Chapter XXVIII. In which the springtime is at hand. Tired of dicing against myself and of the books that Ralph had sent me, I betook myself to the jail window and leaning against the bars looked out in search of entertainment. The dearest, if not the merriest thing the prospect had to offer was the pillory. It was built so tall that it was but little lower than the low upper story of the jail, and it faced my window at so short a distance that I could hear the long whistling breath of the wretch who happened to occupy it. It was not a pleasant sound, neither was a livid face, new branded on the cheek with the great R, and with a trickle of dark blood from the mutilated ears staining the board in which the head was immovably fixed a pleasant sight. A little to one side was the whipping-post, a woman had been whipped that morning, and her cries had tainted the air even more effectually than had the decayed matter with which certain small devils had pelted the runaway in the pillory. I looked away from the poor rogue below me into the clear, hard brightness of the March day, and was most heartily weary of the bars between me and it. The wind blew keenly, the sky was blue as blue could be, and the river a great ribbon of azures sewn with diamonds. All colors were vivid, and all distances near. There was no haze over the forest, brown and bare, it struck to cloudless blue. The marsh was emerald, the green of the pines deep and rich, the budding maples redder than coral. The church with the low green graves around it appeared not a stone's throw away, and the voices of the children up and down the street sounded clearly as though they played in the brown square below me. When the drum beat for the newning the roll was close in my ears. The world looked so bright and keen that it seemed new-made, and the brilliant sunshine and the cold wind stirred the blood like wine. Now and then men and women passed through the square below. The well-nigh all glanced up at the window, and their eyes were friendly. It was now known that Thuckingham was paramount at home, and my Lord Carnal's following in Virginia was much decayed. Young Hamour stood by, bravely dressed and whistling cheerfully, and off the hat with the most noble broken feather. We're going to bait a bear below the fort, he called. Sorry, you'll miss the sport. There will be all the world and my Lord Carnal. He whistled himself away, and presently there came along Master Edward Sharpless. He stopped and stared at the rogue in the pillory, with no prescience, I suppose, of a day when he was to stand there himself. Then lurked up at me, with as much malevolence as his small soul could write upon his mean features, and passed on. He had a jaded look, moreover his clothes were swamp-stained, and his cloak had been torn by briars. What did you go to the forest for, I muttered. The key grated in the door behind me, and it opened to admit the jailer and Dickon with my dinner, which I was not sorry to see. Sir George sent the venison, sir, said the jailer, grinning, and Master Piercy, the wild fowl, and Madame West, the pasty in the march pane, and Master Pory, the sack. Be there anything you lack, sir. Nothing that you can supply, I answered curtly. The fellow grinned again, straightened the things upon the table, and started for the door. You can stay until I come for the platters, he said to Dickon, and went out locking the door after him with ostentation. I applied myself to the dinner, and Dickon went to the window and stood there looking out at the blue sky and at the man in the pillory. He had the freedom of the jail. I was somewhat more straightly confined, though my friends had easy access to me. As for Jeremy Sparrow, he had spent twenty-four hours in jail at the end of which time Madame West had a fit of the spleen, declared she was dying, and insisted upon Master Sparrow's being sent forward to administer consolation, Master Buck, unfortunately, having gone up to Henrique's on business connected with the college. From the bedside of that despotic lady, Sparrow was called to bury a man on the other side of the river, and from the grave to marry a couple at Muldbury Island, and the next day being Sunday and no minister at hand, he preached again in Master Buck's pulpit, and preached a sermon so powerful and moving that its like had never been heard in Virginia. They marched him not back from the pulpit to jail. There were but five ministers in Virginia, and there were a many more sick to visit, and dead to bury. Master Buck, still feeble in body, tarried up river discussing with Thorpe the latter's darling project of converting every imp of an Indian this side, the South Sea, and Jeremy slipped into his old place. There had been some talk of a public censure, but it died away. The pasty and sack disposed of I turned in my seat and spoke to Dickon. I looked for Master Rolf to-day. Have you heard out of him? No, he answered. As he spoke the door was opened and the jailer put in his head. A messenger from Master Rolf, Captain. He drew back, and the Indian that talked was entered the room. Rolf and I had seen twice since the arrival of the George at Jamestown, but the Indian had not been with him. The young chief now came forward and touched the hand I held out to him. My brother will be here before the son touches the tallest pine he announced in his grave calm voice. He asked Captain Percy to deny himself to any other that may come. He wishes to see him alone. I shall hardly be troubled with company, I said. There's a bear baiting toward. Natalk was smiled. My brother asked me to find a bear for to-day. I bought one from the Pospa hedges for a piece of copper and took him to the ring below the fork. Where all the town will presently be gone, I said. I wonder what Rolf did that for. Filling a cup with sack, I pushed it to the Indian across the table. You are little in the woods nowadays, Natalk was. His fine dark face clouded ever so slightly. Opec Ocano has dreamt that I am Indian no longer.  He calls me no more his brave, his brother's bohaktan's dear son. I do not sit by his council fire now, nor do I lead his war bands. When I went last to his lodge and stood before him, his eyes burned me like the coals the monikans once closed my hands upon. He would not speak to me. It would not fret me if he never spoke again, I said. You have been to the forest today? Yes, he replied, glancing at the smear of leaf mold upon his bearded moccasins. Captain Percy's eyes are quick. He should have been an Indian. I went to the Pospa hedges to take them the piece of copper. I could tell Captain Percy a curious thing. Well, I demanded, as he paused. I went to the lodge of the werewanans with the copper, and found him not there. The old men declared that he had gone to the wares for fish, he and ten of his braves. The old men lied. I had passed the wares of the Pospa hedges, and no man was there. I sat and smoked before the lodge, and the natives brought me chinkapin cakes and pohickery. For Nantakwas is a prince and a welcome guest for all, save Opecacano. The old men smoked with their eyes upon the ground, each seeing only the days when he was even as Nantakwas.  Hmm, the cup was a heavy price to pay, continued the Indian. I do not know what great thing it bought. Hmm, I said again. Did you happen to meet Master Edward Sharpless in the forest? He shook his head. The forest is wide, and there are many trails through it. Nantakwas looked for that of the werewanans of the Pospa hedges, but found it not. He had no time to waste upon a white man. He gathered his otterskin mantle about him and prepared to depart. I rose and gave him my hand, for I thoroughly liked him, and in the past he had made me his debtor. Tell Rolf he will find me alone, I said, and take my thanks for your pains Nantakwas. If we ever hunt together again, may I have the chance to serve you. I bear the scars of the wolf's teeth yet. You came in the nick of time that day. The Indians smiled. It was a fierce old wolf. I wish Captain Percy free with all my heart, and then we will hunt more wolves, he and I. When he was gone and the jailer and Dickon with him, I returned to the window. The runaway in the pillory was released and went away homewards, staggering besides his master's syrup. Passersby grew more and more infrequent, and up the street came faint sounds of laughter and harrying. The bear must be making good sport. I could see the half-moon and the guns and the flag that streamed in the wind, and on the river a sailor to, white in the sunlight as the gulls that swoop past. Beyond rose the bear masts of the George. The Santa Teresa rode no more forever in the James. The king's ship was gone home to the king without the freight he looked for. Three days in the George would spread her white wings and go down the white river, and I with her, and the king's ward, and the king's, sometime, favorite. I looked down the wind-rupled stream and saw the great bay into which it emptied, and beyond the bay the heating ocean, dark and light, league on league, league on league, then green England and London and the tower. The vision disturbed me less than once it would have done. Men that I knew and trusted were to be passengers on that ship, as well as one I knew and did not trust. And if at the journey's end I saw the tower, I saw also his grace of Buckingham, where I hated, he hated, and was now powerful enough to strike. The wind blew from the west from the unknown.  The ghost of things long dead which face or voice could never conjure up will sometimes start across our path at the beckoning of an odor. A day in the starving time came back to me, how I had dragged myself from our broken palisade and crazy huts, and the groans of the famished and the plague-stricken, and the presence of the unburied dead across the neck and into the woods, and had lain down there to die, being taken with a sick fear and horror of the place of cannibals behind me, and how weak I was, too weak to care any more. I had been a strong man, and it had come to that, and I was content to let it be. The smell of the woods that day, the chill brown earth beneath me, the blowing wind, the long stretch of the river gleaming between the pines, and fair in sight the white sails of the patience and the deliverance. I had been too nigh gone then to greatly care that I was saved. Now I cared, and thank God for my life. Come what might in the future, the past was mine. Though I should never see my wife again, I had that hour in the state cabin of the George. I loved, and was loved again. There was a noise outside the door and rossed voice speaking to the jailer. In patience for his entrance I started toward the door, but when it opened he made no move to cross the threshold. I am not coming in, he said, with a face that he strove to keep grave. I only came to bring someone else. With that he stepped back, and a second figure coming forward out of the dimness behind him crossed the threshold. It was a woman cloaked and hooded. The door was drawn, too, behind her, and we were alone together. Inside the cloak and the hood she wore a writing-mask. Do you know who it is? She asked, when she had stood so shrouded for a long minute, during which I had found no words with which to welcome her. Yay! I answered. The princess in the fairytale. She freed her dark hair from its covering, and unclasping her cloak let it drop to the floor. Shall I enmasse? She asked with a sigh. Faith, I should keep the bit of silk between your eyes, sir, and my blushes. Am I ever to be the forward one? Do you not think me too bold a lady? As she spoke her white hands were busy about the fastening of her mask.  