Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
I AND Black Lamoral were leading a forlorn hope. With all my old company
behind us, we were thundering upon an enemy as thick as ants, covering
the face of the earth. Down came Black Lamoral, and the hoofs of every
mad charger went over me. For a time I was dead; then I lived again, and
was walking with the forester's daughter in the green chase at home. The
oaks stretched broad sheltering arms above the young fern and the little
wild flowers, and the deer turned and looked at us. In the open spaces,
starring the lush grass, were all the yellow primroses that ever
bloomed. I gathered them for her, but when I would have given them to
her she was no longer the forester's daughter, but a proud lady,
heiress to lands and gold, the ward of the King. She would not take the
primroses from a poor gentleman, but shook her head and laughed sweetly,
and faded into a waterfall that leaped from a pink hill into a waveless
sea. Another darkness, and I was captive to the Chickahominies, tied to
the stake. My arm and shoulder were on fire, and Opechancanough came and
looked at me, with his dark, still face and his burning eyes. The fierce
pain died, and I with it, and I lay in a grave and listened to the loud
and deep murmur of the forest above. I lay there for ages on ages before
I awoke to the fact that the darkness about me was the darkness of
a ship's hold, and the murmur of the forest the wash of the water
alongside. I put out an arm and touched, not the side of a grave, but a
ship's timbers. I stretched forth the other arm, then dropped it with a
groan. Some one bent over me and held water to my lips. I drank, and my
senses came fully to me. “Diccon!” I said.
“It's not Diccon,” replied the figure, setting down a pitcher. “It is
Jeremy Sparrow. Thank God, you are yourself again!”
“Where are we?” I asked, when I had lain and listened to the water a
little longer.
“In the hold of the George,” he answered. “The ship sank by the bows,
and well-nigh all were drowned. But when they upon the George saw that
there was a woman amongst us who clung to the poop deck, they sent their
longboat to take us off.”
The light was too dim for me to read his face, so I touched his arm.
“She was saved,” he said. “She is safe now. There are gentlewomen
aboard, and she is in their care.”
I put my unhurt arm across my eyes.
“You are weak yet,” said the minister gently. “The Spaniard's ball, you
know, went through your shoulder, and in some way your arm was badly
torn from shoulder to wrist. You have been out of your head ever since
we were brought here, three days ago. The chirurgeon came and dressed
your wound, and it is healing well. Don't try to speak,--I'll tell
you all. Diccon has been pressed into service, as the ship is short of
hands, having lost some by fever and some overboard. Four of the pirates
were picked up, and hung at the yardarm next morning.”
He moved as he spoke, and something clanked in the stillness. “You are
ironed!” I exclaimed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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