Side by side the three emerged quickly from the woods. A sudden viperish hiss from his ally caused Frazer to turn instantly, and the enemies stood face to face. Swiftly Towaye started to raise his bow, but swifter still Marlowe’s pistol sprang to a deadly aim. Yet the poet, fearing to kill, withheld his bullet. In the next instant he would have changed his aim and fired, but the risk of missing his opponent altogether and receiving the arrow in his own breast held him motionless. Thus between these two there was temporarily a deadlock, while both stood transfixedly waiting for the slightest error of movement on the other’s part. Vytal, however, being in the first second unimpeded, rushed toward his adversary with rapier drawn. “Halt!” The peremptory cry came from Frazer in a sharp note of menace, as, guarding himself with a rapier in one hand, he now raised with the other a small curved horn to his lips. Keeping it poised as though ready at an instant to sound an alarum, he called threateningly: “Two hundred Winginas lie within the forest waiting. A single blast means death to each of you;” then, with a laugh, “I pray you reconsider the expediency of attacking me now.” Vytal stood still, controlling himself by a great effort. In his place doubtless the poet and many another would have rushed forward with rash impetuosity, but the campaigner’s trained hand could even compass that which to a brave soldier in the heat of fight is the most difficult of tactics, namely, the lowering of his sword. The two men stood at gaze, Vytal fettered by the realization that his own death would in all probability mean the decimation of the whole colony, and Frazer by the rigid Fate before him. For once the soldier hesitated. Instinct hinted that threats of alarum were empty, but reason demanded caution. The possibility that an overwhelming force lay near at hand in ambush was by no means slight. Suddenly Vytal uttered a low order to Manteo, who thereupon, step by step, retreated almost imperceptibly toward the woods. “Halt!” Again the horn touched Frazer’s lips. “I forbid you,” he said, “to arouse the settlers.” But Manteo only looked to Vytal for a sign. “Remain,” said the latter, calmly, and the deadlock was now complete. “It is strange, Master Frazer,” observed the poet, still covering Towaye with his pistol, “that your horn forbears so long. In troth, I begin to doubt its efficacy.” Frazer laughed. “At any instant I am ready to prove it, Sir Poet. ’Troth, ’tis only a feeling of kindness that delays your doom, mingled perhaps with a slight curiosity. Doom, say I? Yea, doom. This colony will perish. Perchance you know not that John White, your governor, hath come to the very shore of Roanoke and departed.[9] His own men played mutineers. He could not seek you at Croatan. Ay, on my oath, ’fore God, a ship came and went away. ’Tis common report in England. Roanoke is deserted, say they; Virginia, a savage wilderness.”