I untied the ribbons. May I not sit down? She said plaintively, but with soft merriment in her eyes. I am not quite strong yet. My heart, you do not know what pain I have in my heart sometimes. It makes me weep of nights, and when none are by, indeed it does. There was a settle beneath the window. I led her to it, and she sat down. You must know that I am walking in the governor's garden, that hath only a lane between it and the jail. Her eyes were downcast, her cheeks pure rose. When did you first love me? I demanded. Lady Wyatt must have guessed why Master Rolf alone went not to the bear-baiting, but joined us in the garden. She said the air was keen and fetched me her mask, and then herself went indoors to embroider Samson in the arms of Delilah. Was it here at Jamestown? Or was it when we were first wrecked or on the island with the pink hill when you wrote my name in the sand? Or— The George will sail in three days, and we are to be taken back to England after all. It does not scare me now. In all my life I have kissed you only once, I said. The rose deepened and in her eyes there was laughter with tears behind.  If you are bent upon having your way, I do not know that I—that I—can help myself. I do not even know that I want to help myself. Outside the wind blew, and the sun shone, and the laughter from below the fort was too far away and elfin to jar upon us. The world forgot us, and we were well content. There seemed not much to say. I suppose we were too happy for words. I knelt beside her and she laid her hands in mine, and now and then we spoke. In her short and lonely light and in my longer stern and crowded one, there had been little tenderness, little happiness. In her past to those about her she had seemed bright and gay. I had been a comrade whom men liked because I could just as well as fight.  Each felt for the other a great compassion. Each knew that though we smiled to-day, the groan and tear might be to-morrow's due. The sunshine around us was pure gold, but that the clouds were mounting we knew full well. I must soon be gone, she said at last. It is a stolen meeting. I do not know when we shall meet again. She rose from the settle and I rose with her, and we stood together beside the barred window. There was no danger of her being seen. Street and square were left to the wind and the sunshine. My arm was around her and she leaned her head against my breast. Perhaps we shall never meet again, she said. The winter is over, I answered. Soon the trees will be green and the flowers in bloom. I will not believe that our spring can have no summer. She took from her bosom a little flower that had been pinned there. It lay a purple star in the hollow of her hand. It grew in the sun. It is the first flower of spring. She put it to her lips, then laid it upon the window ledge beside my hand.  Will you take this little purple flower and all my heart beside? I bent and kissed first the tiny blossom and then the lips that had proffered it. I am very rich, I said. The sun was now low and the pines in the square and the upright of the pillory cast long shadows. The wind had fallen and the sounds had died away. It seemed very still. Nothing moved but the creeping shadows until a flight of small white-breasted birds went past the window. The snow is gone, I said. The snowbirds are flying north. The woods will soon be green, she murmured wispily, ah, if we could ride through them once more, back to Wayanoak. To home, I said. Home, she echoed softly. There was a low knocking at the door behind us. It is Master Rolf's signal, she said. I must not stay. Tell me that you love me and let me go. I drew her closer to me and pressed my lips upon her bound head. Do you not know that I love you? I asked. Yay, she answered. I have been taught it. Tell me that you believe that God will be good to us. Tell me that we shall be happy yet. For oh, I have a boating heart this day. Her voice broke and she lay trembling in my arms, her face hidden. If the summer never comes for us, she whispered. Good-bye, my lover and my husband. If I have brought you ruin and death, I have brought you, too, a love that is very great. Forgive me and kiss me and let me go. Thou art my dearly-loved and honored wife, I said, my heart for bones summer and joy and peace and home. We kissed each other solemnly as those who part for a journey and a warfare. I spoke no word to Rolf when the door was open and she had passed out with her cloak drawn about her face, but we clasped hands and each knew the other for his friend indeed. They were gone, the jailer closing and locking the door behind them. As for me, I went back to the settle beneath the window and falling on my knees beside it, buried my face in my arms. CHAPTER XXIX The sun dropped below the forest, blood red, dying the river its own color. There were no clouds in the sky, only a great suffusion of crimson climbing to the zenith. Against it the woods were as black as war paint. The color faded and the night set in, a night of no wind and of numberless stars. On the hearth burned a fire. I left the window and sat beside it, and in the hollows between the red embers made pictures as I used to make them when I was a boy. I sat there long. It grew late and all songs in the town were hushed. Only now and then the all's well of the watch came faintly to my ears. Dickon lodged with me. He lay in his clothes upon a pallet in the far corner of the room, but whether he slept or not I did not ask. He and I had never wasted words. Since chance had thrown us together again we spoke only when occasion required. The fire was nigh out, and it must have been ten o'clock when, with somewhat more of caution and less of noise than usual, the key grated in the lock. The door opened and the jailer entered, closing it noiselessly behind him.  He began to move about the room, making pretense of seeing that there was water in the pitcher beside my pallet, that the straw beneath the coverlet was fresh, that the bars of the window were firm, and ended by approaching the fire and heaping pine upon it. It flamed up brilliantly, and in the strong red light he half opened a clenched hand and showed me two gold pieces, and beneath them a folded paper. I looked at his furative eyes and brutal doldish face, but he kept them blank as a wall. The hand closed again over the treasure within it, and he turned away as if to leave the room. I drew a noble, one of a small store of gold pieces conveyed to me by Rolf from my pocket, and stooping made it spin upon the hearth in the red firelight. The jailer looked at it a scance, but continued his progress toward the door. I drew out its fellow, set it to spinning, then leaned back against the table. They hunt in couples, I said. There will be no third one. He had his foot upon them before they had done spinning. The next moment they had kissed the two pieces already in his possession, and he had transferred all four to his pocket. I held out my hand for the paper, and he gave it to me grudgingly with a spiteful slowness of movement. He would have stayed beside me as I read it, but I sternly bade him keep his distance. Then kneeling before the fire to get the light, I opened the paper. It was written upon in a delicate woman's hand, and it ran thus. As you hold me, dear, come to me at once. Come without tarrying to the deserted hut on the neck of land nearest to the forest. As you love me, as you are my knight, keep this trice. In distressed and peril, thy white. Fold it with it was a line in the commander's hand and with his signature. The bearer may pass without the palisade at his pleasure. I read the first paper again, repolded it, and rose to my feet. Who brought this, sirrah, I demanded. His answer was glib enough. One of the governor's servants, he said as how there was no harm in the letter, and the gold was good. When was this? Just now. No, I did not know the man. I saw no way to discover whether or not he lied. Drawing out another gold piece, I laid it upon the table. He eyed it greedily, edging nearer and nearer. For leaving this door unlocked, I said. His eyes narrowed and he moistened his lips, shifting from one foot to the other. I put down a second piece. For opening the door, I said. He wed his lips again, made an inarticulate sound in his throat, and finally broke out with, the commander will nail my ears to the pillory. You can lock the doors after me, and know as little as you choose in the morning. No gain without some risk. That so, he agreed, and made a clutch at the gold. I swept it out of his reach. First, earn it, I said dryly. Work at the foot of the pillory an hour from now, and you'll find it. I'll not pay you this side of the doors. He bit his lips and studied the floor.  I suppose I can trust you. I suppose you can. Taking up his lantern, he turned towards the door. It's growing late, he said, with the most uncouth attempt to feign a guileless drowsiness. I'll to bed, captain, when I've locked up. Good night to ye. He was gone, and the door was left unlocked. I could walk out of that jail as I could have walked out of my house at Weyanoke. I was free, but should I take my freedom? Going back to the light of the fire I unfolded the paper and stared at it, turning its contents this way and that in my mind. The hand, but once had I seen her writing, and then it had been wrought with a shell upon firm sand. I could not judge if this were the same. Had the paper indeed come from her, had it not? If in truth it was a message from my wife, what had be fallen in a few hours since our parting, if it was a forger's lie, what trap was set, what toils were laid? I walked up and down, and tried to think it out. The strangeness of it all, the choice of a lonely and distant hut for tristing place, that pass coming from a sworn officer of the company, certain things I had heard that day, a trap, and to walk into it with my eyes open, and you hold me dear, as you are my knight, keep this trist. In distress and peril, come what might, there was a risk I could not run. I had no weapons to assume, no preparations to make. Coming up the jailer's cold, I started toward the door, opened it, and going out would have closed it softly behind me, but that abuded leg thrust across the jam prevented me. I am going with you, said Dickon, in a guarded voice. If you try to prevent me, I will rouse the house. His head was thrown back in the old way. The old daredevil look was upon his face. I don't know why you are going, he declared, but there'll be danger anyhow. To the best of my belief I am walking into a trap, I said, then it will shut on two instead of one, he answered doggedly. By this he was through the door, and there was no shadow of turning on his dark-determined face. I knew my man and wasted no more words. Long ago it had grown to seem the thing most in nature that the hour of danger should find us side by side. When the door of the fire-lit room was shut, the jail was in darkness that might be felt. It was very still. The few other inmates were fast asleep. The jailer was somewhere out of sight, dreaming with open eyes. We groped our way through the passage to the stairs, noiselessly descended them, and found the outer door unchained, unbarred, and slightly ajar. When I had laid the gold beneath the pillory, we struck swiftly across the square, being in fear lest the watch should come upon us, and took the first lane that led toward the palace-sade. Beneath the burning stars the town lay stark in sleep. So bright in the wintry air were those faraway lights that the darkness below them was not great. We could see the low houses, the shadowy pines, the naked oaks, the shady lane glimmering away to the river, star-strewn to match the heavens. The air was cold but exceedingly clear and still. Now and then a dog barked, or wolves howled in the forest across the river. We kept in the shadow of the houses and the trees, and went with the swiftness, silence, and caution of Indians. The last house we must pass before reaching the palace-sade was one that Rolf phoned, and in which he lodged when business brought him to Jamestown. It and some low outbuildings beyond it were as dark as the cedars in which they were set, and as silent as the grave. Rolf and his Indian brother were sleeping there now while I stood without. Or did they sleep? Were they there at all? Might it not have been Rolf who had bribed the jailer and procured the pass from west? Might I not find him at that strange, tricing place? Might not all be well, after all? I was sorely tempted to rouse that silent house and demand if its master were within. I did it not. Servants were there, and noise would be made, and time that might be more precious than life-blood was flying fast.  