“I understand,” repeated Vytal, breathing heavily, and Marlowe, to relieve the tension, declared fervently, “We will defend the women to the last man.” Vytal turned to him as though he would have asked a question, but looked away again in silence. They were now nearing the workers on the beach, who made ready to return for the night to their cabins in the fly-boat and _Admiral_, where they were to sleep until the town had been rebuilt. Seeing the governor stop to speak with one of the assistants, Marlowe turned to his taciturn friend. “May I share that hermit’s hut with you?” “I would share it with no other,” and Vytal looked down at the poet as at a younger brother. Marlowe’s face brightened. He started ahead with a buoyant step. “Now we shall live together, a pair of barbarians, heavily armed against the world and waiting to see which must be the last man.” He would have run on further in his reckless manner, but there came no response to the outburst of defiant enthusiasm. Turning to ascertain the reason, he was surprised to find that his companion, who had dropped behind him, was at this moment entering the woods in company with Manteo, the Indian. “My brother, a tongue of smoke licks the sky far to the southward; yet the forest burns not; the smoke is from the shore.” “You think it is the camp of white men?” “I do; for did I not see a ship asleep at anchor and the gleam of armor under a hill?” A look of intense satisfaction crossed Vytal’s face. “They are come,” he said. CHAPTER X “As had you seen her ’twould have moved your heart, Though countermined with walls of brass, to love, Or at the least to pity.” —MARLOWE, in _The Jew of Malta_. On the third night following Manteo’s return, Vytal and Marlowe were together in the secluded hut of their choosing. The cabin contained but one room, scantily furnished by two pallets of straw, a rough-hewn table, a couple of chairs, and other bare necessities of a home’s interior. The weather was foul, the sky lowering. Occasionally a gleam of distant lightning shot through chinks in the hovel wall, straight across Vytal’s face, as, deep in thought, he sat beside the table. A tempestuous wind, shrieking like a shrew in heated brawl, seemed bent on extinguishing a cresset which had been thrust between the logs, but succeeded only in causing the light to flare uncertainly, as though the torch were being brandished aloft by an unseen hand. As the gale increased, Marlowe, who had been half reclining on his pallet in a dark corner, rose and peered out through the hole in the door which he had made with the skull-like stone. The aperture, jagged and splintered at the edges, had purposely been left uncovered, as the hut’s original windows were still barred.