Then, after the first bewildering moment of gloom, when hoarse cries for lights drowned softer sounds, and the staircase voiced its strain with new groans under the stampede, and each swordsman mistook his neighbor for the enemy, with the result of blundering wounds in the black passage—after that moment of havoc there came a lull, a loud volley of oaths, and the breeches-maker’s laugh was heard crackling like dry wood amid the roar of an angry flame. For one instant even the patch of sky framed by the casement was obscured, and those looking toward the window saw it filled by a dark form that came and went as a cloud across the moon. Vytal, having gained the sill, had leaped far out into the Thames. Book II CHAPTER I “What star shines yonder in the east? The loadstar of my life.” —MARLOWE, in _The Jew of Malta_. “The 8th we weighed anchor at Plymouth, and departed thence for Virginia.” With this terse statement of fact an old-time traveller is content to record the beginning of a memorable voyage. It was on the 8th of May, 1587, that two ships—one known as the _Admiral_, of a hundred and twenty tons, the other a fly-boat—set sail westward from the coast of England. There was also a pinnace of small burden carried on board the larger vessel, and ready to be manned for the navigation of shallow waters; but this, like a child in arms, was a thing of promise rather than present ability. The aim of the voyage is briefly outlined: to establish an English colony in Virginia, where previous attempts at settlement had resulted in desertion and no success; to find fifteen men who had been left the year before to hold the territory for England; to plant crops; to produce and manufacture commodities for export; to extend commerce and dominions; to demand the lion’s share between possessions of France and Spain—the great central portion of a continent; and thus in all ways first and last to uphold the supremacy and majesty of England and the queen. The ships had been provisioned at Portsmouth and Cowes, where many of the colonists embarked, including among the notable ones two Indians, Manteo and Towaye by name, who, several years before, had been brought to England from Roanoke by Arthur Barlow. At Portsmouth, among others, three soldiers came aboard, booted and spurred as though from a recent journey in the saddle; the one slim, tall, and bronzed by the sun; another no shorter, but broad and heavy in proportion; the third laughable in aspect, being fat, as if, like a stage buffoon, he had stuffed a pillow in his doublet, and leading, much to the astonishment of the passengers, a bear-cub that copied his own waddling gait, and followed on a chain of bondage with remarkable fidelity.