There was a cabin built almost against the palace-sade, and here one man was supposed to watch whilst another slept. We found both asleep. I shook the younger to his feet and heartily cursed him for his negligence. He listened stupidly and read as stupidly by the light of his lantern the pass which I thrust beneath his nose. Staggering to his feet and drunk with his unlawful slumber, he fumbled at the fastenings of the gate for full three minutes before the ponderous wood finally swung open and showed the road beyond. It's all right, he muttered thickly. The commanders pass. Good night, the three of thee. Are you drunk or drugged, I demanded? There are only two. It's not sleep that is the matter with you. What is it? He made no answer but stood holding the gate open and blinking at us with dull, unseeing eyes. Something ailed him beside sleep. He may have been drugged for ought I know. When we had gone some yards from the gate we heard him say again in precisely the same time. Good night, the three of ye. Then the gate creaked too, and we heard the bars drawn across it. Without the palisade was a space of wasteland, marsh and thicket, tapering to the narrow strip of sand and scrub joining the peninsula to the forest, and here and there upon this waste-ground rose a mean house dwelt in by the poor of sort, all were dark. We left them behind and found ourselves upon the neck with a desolate murmur of the river on either hand and before us the deep blackness of the forest.  I did hear something then, he muttered. Look, sir. The stars faintly lit the road that had been trodden hard and bare by the feet of all who came and went. Down this road something was coming toward us, something low and dark that moved not fast and not slow, but with a measured and relentless pace. A panther said Dickon. We watched the creature with more of curiosity than alarm. Unless brought to bay or hungry or wantonly irritated, these great cats were cowardly enough. It would hardly attack the two of us. Nearer and nearer it came, showing no signs of anger and none of fear, and paying no attention to the withered branch with which Dickon tried to scare it off. When it was so close that we could see the white of its breast it stopped looking at us with large, unfaltering eyes and slightly moving its tail to and fro. A tame panther ejaculated Dickon. It must be the one Nantoc was tamed, sir. He would have kept it somewhere near Master Ralt's house. And it heard us and followed us through the gate, I said. It was the third the warder talked of. We walked on and the beast, addressing itself to motion, followed at our heels. Now and then we looked back at it, but we feared it not. As for me, I had begun to think that a panther might be the least formidable thing I should meet that night. By this I had scarcely any hope or fear that I should find her at our journey's end. The lonesome path that led only to the nighttime forest, the deep and dark river with its mournful voice, the hard, bright, pitiless stars, the cold, the loneliness, the distance. How should she be there? And if not she, who then? The hut to which I had been directed stood in an angle made by the neck and the main bank of the river. On one side of it was the water on the other, a deep wood. The place had an evil name, and no man had lived there since the planter who built it hanged himself upon its threshold. The hut was ruinous. In the summer, tall weeds grew up around it, and venomous snakes harbored beneath its rottet and broken floor. In the winter the snow whitened it, and the wild fowl flew screaming in and out of the open door and the windows that needed no barring. Tonight the door was shut and the windows in some way obscured, but the interstices between the logs showed red. The hut was lighted within, and someone was keeping trice. The stillness was deadly. It was not silence for the river murmured in the stiff reeds, and far off in the midnight forest some beast of the night uttered its cry, but a hush, a holding of the breath, an expectant horror. The door warped and shrunken was drawn too, but was not fastened as I could tell by the unbroken line of red light down one side from top to bottom. Making no sound I laid my hand upon it, pushed it open a little way, and looked within the hut. I had thought to find it empty or to find it crowded. It was neither. A torch lit it, and on the hearth burned a fire. Drawn in front of the blaze was an old rude chair, and in it sat a slight figure draped from head to foot in a black cloak. The head was bowed and hidden, the whole attitude one of listlessness and dejection. As I looked there came a long tremulous sigh, and the head drooped lower and lower as if in a growing hopelessness. The revulsion of feeling was so great that for a moment I was dazed as by a sudden blow. There had been time during the walk from the jail for enough of wild and whirling thoughts as to what should greet me in that hut, and now the slight figure by the fire, the exquisite melancholy of its posture, its bent head, the weeping I could divine. I had but one thought to comfort her as quickly as I might. Dickon's hand was upon my arm, but I shook it off and pushing the door open crossed the uneven and noisy floor to the fire, and bent over the lonely figure beside it. Jocelyn, I said, I have kept triced. As I spoke I laid my hand upon the bowed and covered head. It was raised, the cloak was drawn aside, and there looked me in the eyes, the Italian. As if it had been the Gorgon's face I was turned to stone, the fill-me eyes, the smile that would have been mocking had it not been so very faint, the pallor, the malignance I stared and stared, and my heart grew cold and sick. It was but for a minute. When a warning cry from Dickon roused me, I sprang backward until the width of the heart was between me and the Italian, then wheeled and found myself face to face with the king's late favorite. Behind him was an open door and beyond it a small inner room dimly lighted. He stood and looked at me with an insolence and a triumph most intolerable. His drawn sword was in his hand, the jeweled hilt blazing in the firelight, and on his dark superb face a taunting smile. I met it with one as bold at least, but I said no word good or bad. In the cabin of the Gorge I had sworn to myself that, thence forward, my sword should speak for me to this gentleman. You came, he said, I thought you would. I glanced around the hut, seeking for a weapon, seeing nothing more promising than the thick half-consumed torch. I sprang to it and rested it from the socket.  My lord laughed, reading my thoughts. You are mistaken, he declared coolly. I am content that Captain Percy knows I do not fear to fight him. This time I play to win. Looking toward the outer door he raised his hand with the gesture of command. In an instant the room was filled. The red-brown figures naked saved for the loincloth and the headdress, the impassive faces dashed with plaque, the ruthless eyes. I knew now why Master Edward Sharpless had gone to the forest, and what service had been bought with that silver cup. The pospa hedges and I were old enemies, doubtless they would find their task a pleasant one. My own knaves, unfortunately, were out of the way, sent home on the Santa Teresa, said my lord, still smiling. I am not yet so poor that I cannot hire others. True, Nicolo might have done the work just now when you bent over him so lovingly and spoke so softly. But the river might give up your body to tell strange tales. I have heard that the Indians are more ingenious and leave no such witness anywhere.  He strove to free his hand to withdraw himself from my grasp. Locked together we struggled backward and forward in what seemed a blaze of lights and a roaring as of mighty waters. Red hands caught at me, sharp knives panned it to drink my blood. But so fast we turned and writhed, now he uppermost, now I, that for very fear of striking the wrong man, hands and knives, could not be bold. I heard Dickon fighting and knew that there would be howling tomorrow among the squaws of the pospa hedges. With all his might my lord strove to bend the sword against me and at last did cut me across the arm, causing the blood to flow freely. It made a pool upon the floor and once my foot slipped in it and I stumbled and almost fell. Two of the pospa hedges were silent for evermore. Dickon had the knife of the first to fall and it ran red. The Italian, quick and sinuous as a serpent, kept beside my lord and me, striving to bring his dagger to his master's aid. We too panned it hard, before our eyes, blood within our ears, the sea, the noise of the other combatants, suddenly fell. The hush could only mean that Dickon was dead or taken. I could not look behind to see. With an access of fury I drove my antagonist toward a corner of the hut, the corner so it chanced in which the panther had taken up its quarters. With his heel he struck the beast out of his way. Then made a last desperate effort to throw me. I let him think he was about to succeed, gathered my forces, and brought him crashing to the ground. The sword was in my hand and shortened. The point was at his throat when my arm was jerked backwards. A moment and a half a dozen hands had dragged me from the man beneath me, and a supple savage had passed a throng of deer skin around my arms and pinioned them to my sides. The game was up. There remained only to pay the forfeit without a grimace. Dickon was not dead.  My lord rose and stood over against me. His rich doublet was torn and dragged away at the neck, and my blood stained his hand and arm.  The game was long, he said, but I have won at last. A long good night to you, Captain Percy, and a dreamless sleep. There was a swift backward movement of the Indians and allowed the panther-sir have a care from Dickon. I turned. The panther, maddened by the noise and light, the shifting figures, the blocked doors, the sight and smell of blood, the blow that had been dealt it was crouching for a spring. The red-brown hair was bristling, the eyes were terrible. I was before it, but those glaring eyes had marked me not. It passed me like a bar from a catapult, and the man whose heel it had felt was full in its path. One of its forefeet sank in the velvet of a doublet. The claws of the other entered the flesh below the temple and tore downwards and across. With a cry as awful as the panther's scream, the Italian threw himself upon the beast and buried his poignant in its neck. The panther and the man it had attacked went down together. When the Indians had unlocked that dread embraced and entrusted aside the dead brute, there emerged from the dimness of the inner room Master Edward Sharpless, gray with fear, trembling in every limb to take the reins that had fallen from my Lord's hands. The king's minion lay in his blood, a ghastly spectacle, unconscious now but with life before him, life through which to pass a nightmare vision. The face out of which had looked that sullen, proud and wicked spirit had been one of great beauty. It had brought him exceeding wealth and power beyond measure. The king had loved to look upon it and it had come to this.  