedhad suffered severely. Of the thirty men with whom the defense hadcommenced there now remained but twelve, and of that number several werewounded. The Colonel was bleeding from a cut on the head, the underoverseer had a ball through his arm, Sir Charles still lay withoutmovement at Landless's feet.
Forced, together with almost all of his party, by the mad rush of theassailants to the further end of the room, the master had seen withagony the women left well-nigh defenseless. Followed by Woodson,Havisham, Regulus, and young Whittington, he had all but cut his wayback to them, when a fresh influx from the hall of slaves and whites whohad been engaged in plundering the house, drove them apart again.
The newcomers came fresh to the work, maddened, moreover, by themaster's wines. They advanced upon the Colonel and his party withdrunken shouts, some brandishing rude weapons, others silver salvers andtankards, the spoil of the plate chest. The voice of Luiz Sebastian rangthrough the room. "Quick work of them, friends; I smell the morning!"With a laugh and a scrap of Spanish song upon his lips he came atLandless with a knife, but a turn of the white man's wrist sent theweapon hurling through the air.
"Curse you!" cried the mulatto, springing out of reach of the deadlypoint, and holding his arm from which the blood was flowing. "Mother ofGod! but I will have you yet!" and bounded towards his weapon. Landless,steadily watchful, and pointing that fatal sword this way or thatagainst all comers, cleared for himself and the still senseless man athis feet a circle into which few cared to intrude, for the fame of thatblade had gone through the room. "Leave him until we have dealt with theothers," said the mulatto between his teeth. "Then will we give himreason to wish that he had never been born."
A touch upon his arm, and Landless turned to find Patricia standingbeside him. "Go back," he cried. "Go back!"
"They are murdering them all over there," she said steadily. "My fatheris dead. I saw him fall."
"Not so, madam. He did but stumble over the dead. See, Woodson fightsthem back from him. For God's sake, get back behind the barricade!"
She shook her head. "He is dead. They will all be dead directly, mycousin and all. My father cannot help me, and he who lies here cannothelp me. I will not be taken alive by these devils, and I have no knife.Will you kill me?"
"My God!"
"Quick!" she said in the same low, steady tones. "They are coming; theywill beat us down in a moment. Kill me!"
For answer Landless raised his voice until it rang high above theuproar, and arrested the attention of the combatants on both sides."Fight with a will, men," he cried, "for help is at hand! Do you nothear the hoofs of the horses?"
"By God! you are right!" cried the Colonel, suddenly struggling to hisf
eet. "Hold out, men! Anthony Nash reached Rosemead, and has brought usaid!"
"The dog priest!" the mulatto cried fiercely to Trail. "Was he here?Then they have sent for help, and Mother of God! it is here!"
"And coming at the planter's pace," answered Trail. "They will be uponus before we reach the boats."
The mulatto glanced at the friend with whom he had fled the Indies witha sinister smile. "Ay," he muttered to himself. "They will be upon usindeed, before we reach the boats, wherefore Luiz Sebastian goes not toturn pirate this time. He throws in his lot with the Ricahecrians whosecanoes are close at hand in the inlet that winds into the Pamunkey.They are very swift, and in the Blue Mountains there is safety. But onething first."
He gave a shrill and peculiar whistle which brought to him half a dozenIndians. He pointed to the body of Grey Wolf and then to Landless. Ayell burst from the lips of the savages, and they rushed upon thelatter. He met them, ran his sword through the heart of the first, ofthe second: Sir Charles moaned, stirred, and struggled to his knees. Athird raised his knife; it would have descended, but Landless dartedbetween the savage and the half-dazed, utterly helpless man at whom theblow was aimed, struck up the arm, and plunged his sword into the darkbreast. A broken oar, snatched from the floor by the mulatto, descendedupon his head, and with a woman's scream sounding in his ear, he fellheavily to the floor, and lay as one dead.
When he came to himself, it was to find the great room still crowdedwith men, and filled with noise and confusion, but the thronging figuresand the excited voices were those of friends--of servants from theneighboring plantations, of small planters and tenants of ColonelsLudwell and Fitzhugh, the Surveyor-General, and Dr. Anthony Nash. He sawthe master, panting, bleeding, but exultant, seize Dr. Nash's hands inhis own. He saw Sir Charles smile and extend his box of richly scentedsnuff to Colonel Ludwell, and the women leaving their corner of refugewith hysterical laughter and tears; saw Betty Carrington in her father'sarms, and Mistress Lettice being helped across a heap of dead by CaptainLaramore. Indians, negroes, mulatto, scoundrel whites, were gone.
"They got off clear--the d--d villains," said Dick Whittington,appearing beside him, "just before the horses came up. But Woodson hasgone after the slaves and the convicts with a party of Carrington's men.He'll catch them, I'm thinking, and they'll come to a pirate'send--that's all the pirating they'll get. The Indians will get cleanaway; they're most to the Pamunkey by now, I reckon."
Landless staggered to his feet, and put his hand to his head, which wasbleeding. "The women are all safe?" he demanded.
"All but poor Annis," said the boy. "When I saw the poor maid fall, Ithanked the Lord that Joyce Whitbread was safe in her mother's cottageat Banbury. But none of the others were hurt. There is Mistress Letticeand Mistress Betty Carrington--I do not see Mistress Patricia."
The master of Verney Manor, pouring forth a rapid account of the lateaffair to the gentlemen who crowded around him, was brought to a deadstop by the appearance of a man who had burst through the throng, andnow stood before him, half naked, bleeding, with white, drawn face andwild eyes.
"What is it? Speak!" cried the master, terror of he knew not whatgrowing in his eyes.
"Your daughter, Colonel Verney!" cried Landless. "She is not here. TheRicahecrians have carried her off."
With a sound between a groan and a scream the Colonel staggered, andwould have fallen had not Carrington caught him. "Gone! Impossible!"cried Sir Charles vehemently, all his studied insouciance thrown to thewinds. "She was with the women behind the barrier that we made. She ishere."
He began to call her by name, loudly, appealingly, but there came noanswering voice.
"She will not answer," said Landless hoarsely. "She is not here. She waswith the women until just before the last. She saw her father fall, andthought him dead, and you dead, too, Sir Charles Carew, and she came tome, and prayed me to kill her. Then we heard the sound of the horses,and six Indians--Ricahecrians--with Luiz Sebastian, came against me. Shestood at my side while I killed three. Then I was struck down, and Iheard her scream as I fell."
The master freed himself from Carrington's supporting arm, and raisedfrom his hands a face that had suddenly become that of an old man. Butthe voice was steady with which he said quietly,--
"Let them search the room thoroughly, for the child may be laying in afaint beneath these dead, though my soul doth tell me that it is as thisman says, and that she is gone. But we will after them at once, and,please God, we will have her back, safe and sound. They have but anhour's start."
"Ay," muttered young Whittington to Havisham. "Only an hour. But theChickahominies build the swiftest canoes in this corner of the world,and I have heard that the canoes of the Ricahecrians are to the canoesof the Chickahominies as swallows are to cranes."
Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia Page 27
