Ananias smiled at this with triumph, and resumed his appeal. “I ask you, my masters, is it not far better to risk a thousand storms by sea than encounter death by torture or slow starvation? I doubt not the Indian chieftain is well meaning, but so also is Sir Walter Raleigh; yet to what a pass hath his invitation brought us! The time is come to save ourselves.” He hesitated, for at this moment his daughter, the little Virginia, who had chased a humming-bird across the square, stopped in her flight and looked up at him. When his eyes fell to hers he winced perceptibly, and then his face, flushing for an instant, seemed superlatively beautiful under the recall of a lost masculinity. But suddenly his glance wandered to Eleanor, who stood aloof watching him, and the old, drawn, pallid look reasserted itself, whereat, slowly, he turned on his heel and, with eyes shamefully cast down, re-entered the cabin of Gyll Croyden. “On the morrow,” said Vytal, “we go to Croatan.” CHAPTER XVIII “His looks do measure heaven and dare the gods: His fiery eyes are fixed upon the earth.” —MARLOWE, in _Tamburlaine_. Oftentimes the necessity for mere physical exertion alleviates the dull pain of hopelessness and induces men to forget themselves. The renewed activity may be long delayed and unsought, but when at last it comes the change is everywhere apparent. For months the colony had been subject to a kind of lethargy, a spirit of retrospection and dark foreboding, which even the endeavors of Vytal and his men could not dispel. But on the day of exodus there was not even an attempt at prophecy. The tangible present became paramount. Each man, with a few exceptions, acted for himself, and thus for all. Even selfishness, if it be positive, may result in a benefit widespread beyond its own intent. The sun, rising slowly, seemed at last to pause and balance itself on the edge of the flaming sea, like an oven’s red-hot lid for a moment lifted from its hole. The sky, papery, blue, and shallow—a ceiling painted azure in clumsy imitation of the heavens—seemed so low as to shut out air. One might almost have expected to see strips of the blue peel off in places, cracked by the consuming heat. The bosom of the sea lay motionless, as if the breath of life had gone forever; and the corpse of the earth was carrion for the sun. But the toilers persisted. The emigration had begun. For hours and hours the boats proceeded on their way until day was nearly gone, and at last, as if Fate would deride the colony, a cloud, for which all had prayed so long, crept up over the horizon. A low, muffled roar came across the water, and, in the distance, rain fell. Ananias Dare, who, with Vytal, Marlowe, and Manteo, stood in the bow of the pinnace, suggested that all should immediately return. But Vytal refused. “It would be months,” he affirmed, “even under the most favorable conditions, before our planters could replenish the storehouse.”