In every heart there are dark depths whence at times ugly things creep into the daylight, but at least I could drive back that unmanly triumph and bid it never come again. I would have killed him, but I would not have had him thus. The Italian was upon his knees beside his Master. One such a creature could love. From his skeleton throat came a low, prolonged, croaking sound, and his bony hands strove to wipe away the blood. The pospa hedges drew around us closer and closer, and the wereawants clutched me by the shoulder. I shook him off. Give the word, Sharpless, I said, or nod if thou art too frightened to speak. Murder is too stern of stuff for such a base kitchen knave as thou to deal in. He would not meet my eyes, but beckoned the wereawants to him, and began to whisper vehemently, pointing now to the man upon the floor, now to the town, now to the forest. The Indian listened, nodded, and glided back to his fellows. The white men upon the Palhoutan are many, he said, in his own tongue, but they build not their wigwams upon the banks of the Pamanki. The singing birds of the Pamanki tell no tales. The pine splinters will burn as brightly there, and the white men will smell them not. We will build a fire at Aramasak, between the red hills, before the temple and the graves of the kings. There was a murmur of ascent from his braves, Aramasak. They would probably make a two-days journey of it. We had that long, then, to live. Captors and captives we presently left the hut. On the threshold I looked back, past the paltrune whom I had flung into the river one midsummer day, to that prone and bleeding figure. As I looked, it groaned and moved. The Indians behind me forced me on, a moment and we were out beneath the stars. They shone so very brightly. There was one, large, steadfast, golden, just over the dark town behind us, over the governor's house. Did she sleep, or did she wake? Being or waking, I prayed God to keep her safe and give her comfort. The stars now shone through naked branches, black tree trunks hemmed us round, and under our feet was the dreary rustling of dead leaves. The leafless trees gave way to pines and cedars, and the closely woven scented roof hid the heavens and made a darkness of the world beneath. Chapter 30 In which we start upon a journey. When the dawn broke it found us traveling through a narrow valley beside a stream of some width. Upon its banks grew trees of extraordinary height and girth. Cyprus and oak and walnut, they towered into the air, their topmost branches stark and black against the rosy-ed heavens. Below that iron tracery glowed the firebrands of the maples, and here and there a willow leaned the pale green cloud above the stream. Mist closed the distances. We could hear but not see the deer where they stood to drink in the shallow places or couched in the gray and dreamlike recesses of the forest. Spectral, unreal, and hollow seems the world at dawn. Then if ever the heart sickens and the will flags and life becomes a pageant that hath ceased to entertain. As I moved through the mist in the silence and felt the tug of the thong that bound me to the wrist of the savage who stalked before me, I cared not how soon they made an end, seeing how stale and unprofitable were all things under the sun. Dickon, walking behind me, stumbled over a root and fell upon his knees, dragging down with him the Indian to whom he was tied. In a sudden access of fury aggravated by the jeers with which his fellows greeted his mishap, the savage turned upon his prisoner and would have stuck a knife into him, bound and helpless as he was, had not the wearer wants interfered. The momentary altercation over and the knife restored to its owner's belt, the Indians relapsed into their usual menacing silence and the sullen march was resumed. Presently the stream made a sharp bend across our path and we forwarded it as best we might. It ran dark and swift and the water was of icy coldness. Then the woods had been burnt, the trees rising from the red ground like charred and blackened stakes with the ghostlike mist between. We left this dismal track behind and entered a wood of mighty oaks standing well apart and with the earth below carpeted with moss and early wildflowers. The sun rose, the mist vanished, and there set in the march day of keen wind and brilliant sunshine. Thereon an Indian bent his bow against a bear shambling across a little sunny glade. The arrow did its errand and where the creature fell, there we sat down and feasted beside a fire kindled by rubbing two sticks together. According to their want the Indians ate ravenously and when the meal was ended began to smoke, each warrior first throwing into the air as thank-offering to Kewasa, a pinch of tobacco. They all stared at the fire around which we sat and the silence was unbroken. One by one as the pipes were smoked they laid themselves down upon the brown leaves and went to sleep. Only our two guardians and a third Indian over against us remaining wide-eyed and watchful. There was no hope of escape and we entertained no thought of it. Dickon sat, biting his nails, staring into the fire and I stretched myself out and burying my head in my arms tried to sleep but could not. With the midday we were afoot again and we went suddenly on through the bright afternoon. We met with no harsh treatment other than our bonds. Instead when our captors spoke to us it was with words of amity and smiling lips, who accounted for Indian fashions. It is a way they have to flatter and caress the wretch for whom have been provided the torments of the damned. If when at sunset we halted for supper and gathered around the fire the whereowants began to tell of a foray I had let against the pospa hedges years before, and if he and his warriors for all the world like generous foes loudly applaud at some daring that had accompanied that raid, none the less did the red stake wait for us, none the less would they strive as for heaven to ring from us groans and cries. The sun sank and the darkness entered the forest. In the distance we heard the wolves, so the fire was kept up through the night. Dickon and I were tied to trees and all the savages saved one, lay down and slept. I worked a while at my bonds, but an Indian had tied them and after a time I desisted from the useless labor. We too could have no speech together. The fire was between us and we saw each other but dimly through the flame and breathing smoke as each might see the other tomorrow. What Dickon's thoughts were I know not, mine were not of the morrow. There had been no rain for a long time and the multitude of leaves underfoot were crisp and dry. The wind was loud in them and in the swaying trees, often the forest was a bog and the will of the wisps danced over it. Pale cold flames moved aimlessly here and there like ghosts of those lost in the woods. Toward the middle of the night some heavy animal crashed through a thicket to the left of us and tore away into the darkness over the loud rustling leaves and later on wolves' eyes leaned from out the ring of darkness beyond the firelight. Far on in the night the wind fell and the moon rose, changing the forest into some dim, exquisite, far-off land seen only in dreams. The Indians awoke silently and all at once as at an appointed hour. They spoke for a while among themselves, then we were loosened from the trees and the walk toward death began anew. On this march the were-owants himself stalked beside me, the moonlight whitening his dark limbs and relentless face. He spoke no word, nor did I deign to question or reason or entreat. Alike in the darkness of the deep woods and in the silver of the glades and in the long twilight stretches of sassafras and sighing-grass, there was for me but one vision. Slender and still and white she moved before me with her wide dark eyes upon my face, jostling, jostling. At sunrise the mist lifted from a low hill before us and showed an Indian boy painted white, poised upon the summit like a spirit about to take its flight. He prayed to the one over all and his voice came down to us pure and earnest. At sight of us he bound it down the hillside like a ball and would have rushed away into the forest had not a pospa hedge starting out of lying seized him and set him in our midst where he stood, cool and undismayed, a warrior in miniature. He was of lapamakis and his tribe and the pospa hedges were at peace. Therefore when he saw the totem burnt upon the breast of the were-owants he became loquacious enough and offered to go before us to his village upon the banks of a stream some bow shots away. He went and the pospa hedges rested under the trees until the old men of the village came forth to lead them through the brown fields and past the ring of leafless mulberries to the stranger's lodge. Here on the green turf mats were laid for the visitors and water was brought for their hands. Later on the women spread a great breakfast of fish and turkey and venison, maize bread, chukahoe, and pohickory. When it was eaten the pospa hedges ranged themselves in a semicircle upon the grass, the pamunkis faced them, and each warrior and old man drew out his pipe and tobacco pouch. They smoked gravely in a silence broken only by an occasional slow and stately question or compliment. The blue incense from the pipes mingled with the sunshine falling freely through the bare branches. The stream which ran by the lodge rippled and shown and the wind rose and fell in the pines upon its farther bank. Dickon and I had been freed for the time from our bonds and placed in the center of this ring, and when the Indians raised their eyes from the ground it was to gaze steadfastly at us. I knew their ways and how they valued pride in difference and a bravado disregard of the worst an enemy could do. They should not find the white man less proud than the savage. They gave us readily enough the pipes I asked for. Dickon lit one and I the other, and sitting side by side we smoked in a contentment as absolute as the Indians own.  The story ended we smoked with serenity for a while. Then I drew my dice from my pocket, and beginning to throw, we were at once as much absorbed in the game as if there were no other stake in the world beside the remnant of gold that I piled between us. The strange people in whose power we found ourselves looked on with grim approval, as at brave men who could laugh in death's face. The sun was high in the heavens when we bade the Pamunkeys farewell. The cleared ground, the mulberry trees and the grass beneath, the few rude lodges with the curling smoke above them, the warriors and women and brown-naked children, all vanished, and the forest closed around us. A high wind was blowing, and the branches far above beat at one another furiously, while the pendant leafless vines swayed against us, and the dead leaves went past in the whirlwind. A monstrous flight of pigeons crossed the heavens, flying from west to east, and darkening the land beneath like a transient cloud. We came to a plain covered with very tall trees that had one and all been ringed by the Indians.  As we passed, the wind brought two crashing to the earth. In the center of the plain something, deer or wolf, or bear or man, lay dead, for to that point the buzzards were sweeping from every quarter of the blue. Beyond was a pine wood, silent and dim, with a high green roof and a smooth, scented floor. We walked through it for an hour, and it led us to the Pamunkey, a tiny village counting no more than a dozen warriors stood among the pines that ran to the water's edge, and tied to the trees that shadowed the slow-moving flood were its canoes. When the people came forth to meet us, the paspa hedge is bought from them, for a string of rono, two of these boats, and we made no tarrying, but embarking at once, rode up river toward Aramasak, and its three temples. Dickon and I were placed in the same canoe. We were not bound. What needed bonds when we had no friend nearer than the Pohaten, and when Aramasak was so near. After a time the paddles were put into our hands, and we were required to row while our captors rested. There was no use in sulking us. We laughed as at some huge jest, and bent to the task with the wheel that sent our canoe well in advance of its mate. Dickon burst into an old song that we had sung in the low countries by campfires on the march, before the battle. The forest echoed to the loud and warlike tune, and a multitude of birds rose startled from the trees upon the bank. The Indians frowned, and one in the boat behind called out to strike the singer upon the mouth. But the wereawatts shook his head. There were none upon that river who might not know that the paspa hedge's journey to Aramasak, with prisoners in their midst.  