Indians. How he had gotten free of them, we could not learn.
For three weeks we waited, and saw no sail. Yet once again we enjoyed our
sojourn upon the beach, and the change of diet provided by the sea. It was a
pleasant, easy time. There was game in the woods and the fish were running well
and the only Indians we encountered were friendly and inclined to trade.
Kin, I think, was the happiest of us all. He ran along the shore … miles of
almost straight beach, all open to sun and sky. He was brown as an Indian, tall
for his age, and a quiet, serious child.
On our fourteenth day we saw a sail, but it passed us by. Several days later we
saw another. Warily, it came closer, and through our glasses we could see a man
studying us through his own spyglass. He took soundings, then anchored and put a
boat over.
Several men took to the boat and, when nearing shore, one of them suddenly stood
up and waved.
It was John Pike.
When the boat came closer he leaped over the side and came splashing to us, his
face lit with pleasure. “Barnabas! And Mistress Abigail! It is good to see you!”
We welcomed him to our campfire and he sent the boat back for wine and ale.
“I have done well,” he said after awhile. “The fluyt is now part mine and I also
own another ship now, which trades abroad.”
He held Brian on his lap as he talked. “Barnabas, if you’d like the boys to go
to school in London, let me have them. I’d treat them like they were my own.”
That Pike had done well was obvious. He was a man of business, prosperous, yet
still adventurous. But he should have known I would not thus part with my sons.
Later, he took us aboard his ship. He lingered for several days, taking on fresh
water, trading with Indians and with us, and catching a supply of fresh fish as
well as some game from the forest.
To Abby and Lila he gave some bales of assorted dress goods, and to me, canvas,
tools, and seed for grain and vegetables. He had planned well, and what we might
have thought of needing, he could supply.
On the last day, Jeremy Ring said suddenly, “Captain Pike, I would be pleased if
you’d fetch your Bible.”
Pike looked up, surprised, at Jeremy.
“I want to get married,” said Jeremy quietly, “to Lila.”
Astonished, I looked at her. She was blushing, her head hanging.
“Lila!” Abby exclaimed. “Is this true? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Blushing furiously, Lila said, “I didn’t know. He didn’t ask me.”
“You knew how I felt,” Ring said.
“Yes, yes, I did.” She glanced at him, suddenly shy. “I did.”
“Well, then?”
“Yes … I will. Of course, I will.”
The ceremony was brief, and we all stood on the shore with a light wind blowing,
ruffling our hair and blowing the women’s skirts, and Captain Pike read from the
Bible.
When it was over I said to Pike, “You’ll send the news? You know the Icelanders?
They will take the word of Lila’s marriage to Anglesey. Tell them she has
married a good friend and a good man.”
“I will that.”
“And John Tilly? What of him?”
“Why, we’re partners! I thought I had told you. He commands the fluyt when she’s
at sea. We trade in the Spanish Indies. It’s risky, but we’ve some friends who
like to profit a bit in the trade themselves, and although we have to avoid
Spanish warships we make a good thing of it.”
“Slaving?”
“Not us. The Arabs and the Portuguese have that business, and we wish for none
of it. They intrigue with the warlike African tribes who sell them their
prisoners … the ones they themselves used to enslave or kill.
“But I am a free man and would see all men free. John Tilly believes as I do, so
we have no conflict. Slaves are not an easy cargo. I prefer sugar, rum, or
timber … fur if they can be had.”
He sat on a hummock of sand. “You have been to your mountains? And what lies
beyond?”
“More mountains, and then lowlands again, and lovely timbered valleys and
meadows. These I have not seen, but the Catawba tell me they are there.”
“There is much fighting among the Indians?”
“An Indian boy is not a man until he is a warrior. To be a warrior he must
fight, take scalps, count coup. And they do not forget old enmities.”
At last he got up. “Now we must sail. This coast makes me nervous, too.” He
looked at me with keen, thoughtful eyes. “You will stay here? Raise your boys
here?”
“Now, at least. When they grow older we will see the bent of their minds.”
He took my hand, then started to leave. He had gone several steps when he
stopped and turned.
“Barnabas? Do you remember Delve? Jonathan Delve? He was with you awhile, I
believe?”
“What of him?”
“Around a year ago he came down to the coast and was taken aboard a vessel as a
castaway, he and several others. He told the ship’s master of a valuable wreck
of which he knew. When he got the captain ashore, some more of his men were
there and they ambushed and killed the captain and several of his crew. Two
escaped.”
“So?”
“He took the ship, and since has become a pirate and a dangerous man. It is
reported that when drinking he talks often of you. For some reason you are on
his mind.”
“We will be careful.”
Pike walked away over the sand, and I stood and watched him go. He had ships at
sea, a reputation as a successful man, no doubt. Would I trade that for what I
had?
I would not.
Feeling better, I walked back to Abby. “We will go home now,” I said.
30
Where go the years? Down what tunnel of time are poured the precious days?
We are young, and the fires within us burn bright.
All the world lies before us and nothing is too great to be done, no challenge
too awesome.
Then suddenly the days are no more, the years are gone, and the time that
remains is little, indeed.
Kin has grown tall, as fine a woodsman as I know, and as good a man. Brian is
the thoughtful one. Each book I have he has read and reread, and soon, I know,
he will go from me to a wider world. Regret is in me that he would leave, yet
happiness, too, for he has his own life before him in a bigger world if not a
better one.
Yance? What shall I say of Yance? His heart is pure, his strength the greatest
of them all, I think. Yance is strong, he is rough, he is always wrestling,
fighting, climbing, doing, changing.
He is a good son, faithful to his mother and to me. To his brothers, he is
loyal. Yet he acts before he thinks. He is a bundle of muscle and impulse, a
swift runner, a dead shot with any weapon, and a dangerous man because of it.
He listens when I speak, and he obeys. Yet sometimes he acts before I have a
time to speak.
And then there is Jublain … named for my old friend but called Jubal.
He is the truly quiet one. A ghost in the woods, he moves like a shadow, and
lives much with the Indians. He is gone for weeks, then comes and squats against
the wall and listens to the talk and is gone again.
To me he gives love and respect, to his mother, adoration, and that is as I
would have it.
We none of us know how far he has gone or what he has seen, for he rarely speaks
of it. Sometimes stories come to us … an Indian from the west once came among
us, looking for him. Jubal had been gone for weeks, and the Indian told us by
sign language that Jubal had been far beyond the great river that divides the
country in two … we had not known that.
Kin has no wife, nor has Brian or Jubal. Yance does, of course. He went far to
the north last year and came upon a colony that had settled there several years
before. For days he scouted about, watching the people go about their work. He
had done the same at Jamestown when he grew old enough to go so far from home,
for Raleigh had at last planted his colony and my boys used to go down to the
place where they were and lie in the woods and watch them to see how they lived.
Yance had done the same at the place in the north, the place they were calling