—now began to melt. The ice disappeared from the higher courses of the rivers,
and the water began to rush with greater speed.
There were several bales of furs, a few freshwater pearls, and many skins,
including four great buffalo hides.
“We will go to the coast,” I said that night when all were together. “With luck
we shall meet Tilly and the Abigail.”
“Who will go and who will stay?” Fitch asked.
“All will go who wish it,” I replied. “We should go down very swiftly, but the
return will be slower.”
“I do not know,” John Quill said. “I may stay. I have found land that I like,
and I may build my own cabin, plow my own land.” He looked up at me. “I never
owned my own land, Captain. I farmed all my life on land owned by others.
“It is good earth. I like to see it turned by the plow, I like to feel it in my
fingers. It is fine soil, and it will grow a fine crop.”
“Aye,” Slater agreed. “I feel the same. I have laid out a square mile alongside
John’s, and I cannot believe it. I walk through the forest, along the banks of
the stream, and I see blackberries growing in thickets, and nuts falling from
trees, and it is mine.”
“The Catawbas,” I said, “can teach you much of planting. You are farmers, but
they know this land, this climate. It is well to listen. I think you each know
more than they, but what they can teach is important, so learn from them.”
Quill nodded. “I have talked with their head men. I have agreed to give them
one-third of my crop for five years and then the land is mine. Slater did the
same.”
“You will go or stay, Slater?”
“I feel as John does. I will stay. I wish to get in a crop, and to know my land
better.”
The others would come, and we talked much of the going, for there were other
streams down which we might go to the coast, others that called for a shorter
trip overland, and we could build boats or rafts for the trip.
In the end it was decided to go back the way we had come, but then to sail down
the coast, and return up one of the nearer rivers.
Lying abed, and before sleep came, Abby and I talked of this. “I want to go,”
she said, “but so much can happen. I worry about Kin.”
“He will travel well,” I said, “and it is our way. He can learn no younger.”
The wind whispered around the eaves, a soft wind, a spring wind. I stirred
uneasily. Was I doing the right thing? Should I dare such a long trip?
Yet we all needed a change, we all looked forward to seeing a ship from home.
Three days later, at the break of dawn, we started our trek to the boats.
26
The water was a mirror, polished and perfect. Only our oars made a ripple, only
our oarlocks a sound. A gull sailed by above, no wing moving, and our boats
moved slowly outward from the land, moved toward the Outer Banks lying warm in
the midday sun.
There was no ship upon the water, no sign of sail against the sky. Here all was
quiet, and we watched, straining our ears for something beyond silence.
How many ships had come this way in times past? How many an eye had looked
across this empty water? For no man may know the history of the sea, nor does
the sea have a memory, or leave a record, save its wrecks.
To cross the wide ocean must never have been a problem. All that was needed was
the courage, the desire, for men had sailed farther, long before. The Malays had
sailed from their islands south of the Equator, from Java and Sumatra to
Madagascar. And Cheng Ho, the eunuch from the court of Imperial China, had
sailed five times to Africa before Columbus or Vasco Da Gama.
What wrecks might be buried in the sand out there where the warm Gulf current
from the south came up to meet the cold Arctic current from the north? What
unknown ships might here have ended their days?
Hanno had sailed around Africa … and where else? For long the Phoenicians and
the Carthaginians had kept the Straits of Gibraltar guarded so that no other
ships but theirs might sail to the seas beyond, and thus to the markets they
wished to keep for themselves. In later times men had begun to call the Straits
the Pillars of Hercules, whereas, in truly ancient times, the Pillars had been
far to the east, on the coast of Greece. But this men had forgotten, and names
are easily transferred, one place to another.
Of these things I had learned much from Sakim, who was a scholar, a wise man in
his own land, and versed in many sciences.
The Philistines, he told me, were a sea people who came to the shores of what
they call the Holy Land from somewhere to the west. They sailed over the seas in
their high-prowed boats to attack the shores of the Levant and of Egypt, and
they settled there and brought the first iron known to that coast.
Many nations had sailed far upon deep water before them, and even before the
sailors of Crete and Thera, called Atlantis by some, had gone west of Africa.
The idea that the world was flat was never put forth by a seafaring man. It was
a tale told to landsmen, or to merchants who might be inclined to compete for
markets, for in those days the source of raw material was closely guarded.
Coming up to the inner shores of the Outer Banks, I remembered the sunken ship
and the alligator, and wondered idly what had become of Jonathan Delve … and
of Bardle, too, for that matter.
The thought of Bardle was worrying. If he should appear now, with a ship, we
would be helpless before his guns. Yet it was unlikely he would spend much time
along these shores, and after months of absence he would not expect to see us
again.
A low, sandy shore lay before us, topped with brush and some scattered groves of
trees. These Outer Banks stretched along the coast for a great distance …
nearly two hundred miles, I had heard, but I suspected it was not quite so far.
We took shelter in a deeply notched bay of fair extent almost exactly opposite
the tip of the mainland that extended down from the north into the smaller
sound. The Bank was at that place scarcely more than a mile wide, and we had
drawn our boats close in shore. We waded to the beach.
We made camp there.
For days we camped on the beach, keeping always a lookout on the farther shore,
but we saw no ship. Yet it was a quiet time, enjoyed by all. With Abby I took
long walks along the shore where one could see for miles. We searched the shore
for whatever the tide might have washed up. Obviously, no Indian had been along
for some time for we found a cask of good brandy, and the wreck of a lifeboat
still containing a sail and a boat hook. We found several gold coins, the
skeleton of a man, half buried in sand, many logs, ships timbers, and other
debris. We found three boxes, close together on the sand, with water-soaked
clothing, all of which we took back to our boat for ourselves or the Catawba.
Despite all this, for miles the beach was bare and empty.
We kept our fires low, used dry and relatively smokeless driftwood, and kept a
sharp lookout at all times.
Each day brought an increase of doubt and worry. Despite the pleasure of
camping, it was beginning to pall, and still no ship came.
Was our voyage downriver all for nothing? Should we wait longer? Or once more
return to our fort?
Then on the twenty-fourth day, while we were gathering driftwood, I looked up
and saw the ship.
She was not more than a mile offshore, and feeling her way south. I looked at
her long through my glass, and Jeremy studied her as well.
“British,” he said, after a bit, “let’s give her a hail.”
“We shall,” I said, “and then do you, Pim, O’Hara, and Magill stay from sight.
Peter and Sakim can stay with the boats, and also keep out of sight. I’ll meet
them with Watkins and Glasco.”
“If it is going aboard a ship there is,” Abby said, “we shall go as well. I want
Kin to see a ship, and all of us to have a bite of English food.”
“All right,” I agreed reluctantly, “come along.”
Yet I took the time to charge two pistols and conceal them under my buckskin