When he came to the chorus, I joined my voice to his, and the woodland rang to the song. Assam had better befitted our lips than those rude and daunting words, seeing that we should never sing again upon this earth. But at last we sang bravely and gaily, with minds that were reasonably quiet. The sun dropped low in the heavens, and the trees cast shadows across the water. The paspa hedges now began to recount the entertainment they meant to offer us in the morning. All those tortures that they were want to practice with hellish ingenuity they told over, slowly and tauntingly, watching to see a lip whiten for an eyelid quiver. They boasted that they would make women of us at the stake. At all events they made not women of us beforehand. We laughed as we rode, and Dickon whistled to the leaping fish and the fish-hawk and the otter lying along a fallen tree beneath the bank. The sunset came and the river lay beneath the colored clouds like molten gold, with the gaunt forest black upon either hand. From the lifted paddles the water showered in golden drops, the wind died away, and with it all noises, and a dank stillness settled upon the flood, and upon the endless forest. We were nearing Uramasak, and the Indians rode quietly with bent heads and fearful glances. Furoki broaded over this place, and he might be angry. It grew colder and sillier, but the light dwelt in the heavens, and was reflected in the bosom of the river. The trees upon the southern bank were all pines. As if they had been carved from black stone, they stood rigid against the saffron sky. Presently back from the shore there rose before us a few small hills, treeless, but covered with some low, dark growth, the one that stood the highest bore upon its crest three black houses shaped like coffins. Behind them was the deep yellow of the sunset. An Indian rowing in the second canoe commenced a chant or prayer to Oki. The notes were low and broken, unutterably wild and melancholy. One by one his fellows took up the strain. It swelled higher, louder, and sterner became a deafening cry, then ceased abruptly, making the stillness that followed like death itself. Both canoes swung round from the middle stream and made for the bank. When the boats had slipped from the stripe of gold into the inky shadow of the pines, the pospa hedges began to divest themselves of this or that, which they conceived Oki might desire to possess. One flung into the stream a handful of copper links, another the chaplet of feathers from his head, a third a bracelet of blue beads. The wereawants drew out the arrows from a gauntly painted and beat it quiver, stuck them into his belt, and dropped the quiver into the water. We landed, dragging the canoes into a covert of overhanging bushes and fasting them there, then struck to the pines toward the rising ground, and presently came to a large village with many long huts, and a great central lodge where dealt the emperors when they came to Aramasa. It was vacant now, Opecacano being no man knew where. When the usual stately welcome had been extended to the pospa hedges, and when they had returned as stately thanks, the wereawants began a harangue for which I furnished the matter. When he ceased to speak, a great acclamation and tumult arose, and I thought they would scarce wait for the morrow. But it was late, and their wereawants and conjurer restrained them. In the end the men drew off, and the yelling of the children and the passionate cries of the women, importunate for vengeance, were stilled. A guard was placed around the vacant lodge, and we too Englishmen were taken within, and bound down to great logs, such as the Indians used to roll against their doors when they go from home. There was revelry in the village, for hours after the night came, everywhere were bright firelight and the rise and fall of laughter and song. The voices of the women were musical, tender, and plaintive, and yet they waited for the morrow as for a gala day. I thought of a woman who used to sing, softly and sweetly, in the twilight at Wayano, in the firelight at the minister's house. At last the noises ceased, the light died away, and the village slept beneath the heaven that seemed somewhat deaf and blind. CHAPTER 31 IN WHICH NANTAKWA'S COMES TO OUR RESCUE A man who hath been a soldier and an adventurer into far and strange country must needs have faced death many times and in many guises. I had learned to know that grim countenance and to have no great fear of it. And beneath the ugliness of the mask that now presented itself there was only death at last. I was nobabe to whimper at a sudden darkness, to cry out against the curtain that a hand chose to drop between me and the life I had lived. Death frightened me not, but when I thought of one whom I should leave behind me, I feared lest I should go mad. Had this thing come to me a year before, I could have slept the night through. Now, now I lay down to the log before the open door of the lodge, and looking through it saw the pines waving in the night wind and the gleam of the river beneath the stars, and saw her as plainly as though she had stood there under the trees in a flood of noon sunshine. Now she was the jostling Percy of Wayanoke, now of the minister's house, now of a storm-tossed boat and a pirate ship, now of the jail at Jamestown. One of my arms was free. I could take from within my doublet the little purple flower and drop my face upon the hand that held it. The bloom was quite withered and scalding tears would not give it life again. The face that was now gay, now defiant, now pale and suffering, became steadfastly the face that had leaned upon my breast in the Jamestown jail, and looked at me with a mournful brightness of love and sorrow. Spring was in the land, and the summer would come, but not to us. I stretched forth my hand to the wife who was not there, and my heart lay crushed within me. She had been my wife not a year. It was, but the other day that I knew she loved me. After a while the anguish lessened and I lay dull and hopeless, thinking of trifling things, counting the stars between the pines. Another slow hour and a braver mood coming upon me, I thought of Dickon, who was in that plight because of me, and spoke to him, asking him how he did. He answered from the other side of the lodge, but the words were scarcely coming out of his mouth before our guard broke in upon us, commanding silence.  As soon as I heard him move, I spoke again to know if he were much hurt. When he answered in the negative, we said no more. It was now moonlight without the lodge and very quiet. The night was far gone. Already we could smell the morning, and it would come apace. Knowing the swiftness of that approach and what the early light would bring, I strove for a courage which should be the steadfastness of the Christian and not the vanglorious pride of the heathen. If my thoughts wondered if her face would come a thwart the verses I tried to remember, the prayer I tried to frame, perhaps he who made her lovely understood and forgave. I said the prayer I used to say when I was a child and wished with all my heart for Jeremy. Suddenly in the first grade dawn, as added trumpets called, the village awoke, from the long communal houses poured forth men, women and children, fires sprang up, dispersing the mist, and a commotion arose through the length and breadth of the place. The women made haste with their cooking and bore maize cakes and broiled fish to the warriors who sat on the ground in front of the royal lodge. Dickon and I were loosed, brought without, and allotted our share of the food. We ate sitting side by side with our captors, and Dickon, with a great cut across his head, seized the Indian girl who brought him his platter of fish and pulling her down beside him, kissed her soundly, where at the maize seemed not ill-pleased, and the warriors laughed. In the usual order of things, the meal over, tobacco should have followed, but now, not a pipe was lit, and the women made haste to take away the platters and to get all things in readiness. The wearer wants of the pasta hedges rose to his feet, cast aside his mantle, and began to speak. He was a man in the prime of life of a great figure, strong as a Susquehannot, and a savage cruel and crafty beyond measure. Over his breasts, stained with strange figures, hung a chain of small bones and the scalp-locks of his enemies, fringed his moccasins. His tribe, being the nearest to Jamestown, and in frequent altercation with us, I had heard him speak many times, and knew his power over the passions of his people. No player could be more skillful in gesture and expression. No poet more nice in the choice of words, no general more quick to raise a wild enthusiasm in the soldiers to whom he called. All Indians are eloquent, but this savage was a leader among them. He spoke now to some effect. Commencing with a day in the moon of Lossums when, for the first time, winged canoes brought white men into the Bahatun, he came down through year after year to the present hour, ceased, and stood in silence regarding his triumph. It was complete. In its wild excitement, the village was ready then and there to make an end of us, who had sprung to our feet, and stood with our backs against the great Bajri, facing the Matin Throng. So much the best for us would it be if the tomahawks left their hands that were drawn back to throw, if the knives were flourished in our faces should be buried to the half, in our hearts, that we courted death striving with word and look to infuriate our executioners to the point of forgetting their former purpose in the lust for instant vengeance. It was not to be. The wereawants spoke again, pointing to the hills with the black houses upon them, dimly seen through the mist. A moment and the hands clenched upon the weapons fell, another, and we were upon the march. As one man the village swept through the forest toward the rising ground that was but a few bow shots away. The young men bounded ahead to make preparation, but the approved warriors and the old men went more sedately, and with them walked Dickon and I, as steady of step as they. The women and children, for the most part, brought up the rear, though a few impatient hags ran past us, calling the men tortoises who would never reach the goal. One of these women bore a great burning torch, the flame and smoke streaming over her shoulder as she ran. Others carried pieces of bark, heaped with the slivers of pine of which every wigwam has store. The sun was yet to rise when we reached the hollow amongst the low red hills. Above us were the three long houses in which they kept the image of Oki and the mummies of their kings. These temples faced the crimson east, and the mist was yet about them. Hideous priests painted over with strange devices the stuffed skins of snakes nodded about their heads in their hands great rattles which they shook vehemently, rushed through the doors and down the bank to meet us, and began to dance around us, contorting their bodies, throwing up their arms, and making a hellish noise. Dickon stared at them, shrugged his shoulders, and with a grunt of contempt sat down upon a fallen tree to watch the enemy's maneuvers. The place was a natural amphitheater well fitted for a spectacle. Those Indians who could not crowd into the narrow levels spread themselves over the rising ground and looked down with fierce laughter upon the driving of the stakes which the young men brought. The women and children scattered into the woods beyond the cleft between the hills and returned bearing great armfuls of dry branches. The hollow rang to the exaltation of the playgoers, taunting laughter, cries of savage triumph, the shaking of rattles, and the furious beating of two great drums combined to make a clamor deafening to stupor, and above the hollow was the angry reddening of the heavens and the white mist curling up like smoke. I sat down beside Dickon on the log. Beneath it there were growing tufts of a pale blue slender stemmed flower. I plucked a handful of the blossoms and thought how blue they would look against the whiteness of her hand. Then