The din had ceased, and we the living, the victors, stood and looked at the vanquished dead at our feet, and at the dead beyond the gates, and at the neck upon which was no living foe, and at the blue sky bending over all. Our hearts told us, and truly, that the lesson had been taught, and that no more forever need we at Jamestown fear an Indian attack. And then we looked at him whose life we had spared. He opposed our gaze with his folded arms and his head held high and his back against the wall. Slowly, as one man and with no spoken word, we fell back, the half circle straightening into a line, and leaving a clear pathway to the open gates. The wind had ceased to blow, and a sunny stillness lay upon the sand and the rough-hewn wooden stakes and a little patch of tender grass. The church bell began to ring. The Indian out of whose path to life and freedom we had stepped glanced from the line of lowered steel to the open gates and the forest beyond, and understood. For a full minute he waited, not moving a muscle, still and stately as some noble masterpiece in bronze. Then he stepped from the shadow of the wall and moved past us, with his eyes fixed on the forest; there was no change in the superb calm of his face. He went by the huddled dead and the long line of the living that spoke no word, and out of the gates and across the neck, walking slowly, that we might yet shoot him down if we saw fit to repent ourselves. He reached the shadow of the trees: a moment, and the forest had back her own. We sheathed our swords and listened to the governor's few earnest words of thankfulness and recognition; and then we set to work to search for ways to reach and aid those who might be yet alive in the plantations above and below us. Presently there came a great noise from the watchers on the river-bank, and a cry that boats were coming down the stream. It was so, and there were in them white men, nearly all of whom had wounds to show, and cowering women and children--all that were left of the people for miles along the James. Then began that strange procession that lasted throughout the afternoon and night and into the next day, when a sloop dropped down from [v]Henricus with the news that the English were in force there to stand their ground, although their loss had been heavy. Hour after hour they came as fast as sail and oar could bring them, the panic-stricken folk, whose homes were burned, whose kindred were slain, who had themselves escaped as by a miracle. Each boatload had the same tale to tell of treachery, surprise, and fiendish butchery.