Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
There had been no rain for a long time, and the multitude of leaves
underfoot were crisp and dry. The wind was loud in them and in the
swaying trees. Off in the forest was a bog, and the will-o'-the-wisps
danced over it,--pale, cold flames, moving aimlessly here and there like
ghosts of those lost in the woods. Toward the middle of the night some
heavy animal crashed through a thicket to the left of us, and tore away
into the darkness over the loud-rustling leaves; and later on wolves'
eyes gleamed from out the ring of darkness beyond the firelight. Far on
in the night the wind fell and the moon rose, changing the forest into
some dim, exquisite, far-off land, seen only in dreams. The Indians
awoke silently and all at once, as at an appointed hour. They spoke for
a while among themselves; then we were loosed from the trees, and the
walk toward death began anew.
On this march the werowance himself stalked beside me, the moonlight
whitening his dark limbs and relentless face. He spoke no word, nor did
I deign to question or reason or entreat. Alike in the darkness of the
deep woods, and in the silver of the glades, and in the long twilight
stretches of sassafras and sighing grass, there was for me but one
vision. Slender and still and white, she moved before me, with her wide
dark eyes upon my face. _Jocelyn! Jocelyn!_
At sunrise the mist lifted from a low hill before us, and showed an
Indian boy, painted white, poised upon the summit, like a spirit about
to take its flight. He prayed to the One over All, and his voice came
down to us pure and earnest. At sight of us he bounded down the hillside
like a ball, and would have rushed away into the forest had not a
Paspahegh starting out of line seized him and set him in our midst,
where he stood, cool and undismayed, a warrior in miniature. He was of
the Pamunkeys, and his tribe and the Paspaheghs were at peace;
therefore, when he saw the totem burnt upon the breast of the werowance,
he became loquacious enough, and offered to go before us to his village,
upon the banks of a stream, some bowshots away. He went, and the
Paspaheghs rested under the trees until the old men of the village came
forth to lead them through the brown fields and past the ring of
leafless mulberries to the strangers' lodge. Here on the green turf mats
were laid for the visitors, and water was brought for their hands. Later
on, the women spread a great breakfast of fish and turkey and venison,
maize bread, tuckahoe and pohickory. When it was eaten, the Paspaheghs
ranged themselves in a semicircle upon the grass, the Pamunkeys faced
them, and each warrior and old man drew out his pipe and tobacco pouch.
They smoked gravely, in a silence broken only by an occasional slow and
stately question or compliment. The blue incense from the pipes mingled
with the sunshine falling freely through the bare branches; the stream
which ran by the lodge rippled and shone, and the wind rose and fell in
the pines upon its farther bank.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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