dropped them in a sudden shame that in that hour I was so little steadfast to things which were not of earth. I did not speak to Dickon nor he to me. There seemed no need of speech. In the pandemonium to which the world had narrowed, the one familiar matter-of-course thing was that he and I were to die together. The stakes were in the ground and painted red. The wood properly arranged. The Indian woman who held the torch that was to light the pile ran past us whirling the wood around her head to make it blaze more fiercely. As she went by she lowered the brand and slowly dragged it across my wrists. The beating of the drums suddenly ceased and the loud voices died away. To Indians no music is so sweet as the cry of an enemy. If they have rung it from a brave man who has striven to endure, so much the better. They were very still now, because they would not lose so much as a drawing in of the breath. Seeing that they were coming for us, Dickon and I rose to await them. When they were nearly upon us, I turned to him and held out my hand. He made no motion to take it. Instead he stood with fixed eyes looking past me and slightly upwards. A sudden pallor had overspread the bronze of his face. There's a verse somewhere, he said in a quiet voice. It's in the Bible, I think. I heard it once, long ago, before I was lost. I will look unto the hills from whence cometh my help. Look, sir! I turned and followed with my eyes the pointing of his finger. In front of us the bank rose steeply, bare to the summit. No trees, only the red earth, with here and there a low growth of leafless bushes. Behind it was the eastern sky. Upon the crest against the sunrise stood the figure of a man, an Indian. From one shoulder hung an otterskin, and a great bow was in his hand. His limbs were bare, and as he stood motionless, bathed in the rosy light, he'd look like some bronze god, perfect from the beated moccasins to the calm, uneager face below the feathered headdress. He had but just risen above the brow of a hill. The Indians in the hollow saw him not. While Dickon and I stared, our tormentors were upon us. They came a dozen or more at once, and we had no weapons. Two hung upon my arms while a third laid hold of my doublet to rend it from me. An arrow whistled over their heads and stuck into a tree behind us. The hands that clutched me dropped, and with a yell the busy throng turned their faces in the direction whence had come the arrow. The Indian who had sent that dart before him was descending the bank. An instant breathless hush while they stared at the solitary figure. Then the dark forms bent forward for the rush straightened, and there arose a loud cry of recognition.  He came down the hillside to the level of the hollow, the authority of his look and gesture making way for him through the crowd that surged this way and that, and walked up to us where we stood, hemmed round, but no longer in the clutch of our enemies. It was a very big wolf this time, Captain Percy, he said. You were never more welcome, Nantakwas, I answered, unless indeed the wolf intends making a meal of three instead of two. He smiled. The wolf will go hungry today. Taking my hand in his, he turned to his frowning countrymen. Men of the Pamumpkis, he cried, this is Nantakwas' friend, and so the friend of all the tribes that call Pahatin father. The fire is not for him, nor for his servant. Keep it for the Manakins and for the dogs of the Longhouse. The Calumet is for the friend of Nantakwas and the dance of the maidens, the noblest buck, and the best of the weirs. There was a surging forward of the Indians at a fierce murmur of dissent. The werealants standing out from the throng lifted his voice. There was a time, he cried, when Nantakwas was the panther crouched upon the bow above the leader of the herd.  There was a time when the word of the Son of Pahatin weighed more than the lives of many dogs such as these. But now I know not why we should put out the fire at his command. He is war chief no longer, for Opecocano will have no tame panther to lead his tribes. Opecocano is our head, and Opecocano kindlet of fire indeed. He will give to this one what fuel we choose, and to-night Nantakwas may look for the bones of the white men. He ended in a great clamour arose. The Pospahedges would have cast themselves upon us again, but for a sudden action of the young chief, who had stood motionless with raised head and unmoved face during the werealants' bitter speech. Now he flung up his hand, and in it was a bracelet of gold carved and twisted like a coiled snake and set with the green stone. I had never seen the toy before, but evidently others had done so. The excited voices fell, and the Indians, the monkeys, and Pospahedges alike stood as though turned to stone. Nantakwas smiled coldly. This day hath Opecocano made me war chief again. We have smoked the peace pipe together, my father's brother and I, in the starlight sitting before his lodge, with the wide marshes and the river dark at our feet. Singing birds in the forest have been many. Evil tales have they told. Opecocano has stopped his ears against their false singing. My friends are his friends. My brother is his brother. My word is his word. Witness the armlet that hath no like, that Opecocano brought with him when he came from no man knows where, to the land of the Bahatans, many Huskan awnings ago. That no white men but these have ever seen. Opecocano is at hand. He comes through the forest with his two hundred warriors that are as tall as Sasquahanats and as brave as the children of Wahana-Sanaka. He comes to the temples to pray for Kiwasa for a great hunting. Will you, when you lie at his feet, that he ask you, where is the friend of my friend, of my war chief, of the panther who is one with me again? There came a long deep breath from the Indians, then a silence in which they fell back, slowly and sullenly, whipped towns but with the will to break that leash of fear. Heart said Nantak was smiling. I hear Opecocano and his warriors coming over the leaves. The noise of many footsteps was indeed audible, coming toward the hollow from the woods beyond. With a burst of cries, the priests and the conjurer whirled away to bear the welcome of Oki to the royal worshipper, and at their heels went the chief men of the Pamamkis. The whereawants of the Pasphahedges was one that sailed with the wind. He listened to the deepening sound and glanced at the sun of Pohatan where he stood, calm and confident, then smoothed his own countenance and made a most pacific speech, in which all the blame of the late proceedings was laid upon the singing birds. When he had done speaking, the young men tore the stakes from the earth and threw them into a thicket, while the women plucked apart the newly kindled fire and flung the brands into a little nearby stream where they went out in a cloud of hissing steam. I turned to the Indian who had wrought this miracle. Art sure it is not a dream none talk was, I said. I think that Opecocano would not lift the finger to save me from all the deaths the tribes could invent. Opecocano is very wise, he answered quietly. He says now the English will believe in his love indeed when they see that he holds dear, even one who might be called his enemy, who has spoken against him at the Englishman's council fire. He says that for five sons Captain Percy shall feast with Opecocano and that then he shall be sent back free to Jamestown. He thinks that then Captain Percy will not speak against him anymore, calling his love to the white men only words with no good deeds behind. He spoke simply out of the nobility of his nature, believing his own speech. I that was older and had more knowledge of men and the mass that they were was but half deceived. My belief in the hatred of the Dark Emperor was not shaken, and I looked yet to find the drop of poison within this honey flower. How poison was that bloom God knows I could not guess. When you were missed three sons ago, Nantakwas went on, I and my brother tracked you to the hut beside the forest where we found only the dead panther. There we struck the trail of the pospa hedges, but presently we came to running water and the trail was gone. We walked up the bed of the stream for half the night, I said. The Indian Nutt, I know, my brother went back to Jamestown for men and boats and guns to go to the pospa hedge village and up the pahatun. He was wise with the wisdom of the white men, but I who needed no gun and who would not fight against my own people, I stepped into the stream and walked up it until past the full sun power. Then I found a broken twig and the print of a moccasin, half hidden by a bush overlooked when the other prints were smoothed away. I left the stream and followed a trail until it was broken again. I looked for it no more then, for I knew that the pospa hedges had turned their faces towards Armasa and that they would make a fire where many others had been made in the hollow below the three temples. Instead I went with speed to seek Opec Ocano. Yesterday when the sun was low I found him sitting in his lodge above the marshes and the colored river. We smoked the peace pipe together and I am his war-sheet again. I asked for the green stone that I might show it to the pospa hedges for a sign. He gave it, but he willed to come to Armasa with me.  What I would have said, he put aside with a fine gesture. Captain Percy is my friend. My brother loves him, and he was kind to Maytox when she was brought prisoner to Jamestown. I am glad that I could pull off this wolf. Tell me one thing, I asked. Before you left Jamestown, had you heard aught of my wife or of my enemy? He shook his head.  My brother and I followed your trail at once. The town was scarce awake when we left it behind us, and I did not return. By this we three were alone in the hollow, for all the savages, men and women, had gone forth to meet the Indian whose word was law from the falls of the far west to the Chesapeake. The sun now rode above the low hills, pouring its gold into the hollow and brightening all the world besides. The little stream flashed diamonds, and the carbon devils upon the black house above us were frightful no longer. There was not a menace anywhere from the cloudless skies to the sweet and plain of chant to kawasa, sung by women and floating to us from the woods beyond the hollow. The singing grew nearer and the rustling of the leaves beneath many feet more loud and deep. Then, all noise ceased, and Opecacano entered the hollow alone. An eagle feather was thrust through his scalp block. Over his naked breast, that was neither painted nor pricked into strange figures, hung a triple row of pearls. His mantle was woven of bluebird feathers, as soft and sleek as satin. The face of this barbarian was dark, cold, and impassive as death. Behind that changeless mass as in a safe retreat, the super-subtle devil that was the man might plot destruction and plan the laying of dreadful minds. He had dignity and courage. No man denied him that. I suppose he thought that he and his had wrongs. God knows perhaps they had. But if ever we were hard or unjust in our dealings with the savages, I say not that this was the case. At least we were not treacherous and dealt not in Judas' kisses. I stepped forward and met him on the spot where the fire had been. For a minute neither spoke. It was true that I had striven against him many a time, and I knew that he knew it. It was also true that without his aid Nantakwas could not have rescued us from that dire peril, and it was again the truth that an Indian neither forgives nor forgets. He was my savior, and I knew that mercy had been shown for some dark reason which I could not divine. Yet I owed him thanks, and gave them as shortly and simply as I could. He heard me out with neither liking nor disliking, nor any other emotion written upon his face. But when I had finished as though he suddenly bethought himself, he smiled and held out his hand, white man fashion.  