Opposing this view, many authorities believe that a massacre occurred by which many of the English suffered at the hands of hostile savages. In the ensuing story, however, I have ventured to explain the oblivion of the colony’s end in a way which I believe has not yet been suggested. After this preamble I hasten to assure the reader—perhaps already surfeited with historical novels—that he shall find scarce more of history in the whole tale following than in the foreword just concluded. The “manners and customs” also are rigidly suppressed. I have made bold, though, to use several of the colonists’ names which have been preserved, but the conception of character is my own. W. F. P. John Vytal A Tale of the Lost Colony Book 1 CHAPTER I “… framed of finer mould than common men.” —MARLOWE, in _The Jew of Malta_. It is not to yesterday that we would take you now, but to a day before innumerable yesterdays, across the dead sea of Time to a haven mutable yet immortal. For the Elizabethan era is essentially of the quick, although its dead have lain entombed for centuries. The world of that renascent period, alight with the spontaneous fire of intellectual and passionate life, shines through the space of ages as though then, for the first time, it had been cast off from a pregnant sun. Overcoming the remoteness of the epoch by an appreciation of this vivid reality, we pause at the outset near the great south gate of London Bridge as it stood three centuries ago. On a certain April afternoon the massive stones and harsh outlines served to heighten by contrast the effect of lithe grace and nonchalance apparent in the figure of a young man, who, leaning lightly against the barbacan, presented a memorable picture of idleness and ease. Yet a fleeting expression in the youthful face belied the indolence of attitude. For in more ways than one “Kind Kyt Marlowe” resembled the spring-tide, whose tokens of approach he intuitively recognized. His eyes, usually soft and slumberous with the light of dreams, now and again shone brilliant like black diamonds. With all his careless incontinence, he possessed a latent power, a deep, indeterminable force, portending broad hot days and nights of storm.