There was little wind, and we moved but slowly. I looked again at the fog bank and it seemed closer. Jago was staring at it, obviously frightened. With my glass I lifted a strong dark line, like a thread. Land!
'Aye,' Jago said, 'and none too soon.'
Lila came on deck and walked to the rail and looked astern. As she stood there the fog seemed to thin toward the center and dimly we seemed to see an island.
A mirage? My chart showed no island there. It suddenly seemed clearer. Were those houses? Temples? I walked to the afterrail and stared.
'See it, Cap'n?' said Jago. 'See? Look, but never speak of it, men will think you daft, as they have thought me. Look ... something moves! Do you see it?'
Indeed, I did, or thought I did. I pointed my glass toward it again, and the figures leaped at me. Men ... and women, all in strange costumes ... temples of a sort not seen before ...
'Captain,' Tilly was speaking, 'we're closing in on the shore. There seems to be an opening yon.'
With an effort, I took my eyes away and looked shoreward. A long white beach, gleaming in the sun, a sandy shore stretching north and south as far as the eye could reach ... and yes, there seemed to be an opening.
'Jago?' I said. He did not turn and I spoke again, more sharply. 'Jago!'
'Aye, aye.'
Indicating the opening, I said, 'Do you know that one?'
'I do that. She's shoal, Cap'n, but with the lead we can go in yonder.'
He looked back over his shoulder, and I over mine. The opening in the mist had closed, the mist was thinning, the fair vision of a city was gone.
Was it a mirage? For a moment it had seemed we looked into another world, as through a magic window or door.
Was that where the vanished ships had gone? Through that door? Into that mirage?
Chapter 14
Cautiously, using the lead, I took the fluyt into the passage between the sandy islands, using only such sail as needed for steerage way. If we ran aground here and a storm blew up we would be at the mercy of wave and wind, and all my great hopes might vanish in what followed. If I ran aground, I wished it to be not too forcefully, that we might the easier escape.
Lowering a boat, we let it proceed before us, and thus found our way through and into deeper water, when we took the boat back aboard once more. Remembering my one-time meeting here with my old enemy Bardle, I had two guns prepared and gun crews standing by.
Blue, having the sharpest eyes, was posted aloft to look out for ships and savages, or any smoke which might hint of activity ashore.
Now that we were so close, Lila was silent, eyes wide with apprehension, fearful her mistress might have been killed, drowned, or otherwise lost. I scoffed at this, and kept still my own fears, for better than she I knew what dangers the country might hold.
Calling John Tilly aft, I told him I wanted the men to go below, two at a time, and arm themselves each with a cutlass, and then I wanted muskets charged and kept in a rack conveniently placed inside the door to the main cabin where they would be ready to hand.
Worried, I paced the afterdeck. I had armed myself with my sword as well as a brace of pistols, yet it was not of weapons I thought, for indeed, they were but a precaution. Captain Tempany was a fine seaman, and he'd a good crew aboard ... but supposing he had been overhauled and forced back by a Queen's ship because of his connection with me?
What if pirates had taken his ship? Or storms?
Hour by hour my anxiety grew, and still no sign of the ship.
Darkness came, and rather than venture on we let go the anchor to wait for daybreak.
The ship should be here, yet if I recalled rightly there were four big rivers flowing into the two sounds, and a number of lesser streams. There were any number of coves and inlets in which the ship might be lying. I tried to think of all the reasons we had not found her, all that could be done, yet nothing gave me rest.
Alone I stood by the rail, looking shoreward. Restless, unable and unwilling to sleep, I had told Tilly to let the crew rest and when I. Was ready to turn in I'd awaken one of them to take my place on lookout.
Hearing a step, I turned. It was Lila. She came to the rail and stood beside me.
'Will we find her?'
'I think so. If she is here, we'll find her.'
'It is a vast land. I could not imagine it so big, so empty.'
'There are Indians over there ... many of them.' I paused. 'Not so many people as in England, of course. The way they live, mostly hunting and gathering berries, roots, and nuts, they need much land to support only a few.'
'They do not plant?'
'Some of the tribes do. They plant corn, a few other things. Mostly they live by hunting, fishing, and gathering, so they move from time to time, going to new areas where they can find more game, and more food.'
'Our coming will change them, I think.'
'I don't know, Lila. Perhaps it will. Yes, I believe it will, and perhaps not for the better. They have a way of life that is not ours, beliefs different than ours. We will learn much from them about this country, and they will learn from us, but I am not sure whether what they learn will be good for them.
'All I know is that it is inevitable. If not us, then somebody else, and all change is difficult, all change is resisted, I think. No people can long remain in isolation, and men will go where there is land, it is their nature, as it is with animals, with plants, with all that lives.
'Since the beginning of time men have moved across the face of the world, and we like to believe this is a result of our individual will, our choice, and it may be so, but might it not be that we are moved by tides buried in our natures?
Tides we cannot resist?
'Whole nations and tribes have moved, suddenly, always with some kind of an excuse. But was not the excuse sometimes found afterward? How do we know we make these moves by our own decision?
'Men like to believe themselves free from nature, free of the drives that move animals and plants, but wherever there is open space men will come to occupy it.
'The Indian himself has moved, pushing out other Indians. I heard of this on my previous voyage ... it is inevitable.'
Long after Lila went to sleep, I paced the deck, wandering from bow to stern, alert for any moving thing upon the dark water. At last I awakened one of the men, a Newfoundlander I knew only as Luke, and left him on lookout.
Yet sleep did not come for a fear was on me, a fear for what could have happened to my love, she who had given up all for me to come to this far, strange place.
How deep, how strange is the courage of women! Courage is expected of a man, he is conditioned to it from childhood, and we in our time grew up in a world of wars and pressgangs, of highwaymen and lords sometimes as high-handed as they.
We grew up to expect hardship and war. But a woman?
I'd seen them follow their men to war, seen them seeking over battlefields to find their lonely dead, or the wounded who would die but for them. I have seen a woman pick up a man and carry him off the field to a place where he might have care.
Abigail, for all her life aboard ship with her father, had given up all a girl might have for the hardship of life in a new, strange land, without comforts, without the chance of care if she came to a child-bearing time. At least, no care other than I could provide.
At last I slept, and it was full dawn before my eyes opened again, and when I came out upon deck we got under way, making our way past the tiny coves and inlets, the rivermouths and the bays.
No ship ... nothing.
Had not two colonies disappeared here? Had not the men Grenville left vanished?