The eyes of Opecacano were as fathomless as a pool at midnight, and as devoid of mirth or friendliness as the staring orbs of the carbon imps upon the temple corners. Singing birds have lied to Captain Percy, he said, and his voice was like his eyes. Opecacano thinks that Captain Percy will never listen to them again. The chief of the Fahaptans is a lover of the white men, of the English and of other white men, if there are others. He would call the Englishmen his brothers and be taught of them how to rule and who to pray to. Let Opecacano go with me to date to Jamestown, I said. He hath the wisdom of the woods. Let him come and gain that of the town. The emperor smiled again. I will come to Jamestown but not today nor tomorrow nor the next day. And Captain Percy must smoke the peace pipe in my lodge above the Pamunkey, and watch my young men and maidens dance and eat with me five days. Then he may go back to Jamestown with presents for the great white father there, and with the message that Opecacano is coming soon to learn of the white men. I could have gnashed my teeth at that delay when she must think me dead, but it would have been the madness of folly to show the impatience which I felt. I, too, could smile with my lips when occasion drove, and drink a bitter draught as though my soul delighted in it. Blithe enough to all seeming, and with as few inward misgivings as the case called for, Dickon and I went with the subtle emperor and the young chief he had bound to himself once more, and with their fierce train back to that village which we had never thought to see again. A day and a night we stayed there. Then Opecacano sent away the pospa hedges, where we knew not, and taking us with him went to his own village above the great marshes of the Pamunkey. CHAPTER 32 I had before this spent days among the Indians on voyages of discovery as conqueror, as negotiator for food, exchanging blue beads for corn and turkeys. Other Englishmen had been with me, knowing those with whom we dealt per sly and fierce heathen, friends to-day, tomorrow deadly foes, we kept our muskets ready and our eyes and ears open, and, what with the danger and the novelty in the bold wild life, managed to extract some merriment as well as profit from the visits. It was different now. Day after day I ate my heart out in that cursed village, the feasting and the hunting and the triumph, the wild songs and wilder dances, the fantastic mummeries, the sudden rages, the sudden laughter, the great fires with their rings of painted warriors, the sleepless sentinels, the wide marshes that could not be crossed by night, the leaves that rustled so loudly beneath the lightest footfall, the monotonous days, the endless nights when I thought of her grief, of her peril, maybe. It was the night of the night, the night of the night, the night of the night, the endless nights when I thought of her grief, of her peril, maybe. It was an evil dream, and for my own pleasure I could not wake too soon. Should we ever wake? Should we not sink from that dream without pause into a deeper sleep whence there would be no waking? It was a question that I had asked myself each morning, half looking to find another hollow between the hills before the night should fall. The night fell, and there was no change in the dream. I will allow that the dark emperor to whom we were so much beholden gave us courteous keeping. The best of the hunt was ours, the noblest fish, the most delicate roots. The skins beneath which we slept were fine and soft. The women waited upon us, and the old men and warriors held with us much stately converse, sitting beneath the budding trees with the blue tobacco smoke curling above our heads. We were alive and sound of limb, well treated and with promise of release. We might have waited, seeing that weight we must, in some measure of contempt. We did not so. There was a horror in the air, from the marshes that were growing green, from the sluggish river, from the rotting leaves and cold black earth and naked forest. It rose like an exhalation. We knew not what it was, but we breathed in, and it went to the marrow of our bones. Opecocano we rarely saw, though we were bestowed so near to him that his sentinels served for ours. Like some god he kept within his lodge with the winding passage and the hanging mats between him and the world without. At other times, issuing from that retirement, he would stride away into the forest. Picked men went with him, and they were gone for hours, but when they returned they bore no trophies, brute or human. What they did we could not guess. We might have had much comfort in Nantakwas, but the morning after our arrival in this village the emperor sent him upon an embassy to the Repahannaks, and when for the fourth time the forest stood black against the sunset, he had not returned. If escape had been possible, we would not have awaited the doubtful fulfillment of that promise made to us below the Armasak temples. But the vigilance of the Indians never slept. They watched us like hawks night and day, and the dry leaves underfoot would not hold their peace, and there were the marshes to cross and the river. Thus four days dragged themselves by, and in the early morning of the fifth, when we came from our wigwam, it was the fine Nantakwas sitting by the fire, magnificent in the paint and trappings of the ambassador, motionless as a piece of bronze, and apparently quite unmindful of the admiring glances of the women who knelt about the fire, preparing our breakfast. When he saw us he rose and came to meet us, and I embraced him. I was so glad to see him. The Repahannaks feasted me long, he said. I was afraid that Captain Percy would be gone to Jamestown before I was back upon the Pamunki. Shall I ever see Jamestown again, Nantakwas, I demented. I have my doubts. He looked me full in the eyes, and there was no doubting the candor of his own. You will go with the next sunrise, he answered. Opecacano has given me his word. I am glad to hear it, I said. Why have we been kept at all? Why did he not free us five days ago? He shook his head. I do not know. Opecano has many thoughts which he shares with no man, but now he will send you with presents for the governor and with messages of his love to the white men. There will be a great feast today, and tonight the young men and maidens will dance before you. Then in the morning you will go. Will you not come with us, I asked? You are ever welcome amongst us, Nantakwas, both for your sister's sake and for your own. Rolf will rejoice to have you with him again. He ever grudges you to the forest. He shook his head again. Nantakwas, the son of Kohatan, had had much talk with himself lately, he said simply. The white men's ways have seemed very good to him, and the god of the white men he knows to be greater than Oki, and to be good and tender.  He remembers Medawak's too, and how she loved and cared for the white men, and would weep when danger threatened them. And Rolf is his brother and his teacher. But Opecacano is his king, and the red men are his people, and the forest is his home. If because he loved Rolf and because the ways of the white men seemed to him better than his own ways, he forgot these things, he did wrong, and the one over all frowns upon him. Now he has come back to his home again, to the forest and the hunting and the war path, to his king and his people. He will be again the panther, crouching upon the bow. Above the white men? He gazed at me in silence, a shadow upon his face. Above the Manakins, he answered slowly. Why did Captain Percy say, above the white men? Opecacano and the English have buried the hatchet forever, and the smoke of the peace pipe will never fade from the air. Nantak was meant above the Manakins or the Longhouse dogs. I put my hand upon his shoulder. I know you did, brother of Rolf by nature, if not by blood. Forget what I said. It was without thought or meaning. If we go indeed tomorrow, I shall be loath to leave you behind. And yet were I in your place, I should do as you are doing. The shadow left his face and he drew himself up. Is it what you call faith and loyalty, and like a knight, he demanded, with a touch of eagerness breaking through the slowness and gravity with which an Indian speaks? Yay, I made reply. I think you good night and true, Nantak was, and my friend moreover who saved my life. His smile was like his sisters, quick and very bright, and leaving behind it a most entire gravity. Together we sat down by the fire and ate of the silven breakfast, with shy brown maidens to serve us, and with the sunshine streaming down upon us through the trees that were growing faintly green. It was a thing to smile at to see how the Indian girls maneuvered to give the choicest meat, the most delicate maize cakes, to the young warchief, and to see how quietly he turned aside their benevolence. The meal over he went to divest himself of his red and white paint, of the stuffed hawk and strings of copper that formed his headdress, of his gorgeous belt and quiver and his mantle of raccoon skins, while Dickon and I sat before our wigwams smoking and reckoning the distance to Jamestown and the shortest time in which we could cover it. When we had sat there for an hour the old men and the warriors came to visit us, and the smoking must commence all over again. The women laid mats in a great half circle, and each savage took his seat with perfect breeding, that is, in absolute silence and with a face like a stone. The peace paint was upon them all, red or red and white. They sat and looked at the ground until I had made the speech of welcome. Soon the air was dense with a fragrant smoke. In the thick blue haze the sweep of painted figures had the seeming of some fantastic dream. An old man arose and made a long and touching speech, with much reference to Calumet's and buried hatchets. When he had finished the chief, talked of Opeca Cano's love for the English, high as the stars, deep as Popogoso, wide as from the sunrise to the sunset, adding that the death of Nematamao last year and the troubles over the hunting grounds had kindled in the breasts of the Indians no desire for revenge, with which highly probable statement he made an end, and all sat in silence looking at me and waiting for my contribution of honeyed words. These famonchies living at a distance from the settlements had but little English to their credit, and the learning of La Pazpa hedges was not much greater. I sat and repeated to them the better part of the Seventh Cano of the Second Book of Master Spencer's Fairy Queen, then I told them the story of the Moor of Venice, and end it by relating Smith's tale of the Three Church's heads. It all answered the purpose to admiration. When at length they went away to change their paint for the coming feast, Dickon and I laughed at that foolery as though there were none beside us who could juggle with words. We were as lighthearted as children, God forgive us. The day wore on with relay after relay of food which we must taste at least, with endless smoking of pipes and speeches that must be listened to and answered. When evening came and our entertainers drew off to prepare for the dance, they left us as weary as by a long day's march. The wind had been high during the day, but with the sunset it sank to a desolate murmur. The sky wore the strange crimson of the past year at Weano. Against that sea of color the pines were drawn in ink, and beneath it the winding, thread-like creeks that pierced the marshes had the look of spilt blood moving slowly and heavily to join the river that was black where the pines shadowed it, red where the light touched it. From the marsh arose the cry of some great bird that made its home there. It had a lonely and aboding sound, like a trumpet blown above the dead. The color died into an ashen gray, and the air grew cold, with a heaviness beside that dragged at the very soul. Dickon shivered violently, turned restlessly upon the log that served him as settle, and began to mutter to himself. Art cold, I asked, he shook his head. Something walked over my grave, he said. I would give all the pohickery that was ever brewed by heathen for a toss