her time, and there was nothing I could do, I who would have done everything.
John Quill had stopped by that night with a piece of venison from a kill and I
talked to him until he almost had to pull himself away.
There was no reason for my fears, for the child came easily, with no
complications.
Sometime I fell asleep, and was awakened by Sakim’s hand on my shoulder. “It is
time, I think.”
“Is there any sign of them?”
“Perhaps … a little change in the sounds … but very little. Come! I have
coffee.”
Coffee was still a rare thing, but we had acquired a taste for it from our
captured cargo, long ago, and when that was gone we had gotten our supplies from
slave ships bound for the West Indies. Sometimes we were without, but used
ground beans or whatever was available.
Our kitchen table was scoured white. That had been Abby’s doing and I had done
nothing to mar its perfection since she had left. My meals I had taken on a
bench outside the door, and used the table only when writing or reading. Which
led me to think … I had to see if John had poured candles for us. Mine were
getting fewer and fewer.
Sakim filled our cups. “It is good, old friend, that we are together. I see you
have been reading Montaigne. Earlier it was Maimonides … I wish I might
introduce you to Khaldoun … Ibn Khaldoun. His Muquaddimah! That you must
someday read. He was of the greatest of our thinkers … not the greatest,
perhaps, but one of them. A most practical man … like you.”
“I? Practical? I only wish I were. There is a madness in me at times, Sakim, and
much of the time I am the least practical of men.”
“Drink your coffee. There is bread made from the meal of corn here. Lila would
be desolate if she thought you had ignored it.”
“Not Lila. You forget how she is. She does what needs doing and is not hurt by
being ignored. I learned long ago that in her own way our Lila is a
philosopher.”
“Well … I only hope Jeremy realizes. Yet it is easy to philosophize about
marriage when one is unmarried. Let us eat our cornbread. If we are to talk
nonsense it is better to eat while doing so, then the time is not entirely
wasted.”
Sakim put down his cup. “Our good Khaldoun has much to say on the subject of
eating. He maintains that the evidence shows that those who eat little are
superior to those who eat much, in both courage and sensibility.
“Yet we readily accept the idea that a fat man is wise. Was he not wise enough
to provide for himself? But we hesitate to ascribe piety to any but the lean. A
fat prophet could never start a new religion, while a lean, ascetic-looking one
could do it easily.
“A prophet should always come down from the mountain or out of the desert. He
should never arise from the table.
“Also, he must have a rich, strong voice, but not one too cultivated. We tend to
dislike and be suspicious of too cultivated a voice. A prophet’s voice should
have a little roughness in the tones.”
“We had better get to the walls,” I said, a little roughness in my own voice.
“It grows a little thick in here. At least, when I read Montaigne I can close
the book when I am tired of listening.”
“See? I drop my pearls and they are ignored. Well, so be it.”
We climbed the ladder in darkness, feeling our way from rung to rung. Kane
O’Hara loomed beside us. “Nothing,” he said. “But the crickets have stopped.”
As he left, he added, “If you need me, raise your voice or fire a shot. I shall
not sleep, only nod a little over the table.”
“I’ll remain here,” Sakim said, to Kane. “But don’t eat all the cornbread.”
The posts that made up the palisade were of uneven lengths and were deliberately
left so, as that made it more difficult for attackers by night to recognize a
man’s head. The poles averaged between fifteen and sixteen feet above the ground
with a walk running around the wall ten feet above the ground except at the gate
itself. Two ladders led from the ground to the walk, and there were two
blockhouses projecting from the walls to enable defenders to fire along the
walls. The second blockhouse had been added sometime after the first, as we were
continually trying to improve our situation. Jeremy was charging the extra
muskets.
No stars were visible now. The wind was picking up, which made the detection of
any approach a doubtful thing. It was intensely dark, yet our eyes were well
accustomed to the night. So far as I had been able to learn, no Indian had
succeeded in taking a fortified position such as ours, but I knew the dangers of
over-confidence, and tried to imagine how they might attempt it.
A dozen times they had attempted this fort with no success. If they tried again,
it must be because they believed they could succeed.
Something struck the palisade below me… .
Further along something else seemed to fall, and something snake-like whisked
along the walk and disappeared over the wall.
Not quite over. It was a knotted rope, and the knot caught in one of the
interstices between two posts. Instantly, I heard moccasins scrape against the
logs outside, and almost at once a head loomed over.
His weirdly painted face was just inches away from mine and my reaction was
instantaneous: a short, vicious smash in the face with the butt of my musket.
He had not seen me at all, and had thrust his head forward to look, so he took
the full force of my blow and hit the ground with a thud.
“Ropes!” I shouted. “They’re climbing ropes!”
Reversing my musket, I fired at a second head that was looming over the wall
some twenty feet away, and which I could scarcely make out.
It was hand to hand then, and a bitter fight it was. Three Senecas, for such
they proved to be, actually made it over the wall. One we shot as he dropped to
the ground inside, another was killed with a sword thrust.
What was happening beyond my vision I’d no idea. It was no time for looking
about. A big Indian leaped over the wall just before me, a lithe,
splendid-looking rascal, although dimly seen. He no sooner lighted on the balls
of his feet than he lunged at me, knife in hand.
My musket was empty and I’d put it down. There was no chance to draw a gun from
my belt, and he held the knife low and came in fast. With a slap of the hand I
drove the knife-wrist aside and out of line with my body, grasped the wrist, put
a leg across in front of him, and spilled him to the walkway.
He hit hard, but was up with a bounce and came at me again, more warily this
time. There was time to draw a pistol, but he had no such weapon. So I drew my
own knife, the knife of India given me by my father long since. The Indian
thrust well, but I parried and also thrust. He’d some knowledge of
knife-fighting but none of fencing, and the point of my blade nicked his wrist.
He pulled back suddenly, blood upon his hand, then feinted and dove at me,
grabbing at my legs. My knee lifted and caught the side of his head as he came
in, and the nudge was enough to put him over the edge.
He fell ten feet but landed standing up. He came back up instantly, and I leaped
at him. He sprang back, but not soon enough and I hit him and knocked him back
to the ground. I jumped down to continue the fight. I hit him with my fist under
the chin.
He staggered. The force of my fist had hurt him. I hit him twice more. He was
totally unused to the boxer’s style and the blow in the wind hurt him anew.
Again I hit him and he fell back into the dirt. I grabbed him up by the lot of
necklaces at his throat and slammed him hard against the gate.
He hit with tremendous force, and I thought he was out. I found his knife on the
ground.
The first light of dawn was in the sky and I saw him plain. He had got up and
was running away. I took the knife and threw it at him, yelling, “You’ll need
that!”
He turned and caught it from the air as one might catch a ball. “I will bring it
back!” he shouted, and was gone.