Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
Landless, tightly bound to a great bay tree with thongs of deerskin,
watched the night grow old with hard, despairing eyes. The stars paled
and the moon rose softly above the tree-tops, silvering the world
beneath. By her light he saw the little glade of which the tree to
which he was bound marked the centre, and the recumbent forms of those
who were to return to the settlements stretched on Indian mats laid upon
the short grass. Worn out with the toil of the day and the storm and
stress of the night before, they slumbered heavily. The watcher in
their midst thought, "If I could sleep!" and resolutely closed his eyes,
but the vision of a flying canoe and a brightness of golden hair, which
had vexed him, passing up the reaches of the river over and over and
over again, was with him still, and he opened them and raised them to
the stars, thinking, "She may be above them now."
How still it was! no air, no breath, no sound—the thongs, that, wound
many times around his body, bound him to the tree, fell at his feet, a
figure slipped from behind the trunk, laid a hand, in which was a knife
that gleamed in the mooonlight, upon his arm, and whispering, "Follow,"
glided over the grass, past the sleepers and into the forest.
Swiftly but cautiously Landless went after it. The overseer lay within
ten feet of him; he passed him, passed the unconscious servants, crossed
a strip of moonlight, entered the shadow of a locust, and all but
stumbled over a man lying asleep beneath it. He recoiled, and a twig
snapped beneath his foot. The sleeper stirred, turned upon his side,
and opened his eyes. The moon, now high in the heavens, shone so
brightly that there was soft light even beneath the heavy branches of
the trees, and by this light his Majesty’s Surveyor-General and his
Majesty’s rebellious, convicted, and condemned servant recognized each
other. For one long minute they stared each at the other, then, without
a word or sign to denote that he was aware that aught stood between him
and the moonlight, Carrington lay down again, pillowed his head upon his
arm and closed his eyes. Landless was passing on with a light and steady
step and the ghost of a smile upon his lips when the apparently
slumbering figure put forth an arm and laid something long and dark
across his pathway. He glanced quickly around, but the Surveyor-General
lay motionless, with closed eyes. Stooping, he took up the object,
which proved to be a richly inlaid musket with flask and pouch. He
paused again, but no sign coming from the quietly breathing form on the
grass he lightly and silently left it and the tiny encampment and
entered the forest, where he found a dark figure leaning against a tree,
waiting for him. Without a word it moved forward into the dense shadow
of the forest, and in the same silence he followed it. They were now in
thick woods, moving beneath interlocking branches and a vast canopy of
wild grape that, stretching from the summit of one lofty tree to that of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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