of acrovitae. In the center of the village rose a great heap of logs and dry branches, built during the day by the women and children. When the twilight fell and the owls began to hoot, this pile was fired, and lit the place from end to end. The scattered wigwams, the scaffolding where the fish were dried, the tall pines and wide-branching mulberries, the trodden grass, all flashed into sight as the flame roared up to the topmost withered bow. The village glowed like a lamp set in the dead blackness of marsh and forest. Opecocano came from the forest with a score of warriors behind him, and stopped beside me. I rose to greet him, as was decent, for he was an emperor, albeit a savage and a pagan. Tell the English that Opecocano grows old, he said. The years that once were as light upon him as the dew upon the maze are now hailstones to beat him back to the earth whence he came. His arm is not swift to strike and strong as it once was. He is old. The warpath and the scalp-damps please him no longer. He would die at peace with all men. Tell the English this. Tell them also that Opecocano knows that they are good and just, that they do not treat men whose color is not their own like babes, fooling them with toys, thrusting them out of their path when they grow troublesome. The land is wide and the hunting grounds are many. Let the red men who were here as many moons ago as there are leaves in summer and the white men who came yesterday dwell side by side in peace, sharing the maze fields and the weirs and the hunting grounds together. He waited not for my answer but passed on, and there was no sign of age in his stately figure and his slow firm step. I watched him with a frown until the darkness of his lodge had swallowed up him and his warriors and mistrusted him for a cold and subtle devil. Suddenly, as we sat staring at the fire, we were beset by a band of maidens coming out of the woods painted with antlers upon their heads and pine branches in their hands. They danced about us, now advancing until the green needles met above our heads, now retreating until there was a space of turf between us. Their slender limbs gleamed in the firelight. They moved with grace keeping time to a plaintive song, now raised by the whole choir, now fallen to a single voice. Pocahontas had danced thus before the English many a time. I thought of the little maid of her great wandering eyes and her piteous untimely death of how loving she was to Rolf and how happy they had been in their brief wedded life. It had bloomed like a rose as fair and as early fallen, with only a memory of past sweetness. Death was a coward passing by men whose trade it was to outbrave him and striking at the young and lovely and innocent. We were tired with all the memory of the day. Moreover, every fiber of our souls had been strained to meet the hours that had passed since we left the jail at Jamestown. The elation we had felt earlier in the day was all gone. Now the plaintive song, the swaying figures, the red light beating against the trees, the blackness of the enshrouding forest, the low melancholy wind. All things seemed strange, and yet deadly old, as though we had seen and heard them since the beginning of the world. All at once a fear fell upon me, causeless and unreasonable, but weighing upon my heart like a stone. She was in a palisaded town, under the governor's protection, with my friends about her and my enemy lying sick unable to harm her. It was I, not she, that was in danger. I laughed at myself, but my heart was heavy, and I was in a fever to be gone. The Indian girls danced more and more swiftly, and their song changed, becoming gay and shrill and sweet. Higher and higher rang the notes, faster and faster moved the dark limbs. Then quite suddenly song and motion ceased together. They who had danced with the abandonment of wild priestesses to some wild god were again, but shy brown Indian maids, who went and set them meekly down upon the grass beneath the trees. From the darkness now came a burst of savage cries only less appalling than the war-woop itself. In a moment the men of the village had rushed from the shadow of the trees into the broad, fire-lit space before us. Now they circled around us, now around the fire. Now each man danced and stamped, and muttered to himself. For the most part they were painted red, but some were white from head to heel. Statues come to life, while others had first oiled their bodies, then plastered them over with small bright-colored feathers. The tall headdresses made giants of them all. As they leaped and danced in the glare of the fire they had a fiendish look. They sang too, but the air was rude and broken by dreadful cries. Out of a hut behind us burst two or three priests, the conjurer, and a score or more of old men. They had Indian drums upon which they beat furiously, and long pipes made of reeds which gave forth no uncertain sound. Fixed upon a pole and born high above them was the image of their oaky, a hideous thing of stuffed skins and rattling chains of copper. When they had joined themselves to the throng in the fire-light the clamor became deafening. Someone piled on more logs, and the place grew light as day. Opecacano was not there, nor Nantakwas. Dickon and I watched that uncouth spectacle, that virginian mask, as we had watched many another one, with disgust and weariness. It would last we knew for the better part of the night. It was in our honor, and for a while we must stay and testify our pleasure. But after a time when they had sung and danced themselves into oblivion of our presence, we might retire and lead the very old men, the women, and the children, soul spectators. We waited for that relief with impatience, though we showed it not to those who pressed about us. Time passed, and the noise deepened, and the dancing became more frantic. The dancers struck at one another as they leaped in world, the sweat rolled from their bodies, and from their limbs came hoarse animal-like cries.  The pines were bronze red, the woods beyond a dead black. All noises of marsh and forest were lost in the scream of the pipes, the wild yelling, and the beating of the drums. From the ranks of the women beneath the red and pines rose shrill laughter and applause as a sat or knelt bent forward watching the dancers. One girl alone watched not them, but us. She stood somewhat back of her companions, one slim brown hand touching the trunk of a tree, one brown foot advanced, her attitude that of one who waits but for a signal to be gone. Now and then she glanced impatiently at the wheeling figures, or at the old men and the few warriors who took no part in the mask, but her eyes always came back to us. She had been among the maidens who danced before us earlier in the night. When they rested beneath the trees, she had gone away, and the night was much older when I marked her again, coming out of the firelit distance back to the fire and her dusky maze. It was soon after this that I became aware that she must have some reason for her anxious scrutiny, some message to deliver a warning to give. Once when I made a slight motion as if to go to her, she shook her head and laid her finger upon her lips. A dancer fell from sheer exhaustion, another and another, and warriors from a dozen or more seated at our right began to take the places of the fallen. The priests shook their rattles and made themselves dizzy with bending and whirling about their oaky. The old men, too, though they sat like statues, thought only of the dance and of how they themselves had excelled long ago when they were young. I rose and making my way to the whereowants of the village where he sat with his eyes fixed upon a young Indian, his son, who bade fair to outlast all others in that wild contest, told him that I was weary and would go to my hut, I and my servant, to rest for the few hours that yet remained of the night. He listened dreamily his eyes upon the dancing Indian, but made offer to escort me thither. I pointed out to him that my quarters were not fifty yards away in the broad firelight, in sight of them all, and that it were a pity to take him or any others from the contemplation of that whirling Indian so strong and so brave that he would surely one day lead the war parties. After a moment he acquiesced, and Dickon and I quietly and yet with some ostentation, so as to avoid all appearance of stealing away, left the press of savages and began to cross the firelit turf between them and our lodge. When we had gone fifty paces, I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the Indian made no longer stood where we had last seen her, beneath the pines. A little farther on we caught a glimpse of her winding in and out among a row of trees to our left. The trees ran past our lodge. When we had reached its entrance we paused and looked back to the throng we had left. Every back seemed turned to us, every eye intent upon the leaping figures around the great fire. Swiftly and quietly we walked across the bit of even ground to the friendly trees and found ourselves in a thin strip of shadow between the light of the great fire we had left, and that of a lesser one burning readily before the emperor's lodge. Beneath the trees, waiting for us, was the Indian made with her light form and large shy eyes and finger upon her lips. She would not speak or tarry, but flitted before us as dust and noiseless as a moth, and we followed her into the darkness beyond the firelight, well nigh to the line of sentinels. A wigwam larger than common and shadowed by trees rose in our path. The girl, gliding in front of us, held aside the mats that curtained the entrance. We hesitated a moment, then stooped and entered the place.


Earlier today, a video recording of a known origin was shared online. The recording depicted SCP-096, a dangerous anomalous humanoid who attacks both, who see its face. If you have seen the recording in question, you are in mortal danger and must follow these orders immediately. Orders to follow. Isolate yourself. Do not show anyone the video. Do not contact anyone or ask for help. If you fail to follow these orders you will put others at risk. If you have not seen the video, you may still be at risk from SCP-096. These are the instructions you must follow. Stay inside. Distance yourself from anyone who has seen the video of SCP-096. Blindfold yourself so that, if SCP-096 is in your area, you will not see its face. Thank you for cooperating. The SCP Foundation will resolve the situation soon. Secure. Contain. Protect.


Welcome to All Hands Update, I'm Petty Officer Jonathan Pancall. These are your headlines from around the fleet. The guided missile cruiser USS Veligolf entered the Black Sea to promote peace and stability in the region on Wednesday. Veligolf's presence builds on the collective security of NATO allies and partners in the Black Sea. The Navy's forward presence in European waters improves maritime readiness and strengthens partnerships with regional allies. The Norfolk-based cruiser is deployed on a multi-mission role in the U.S. six-fleet area of operations. In the fifth-fleet area of responsibility, the Navy has forward-deployed advanced airborne laser technology. This is the maiden deployment for the airborne laser mine detection system. The laser-driven system works like radar and is operated by sailors from Helicopter C Combat Squadron 26 Detachment 2. The technology detects, classifies and localizes floating and near-surface moored mines.


Growing up, I was just obsessed with food. I was always in the kitchen, loved to cook. We had just come out of like the 2008, 2009 recession. It was really the birth of fast casual. Chipotle was really taking off sweet green shake shack. I saw a void in the market. Everyone was really doing the same thing. It was like sandwiches, pizza, salads, and burgers. And I wanted to do something that was fresh and innovative. I just kept coming back with my partner to like, how can we scale sushi? How can we do this? It's possible if someone's gonna do it. And if we do it the right way, it's gonna take off.